Some of you may remember that we pulled the 1275 out of our Morris Minor
Traveller a couple of months ago, since it had burned an exhaust valve and
then we discovered that the #2 wrist pin was loose and had gouged the
cylinder walls. I've discussed a lot of options with various of you, and
had a good idea of what I wanted to do to the motor to make it a nice,
torquey, towing motor.
I finally got the pieces to the machine shop, and the bad news came today.
Apparently this block came from the factory sleeved - in fact, something
like 40% of this particular block came that way due to screwups. The end
result is that there isn't room to make the .060 overbore that I was
thinking of; +010 or +020 is what's comfortable. And the head has 9 cracks
that need to be pinned and needs all new seats. I knew the crank needed to
be ground. We're looking at $975 in machine shop time, just to get the
parts ready - that doesn't include the cost of new pistons and
valves/springs/tappets/cam/oil pump/timing gears/chain.
So I'm not going to go that route. Anyone got good suggestions? Mini Mania
was selling 1300+ engines, fairly complete, a little while ago at a decent
price (about $1200, I think). Not exactly what I wanted, but not a bad deal
at that price, and a much better starting point. Or does someone know where
I can get a used block/head that's in better shape to start with? Got one
lying around your garage you want to part with for a decent price?
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