Terry, I like your approach best. A Spitfire on steroids...OK. Wankels,
Buicks, Nissans, et. al....a bastard car. Not that I don't appreciate the
evil desire of dropping a V-8 into one, but...I agree with your philosophy
here.
Terry Banbury
> ----------
> From: Terry L. Thompson[SMTP:tlt@digex.net]
> Reply To: Terry L. Thompson
> Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2000 11:33 AM
> To: spitfires@autox.team.net
> Subject: Re: ENGINE SWAPPING
>
>
> I have friends who owned the RX-7's. and from what they've told me, the
> rotary engine sucks up as much gas as a small block V-8.
> Hey! My spitfire gets 16 miles to the gallon! (blah)
> I know in the grassroots upgrade, they installed a fuel cell. I think the
> 8
> gal tanks our cars have will be an issue if you go to any moderately
> larger
> or stronger engine.
> Besides, I don't think I could go very long telling people my car had a
> Wankel engine (the psuedonym for a rotary named after the inventor).
>
> I've done a lot of research and have come to the conclusion that the
> Spitfire engine is pretty robust and is the only engine that will fit
> without hacking up the frame in one way or another. And there seems to be
> an
> almost endless number of modifications appearing for them (PSI has a
> Mikuni
> quad carb set-up). Anyone seen the ALL fiberglass body called the
> HURRICANE
> that mounts on a spitfire? (Is that ugly or what?!)
>
> My plans for next year are to save-up about $7k/US, and build a race
> engine
> for a spit (using a 1293cc block .060 over bore, aluminum pistons, moly
> connecting rods, lightened-balanced-knife-edged crank, aluminum flywheel,
> mild race cam, competition valves, etc. and every single inch CBC or TLML
> ceramic coated.) And from the outside it will still look like a spitfire
> engine!
> With a decent header, exhaust and carb set-up. You can probably pull 150
> horses out of a Herald engine (Even that will probably tear out a stock
> rear
> differential or twist both half-axles into pretzels).
>
> And I think this will cost a lot less than some people have with their
> larger engine swaps. The most difficult part is going to be figuring some
> way to down-load all the information lodged in Ted Schumacher's brain into
> some utilizable format.
>
> Terry L. Thompson
> '76 spit 1500
> Maryland
>
>
> >
> > Mazda RX7 rotary.
> >
> > The complete rotary is about the same height as the Spitfire shortblock,
> not
> > much wider and definitely lighter.
> >
> > Not a lot of low end grunt in stock form.... easy on the diff.
>
>
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