Hi,
Just wanted to put in my two cents here. Grassroots did an article a few years
ago about a Spitfire that they set up for autocrossing at the national level.
When they were done they had a good running reliable car that would do 0-60 in
about 8 seconds. This is without doing any internal engine mods. the engine
was rebuilt and balanced, but used a stock cam, pistons etc. Externally they
were running dual DCOE 40 or 45 carbs, hotter ign. etc. Basically all the
standard mods. I don't know what the top speed was, but I'm sure it was faster
than 100 mph. In my opinion 0-60 time is what most people refer to when they
talk about high performance on the street, how often do you drive your spit
more than 85 or 90? My car will do 96 mph top end, with a single stromberg and
all the emissions, but with a hotter cam, higher compression, better ign.
etc.but it is still fairly slow 0-60, this is where I'd like to see more power.
I may eventually follow GRMs example and improve my ca!
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r so that it performs at that level, if I can get around the emissions.
While I think the Spit is a good looking car and would certainly like to see it
have more power, I don't think that it is so beautiful that it is worth
investing a ton of time and effort in installing a different engine, except
maybe in the case of the GT6 engine as this eems to be the easiest and to me
the most desirable swap. The Spit is a great little classic car that performs
reasonably well and if you compare it to it's main competition of the day it
was technologically superior in many ways. For example, tube versus lever
shocks, independent suspension, 8 port heads on the later engines (versus an
MGBs siameesed exhaust even on the last cars), ever look under a Lotus Elan,
the rear end is very similar to a rotoflex GT6. So my feeling is enjoy the car
for what it is, improve the stock engine if you want more acceleration and
don't waste your time messing with bastardizing a great little car.
Glenn
'76 Spitfire
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