Well, I got one for you then. Five years ago one of the brit car places here
in Arlington VA had a complete Twin Cam engine for $1500. While the
thought of dropping it into my MGB seemed appealing, being a high school
senior, I did not have the money. Anyway, within 2 weeks of that getting sold,
I saw this ad in the Washington (Com)Post.
1959 MGA Four Wheel Disc Brakes $2000. (Or something to that effect)
I immediately thought MGA DeLuxe, one of the 300 left over Twin Cam
chassis that the factory dropped 1600 engines into. So I talked my
dad into buying it. (We talked the guy down to $1000 - it looked like
it had been used as a planter in his back yard). He threw in a 1500
chassis that was in perfect shape, 2 1500 engines and a VW bus for free.
As I was dismantling this thing, I noticed some weird things about it.
The hole for the heater core was on the wrong side of the body, it
had early taillights, and several other features which identified it
as a Twin Cam, not a Deluxe. So I wrote to England with the chassis
number to get it looked up in the factory records. The reply was that
it was a plain jane MGA. So, the chassis number was obviously switched.
I bought a book called 'MGA' by Wilson McComb, which has a detailed listing
of all the modifactions made to the MGA's - from engine changes to
changes in the thickness of the splines on the half shafts. From this
I have narrowed my car down to one of 72 MGA Twin Cams made. I wish
like hell I had purchased that engine.
During my vacations from college I have completely restored the chassis
and the major problems in the body. I want to find the original chassis
number. I have no clue what color mine was originally... it has been
at least 5 different colors (White, red, blue, gray, black, and green -
different parts of the car were different colors).
Do you by any chance know what the differences in the casting of the Twin Cam
block and the B series 1600 block are? From the outside they look the same,
except they do not have the same machining. For example, they did not bore the
hole for the distributor, but you can clearly see where the distributor
ought to go on a Twin Cam block.
James
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