I've spent about 50% of my time at work (post-docs can sometimes get away
with this, it will just cost a me a quick paper) and home faxing and
phoning places in UK and USA in my crusade to build the fastest, street
drivable bullet proof 1500 engine possible.
elli
Last night I called the folks at Oselli engineering to see if they had
forged pistons for the 1500 (well actually a TR6 as I will use TR6 pistons).
They said that they do not do too much work on the 1500 anymore as it
cannot be tuned as much as the 1275 A series. The A sreies, with lots of
work (see Vizard) can get you up to about 140 horses. The 1500 can never
be tuned this much. The priomary reason is HEAT. Apparently even if you
plonk big radiators and oil coolers on this lump, it generates too much heat
when being driven hard and cooks itself. The guy said that it is just a big
lump of iron and gets locally very hot. He speculated that only very very
large amounts of $$ would aliviate this problem if you reworked the water
and oil passages in the engine. He said you can get it over 100 horses
with little problem in a road drivable form but it will never match the
A series (I guess without lotsa $$). I don't know about torque, we only
spoke about horses and I was woried about my phone bill!
So there you go, no matter really what I do, I will always live if fear
of being let in the dust by a Midget with an A series.
Cheers Dennis
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