I have an Autosport article by Ted Martin (of Martin engine fame, or
potentially obscurity) where he discusses the state of the art in Formula
Junior engines in 1961. He notes that transistor ignition was a promising
development, but that he wondered about reliability. They were definitely
using electronic ignition then! They were also making special cranks, rods,
pistons, and turning 8500 - 9000 rpm on the 1 litre junior motors, and
running dry sumps, gear drive cams, and lay-down motors! He was also
brazing in new intake ports to the ford heads that they used (production
based motors were the rule) to improve performance beyond what you could get
by just porting and polishing the stock ports. They did a TON of stuff back
then!
At 11:18 PM 14/07/97 -0400, you wrote:
>> I had a long talk with a US vistor in an MGA this past weekend at
>> Shannonville and he was talking about how many electronic ignitions he
>> sees at VSCCA events, which in theory are illegal. I don't think I've seen
>> any of those in our club,
>
>The Crane/Allison system in my '62 Spider is a development of the units
>that we used in the last half of the 60s, when we called them CD
>(capacitive discharge) transistorized ignition. Not VSCCA era, but
>close!
>--
>Jim Hayes Winchester, MA, USA
>hayes@mediaone.net http://www.fotec.com/jim.htm
>jeh@fotec.com http://www.fotec.com/
>All generalizations, with the possible exception of this one, are false!
>
|