[Fot] Now that's something I've never seen before. Sabrina motor carbs for a TR

[Michael Porter]

On 3/16/2016 1:10 PM, billdentin at aol.com wrote:
> Agreed!  If nothing else, it would be nice to have just for its rare, 
> historical significance.  But down through the years I have always 
> wondered why the SABRINA engine never made it into their production 
> cars.  They sure seemed to do their job on the race track, but there 
> must have been issues why they never went into their normal production 
> cars.
>
> I wonder if Kas or Mike Cook has any take on that.
>
>

I imagine they do, but, my first guess would be the overall cost.  At 
precisely the time that the American market was expecting lots of 
changes year to year, Triumph was making just a few cosmetic changes to 
control expenses and to address manufacturing problems.  It made no 
sense to hang onto an engine the basic design of which dated back to the 
`30s--which Triumph did==except for reasons having to do with money.

Tooling costs, especially for low-volume producers, are horribly 
expensive.  With talented people and enough time, it's possible to make 
a few units in-house without production tooling and come up with 
something that works reasonably well (this might be why the engines had, 
IIRC, some persistent oil leaks during racing), but translating that 
design to production is quite another matter.  New castings means new 
forms, and any changes in the design means changes to production 
equipment, too--most manufacturers at the time had specially-made gang 
drills to drill out the bosses for head bolts in the block and the head, 
etc. (by and large, no CNC machining centers then, especially for small 
producers), and all those had to be redone or adjusted to new tasks.  
And all this would have come at the precise time that Triumph was just 
absorbing new tooling costs for the Spitfire and the TR4. And in that 
period, early `60s, market conditions were already changing--the trend 
toward muscle cars in the U.S. certainly had an impact on the sports car 
market--and emission controls were coming and the company was already 
inching toward receivership (wasn't the first part of S-T turned over to 
British Leyland in 1968?).

In a way, it was a perfect storm of adverse conditions.  I'm sure that 
S-T sensed a need to make some radical changes, but they only had the 
money to make do.


Cheers.

-- 


Michael Porter
Roswell, NM


Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....

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