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

[michael]

Calls for a different kind of studs
 
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 11:33:22 -0400
From: billdentin at aol.com
To: mlcooknj at msn.com; mdporter at dfn.com; fot at autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Fot] Now that's something I've never seen before. Sabrina motor carbs for a TR


Yeah! I can understand that...but my hang up is I keep thinking about Sabrina, and Bridget, and Gina, and Sophia, and all those others from that era..





Bill Dentinger









-----Original Message-----

From: michael <mlcooknj at msn.com>

To: Michael Porter <mdporter at dfn.com>; billdentin <billdentin at aol.com>; fot <fot at autox.team.net>

Sent: Thu, Mar 17, 2016 10:27 am

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










Just a quick comment - the "Sabrina" engine is a complex sandwich held together by very long studs. Lots of castings, twin cams to worry about and not much more horsepower than a well-prepared normal TR engine. It might have earned the factory points for development and up-to-date thinking but it would have been expensive to build and service. They were right to stick with the existing engine and put the money into styling.

 

Mike

 


To: billdentin at aol.com; fot at autox.team.net

From: mdporter at dfn.com

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:20:04 -0600

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




  
    
  
  
    
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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