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See a shot of the FRONT here.
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An Experimental Alloy A Series, Made By BMC. In the late 1950's BMC realised that their "Workhorse" engine the A series could do with a bit of a face lift. To this end they commissioned The British Aluminium Co. to investigate the possibilities of making an all Alloy A Series. This project was overseen by George Harriman with input from other BMC worthies including Issigonis. By 1963 "BA" had produced a number of these blocks in varying configurations, with blocks actually running in at least 1 Riley Elf and the project looked like it was going to go somewhere. As you know, the A series engine remained Iron until it died in 2001. I wonder why this project floundered? Read a copy of the original report on this project by clicking on the image to the left. It will download a PDF file c/w drawings. I would like to thank Peter Crudgington for the pictures and info reproduced here. Pete owns one of these blocks and hopes to get it running again before too long. |
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Jackie Stewarts Timing Gears. Of all the items on this site this has to be the rarest single item. As you are probably aware the BMC Mini Cooper S and the single seater formular Junior cars of the 1960's shared a lot of parts and technology. The timing gear featured opposite was taken off Jackie Stewarts 999cc Tyrell Formula Junior car. This was a typical late 999 spec featuring Titanium rods, hard steel liners etc. It would have rev'd to in excess of 10,000 for extended periods and to accomodate this the timing chain was replaced by gears. This set were produced by BMC at Coventry, this is proved by the 707 part number on the alloy cover. Any special Comps. Dept. Items were identified with this prefix. It is not clear who developed this setup or wether they were ever used on Minis. Although it is safe to say there were only ever a handfull made one or two may have made their way down to Daniel Richmond at Downton. Brian Slark makes a modern equivalent of these gears today. For bigger images follow the links below. |
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Another Rarer than rare beast. This is another unbelievably rare item submitted for your amazement. The set of drop gears depicted to the left came from a guy who worked during the 1960's at Morris Engine Experimental, Coventry. As you are no doubt aware, BMC were having problems with the "small" idler, fretting and chewing up the casing. Then failure! This was a possible answer to the problem. They look like they were manufactured for BMC by Jack Knight, as the numbering system seems the similar. However, both the first motion gear, and Primary gear are totaly unique. They have completely different off-sets to a "normal" straight cut set. I am not sure if they ever found there way into a race engine? But they have clearly been run at some point? |
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Experimental 8 port cylinder head. The head pictured here was based on a 163 pattern, but as you can see it has a few more holes than normal. It is assumed that this was produced by the Morris Experimental department sometime in the mid 1960's. Unfortunately very little else is known about this very interesting variant cylinder head. Its last known wareabouts were in Australia, but more than that is not known. I would like to thank Bryan Slark for sending me this very interesting picture of this possibly unique cylinder head. |
