Dear World of knowledgeable Friends,
While the 2.0 Triumph 6 in my Spit is very smooth, I have been
lately been feeling greedy for power. Coincidently, I realized that I
have the engine from my TR-6 restoration project acting as a paper weight
for one of the benches in my shop.
What I'm proposing to do is: put the GT-6 cylinder head onto the
TR-6 short block.
What I'd like is some advice.
Some history of the components: I bought the 74 TR-6 from the orig.
owner, with 49,000 on the clock. It ran beautifully, but he didn't drive
it much if at all. I drove it for a year, on and off, just for fun. I
usually was very gentle with the engine, but after a year of driving it
it blew a head gasket. I took it off the road, and developed a serious
case of Shipwright's. Soon the body was off to the shop being plastic
media blasted, and I was tearing the rest of the car apart.
I removed the cylinder head and greased the cylinder walls (which
look clean still).
The '72 GT-6 engine has compression between 134 and 126 on all six,
so while it's still smooth, it lacks power. The car I obtained the
cylinder head from was a former customers', before he wrote it off in
traffic, and I know that he had the cyl head rebuilt a few years ago by
a shop that I recommended.
I remember the TR-6 of mine being the most powerful stock one that I
had ever driven, so I believe the short block is in good shape.
After a stock rebuild of a friend's TR-250, I recall compression
being 205 across the board. It seemed to run nicely on 92 octane. I'm
hoping that I'll attain similar numbers with the shallower GT-6 head on
the TR-6 block, as Triumph added so much metal to the bottom of the head
castings of practiacally all of their cars during the early 70's.
I don't have a spare TR-250 head to check chamber depth against, and
I'm using the GT-6 (Spit) as a daily driver.
Any suggestions as to how I could get ($ + time) to remain at a
minimum whilst still enjoying a faster Spit?
BTW, I had planned to rebuild the TR-6 engine anyway when I got the
body and interior finished, so the engine would be eventually returned to
the TR-6, and I'll just find another short block for the Spit. But I
don't imagine this'll happen until I get my PhD, which could be some time
yet, no doubt.
Greg Meboe meboe@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu
Dept. of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Washington State University, Pullman, Wa.
'67 Spit-6 '74 TR-6
|