Tom Buchanan Wrote :
1) Aluminum cross_flow head.
2) Roller rockers (How does the extra valve lift compare to a mild cam?)
3)Dual side draft Weber carbs (Would someone expound on the absence of
vacuum advance with these carbs or a way around it?)
4)A 2" diameter full flow headers and exhaust. (Who's got the best,
quietest, and best sounding? I don't want to loose that lovely stock soun=
d.)
5)Electric fan.
I think there are better areas to spend the money and get similar
performance;
If you want to produce horsepower/torque in an MGB engine spend the money on
the bottom
and the block - to make sure that not only can it handle the extra power but
will also stay together and be
reliable. Get the book entitled "How to Power Tune the MGB" by Dave Burgess
- he describes in detail
what type of work should be performed on the block, crank and rods.
Cylinder head : the alloy head may sound good and look superb, but you can
get as much flow from a modified
MGB head. There are several companies in the UK who sell stage 1,2,3,4 and 5
type heads. Each is modified to
handle a specific cam and for a specific application. Driving a stage 5
engine on the road is almost impossible.
Camshaft : Talk to Brit-Tek : he supplies a number of various Piper cams
which I have found to be excellent.
Remember not to get too radical and the cam has to work with the head to get
best performance.
Distributor : match the distributor to the cam/head/application. It's a
waste of time spending several thousand dollars
on the engine and then ignoring the distributor
Carb : the sidedraft 45DCOE works pretty well for street application: I
installed one on my MGB and it took me about
3 months to get the right combination of jets and chokes. I now get 25MPG,
the exhaust is fairly clean and I have
no flat spots in the rev range. The only problem I have found is that there
is a lot of induction noise in comparison to
the SU set-up. BTW a good set of HS6 carbs work just as well as a Weber.
Electric fan: I got a SlimLine fan from PEP-Boys and fitted it behind the
radiator - works great
Exhaust: I fitted the complete Peco system including the header : I think it
gave me slight performance gain, the fit is
perfect and the finish after a year of driving is good.
As a datapoint: I rebuilt my MGB engine about 18 months ago, had the block,
crank and rods worked on as per the instructions
in the Burgess book, Had all components balanced statically and dynamically,
Installed Piper 272BP cam wit the adjustable
cam wheel, modified the head
slightly, installed Peco and Weber and the Euro dizzy. I was really happy
how things turned out. I don't rev the guts out
of the engine as it has a tremendous amount of torque. From about 1500rpm,
the engine pulls like a steam train and atsrts
falling at about 5000 rpm.
gerry
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