I am sitting inside listening to classical music (LPs of course - none of
that new-fangled stuff for me!), and sorting through old sports car magazines.
I hit one old Sports Cars Illustrated with an article on racing the Twincam.
They disassembled the engine, balanced it, and carefully reassembled it,
'blueprinting' it as they went, that is making sure everything was exactly to
spec, tha the clearances were correct, that manifolds lined up with heads,
etc.
Their result, without modifying the engine, was a car that would do 0-60 in 9
seconds flat (their best was 8.9). This is worthy of comment, as it is much
better than almost all of the competition in those days, and many seconds
better than the 2 liter TR3, for instance.
Too bad several of the Twincams given to the magazines for review were not
tuned so that they ran properly!
The next magazine I picked up was called "On The Grid", and it had a report
on the 1960 Le Mans race, where the Lund/Escot Twincam won their class. Their
comments about the Twincam Triumphs were cruel;
" Triumph was somewhat of a surprise with all three cars finishing. ...the
body looked more like the front end of a Mack truck than a race car (this
was the TR4 looking version, rather than the elongated TR3 body used the
previous year). ....according to the drivers themselves, their times were 15
seconds slower than last year and they were losing it all on the straights."
They did more than 125 km. less distance than the MGA, which itself came
within 30 km. of the RS-60 Porsche race cars.
Fun reading on a rainy day!
Bill
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