Yes Bill, costly-and time consuming. But, doable.
Remember too, when Dave was building this engine, he was doing it all himself,
for himself. And he's got a fully tooled shop at his disposal-it's not like
he'd have to pay someone and send stuff out. And, very importantly, Dave has
been building engines for race cars since he was actually small enough to fit
comfortably in the Spit! Compared to some of the Ferrari, Jag, Aston-Martin and
Porsche racing engines he's built-the Spit must have been a peice of cake!
I remember him showing me engine parts and explaining what he'd done to similar
parts in the Spitfire engine-each cylinder took him over 24 hours of working on
it by hand. I was showing a friend of mine, who was a designer for Jaguar and
has restored plenty of LBCs himself Nigel's engine today. Opened the oil cap
and he peaked inside the valve cover and said, 'Whoa! This guy is great!' (Dave
always says that people who truly know their stuff will look and say-wow! Those
that don't know their stuff will look and go-ah-ha. It's turned out to be true!)
I just feel so often that not only am I the West Coast Defender of British
Automotives, I am also the number one defender of Dave's superior talents! No
one believes (cause it's coming from the mouth of a *girl*?) until they
actually *see* the work! And then meet Dave! And then they become believers.
You guys can't believe the exotic, expensive, fast! machines I've seen this guy
put together, build painstakingly by hand-*without a shop manual*! How many
people do you know who can wire pretty much any model, year Jaguar -without a
schematic-and get it *Right*? And I've seen him redo some pretty crappy, rats
nests of wiring that got that way from 'professional restorers'. (The only
reason he asked for a schematic for the Spit was because it's been 3 years
since he worked on the wiring on a Spit-in his words-'Do you know how many
Ferraris and Jags and Mseratis and stuff I've wired in the last 3 years!?')
The only thing the guy doesn't do is upholstry-cause he doesn't have time to do
it himself anymore! But his upholsterer works to the same exacting standards
that Dave works to-or else it gets sent back.
As for getting power out of a 1500 engine-Think of all the F1 championships
that were won with 1500 engines! It's not the size of the engine-it's the skill
of the mechanic (and, ok, the driver too!)
Well, off to bed and to dream of how to improve my $10,000, 147hp Spit into
something even *Better*! :-)
Laura G.
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