Inspection

[pharriso]

Sounds great, but you may have to drive north. I will keep the car in New Paltz, NY. Lots of great driving roads up there. Whereabouts are you in Long Island?

Cold Spring Harbor, Near Huntington.

[rgh0]

I did the inspection on the car today and it is one of the best Elans I have ever seen. You will be hard pressed to keep up with it on any road. it is seriously quick.as you would expect with an engine of that sort of power that has been properly dialled in on a dyno

cheers
Rohan

[PaulFinch]

Rohan,

At the risk of hijacking this thread, I'm intrigued to hear how a 183bhp motor behaves in an Elan on the road.
Do you know what cam this is running to get the peak power but also retain driveability? Does much happen below 5K?
My car currently has 151bhp @7000rpm and 129lb ft around 4400rpm. The engine was prepared with a view to future light competition use (11.7:1, steel rods, peened, lightened & balanced bottom end, 1.6" valves, baffled sump and centre pickup etc) but I still want to retain some road usability so did not go for the steel crank, 180 brake, 8500rpm option.

Having said that I think it is only a matter of time before the lure of bigger numbers takes over and stories of engines like this being used in road cars only makes this feeling stronger!

Cheers,
Paul

[rgh0]

The car is relatively easily drivable on the road and has a good torque spread. It has a lighter clutch / flywheel and crank assembly than mine so it is a little more sensitive off the line at low revs. The competition clutch comes in fairly quickly and needs good balance between accelerator and clutch to take off smoothly but it is relatively easy to do and can be driven in traffic ok.

The cam is a .420 lift 310 degree seat to seat duration grind which is a bit long for road use but is pulls strongly from low revs with no big hole in the torque curve and certainly comes in strongly post 4000 rpm. The shorter duration higher lift cam I use (M cCoy 440 lift 285 degree seat to seat) I thinks works a bit better at lower revs while giving the same hp at higher revs. The carb setup was done on a dyno and was excellent which helps a lot.

The head had a lot of development work also that clearly helps how it works so well.

cheers
Rohan

[nomad]

I shipped a Sunbeam Tiger from San Diego to Oz with the port in Long Beach. If I remember correctly, the shipping was about $2500.00

Thanks, not to hi-jack, relatives in NZ promp's the query.

Kurt
26/3754

[PaulFinch]

Thanks Rohan,

Interesting, I didn't realise it was possible to achieve that much power with that amount of lift. I guess that's where the long duration comes in.

Also, from the pictures it doesn't seem to be using equal length primary big bore manifold (TTR style) but this obviously hasn't restricted the power.

Paul

[rgh0]

I don't know how accurate the dyno was that it was done on. I would have guessed power in the mid to high 170's based on the specification rather than the mid 180's that was measured.

The exhaust is a bigger bore but in the original Lotus header style rather than the TTR style. It has an extremely well developed cylinder head which I suspect is contributing a lot to the ultimate power.

The engine was built by a guy who really knows how to build engines and every detail inside would have been done very carefully to maximise performance and good detail work can certainly add a bit of power also.

cheers
Rohan