Little and large A series

[andy1071]

Agricola: From memory, the Daimler V8 combustion chamber / valve layout was based on the Triumph motorcycle engine... (Edward Turner / Triumph owned Daimler at the time)
A colleague used to drag race with a blown Daimler V8, which gave around 1000hp..

Alan: I was lucky enough to have worked with Keith as well, in the early '90s. -Brilliant engineer, clear 'simple' logic.. Easy to talk to, and very helpful.
-Though every idea/suggestion I seemed to have for engine and parts tuning, he would respond: "Yes, we tried that in 1978, it works but doesn't really give as much as expected..."

[andy1071]

Simon: The rockers look about right for one side.... It looks like 2 different rockers would be used, with different ratios, so presumably the camshaft lobes would be quite different between inlet and exhaust...

[agricola]

Yep Andy thats right it had commonality with the Edward Turners other engine the Bonneville (he designed the ariel square 4 as well) and people tuned the 2.5 with Bonneville pistons and Amal carbs. The great thing about those engines was the quality of the components which was equivalent to EN24 so I think even supercharged rods and cranks were kept standard.
Certainly the 4.5 litre rods were used in the repco-brabham F1 engine. Of course the 4.5 majestic engine would have been a killer, but so few were made. The other thing about the 4.5 was the horsepower quoted of 220 was actually the maximum capacity of the Daimler Dyno it was actually 270, more that a 4.2 Jag and also quite a bit lighter, so a Daimler engined e type would have flown.
But Turner was never going to fit in at Jaguar with all the other designers there,which is a shame as it would take them years to value a v8 engined jag.

[251 ENG]

Be nice to put roller rockers on it

[Gary Schulz]

So you almost have enough parts to build the Hemi? This is a very interesting find and I think you are lucky to have these parts. I believe the various original Chrysler Hemi's (gen 1 and gen 2) had a large offset in pushrod angles so the bores were quite staggered. On an A series it would seem that this is not possible. I guess with straight up pushrods/lifters you would just get a much less favorable valve-train geometry.


This was supposed to work on a standard A series block then?

[251 ENG]

I believe push rods are kept in original location.

I have a 1275 cooper s block that has only been part machined , no holes in top of block.