Unfortunately, the realities of life have intruded, and we're
no longer taking on customer engine builds. This page is left
as a dangling reminder of what once was ... and how we went about
building engines at The Dimebank Garage.
Suffice it
to say that our motto is "do it right or not at all".
We built them by the book - the book, in this case, being
"Tuning the A Series" by David Vizard.
To give you a preview, here are some photos of the 1380 I built for
Sam,
our Morris Minor.
It has about 8.8:1 CR, a Kent 256 cam, AE Hepolite pistons,
with Total Seal piston rings. We were really tired of timing
chain noise (not to mention that the chains tend to stretch
in the first 100 miles), so I splurged and installed an adjustable belt
drive with a Cooper S damper.
I ported and polished the head which has
Rimflo valves, silicon bronze valve guides and Teflon valve
seals. It is fed by a single SU HIF44 (even though the photo
shows a DCOE) and a Maniflow LCB header. It was built for torque,
not top end; it's still being broken in so I can't report specific
output numbers.
If you'd like a "new" A series engine for your car, and you want to specify what goes into the engine instead of just buying a junkyard special or a Gold Seal rebuild, contact us. We can discuss with you mods for reliability and power, and will do the work carefully. It will cost more, but it will be done right.
Last updated Jan 08 1997 by cak