Morris Minor Owners Club

The Honda S2000 is rwd, so not a problem, but the cost of the base parts might be.It is a very long engine though so might require more mods than the K or Zetec. One very nice motor was the old Uno turbo which continues on into the Punto, now this can be mated to the Fiat TC gearbox or Ford Type 9. (or used to be)Very small lightweight and powerfull unit.
Not sure about the Mazda, but it might well as the Zetec S was a Mazda engine re badged.
The cooling of the Rovers, MGF's, Lotus and Disco's was based on an insane principle, running counter to all other manufacturers. This was to enable the engine to reach working temp very quickly and so reduce emissions, however this led to a non mixed system where hot and cooler water never mixed. The engine temp of 94C would open the stat and allow water in at hi 50's -low 60'sC treating the lovely alloy block to severe thermal shock. Swapping the system to the more recognised system helps no end.
The K when we fit it into the Minor is run at lower temps, and the cooling system is far superior, reducing even further the head gasket issue. Its a shame that such a ground breaking motor was ruined by the British industry disease of meddling, and trying to make an engine designed as a 1.1L stretch to a 1.8L despite the protests of the engine designers.

My brother in law has 2 vtecs - Civic and Integra. I couldn't be doing with the lack of low down torque - but they rev well.
My V8 Minor is quicker than the integra for acceleration - no substitute for CC

Pete

Wow! What an appalling design. That's right up there with exhaust heated inlet manifolds and catalytic converters.

When you say the engine was designed as 1.1, and stretched to 1.8, does this cause problems?

matt993fod,

Any chance of a few pictures of your conversion please, especially your steering rack mods.

Interesting to know that the Mx5 motor maybe a rebadged Zetec.

John

Matt, its not a problem, but makes the motor a bit nearer to marginal than had it been designed as a 1.8 in the first place.
The 1.8 turbo version is the one to go for. Its a low pressure unit with 160bhp, and over 220lbs of torque from 1500 rpm. A good Omex ECU will control everything up to a safe 195-200bhp. No issues with stressing the motor as its designed to rev to 7400rpm easily and the turbo's peak power is at 5100rpm. Economic to run big on torque and ultra smooth.

Hey Innovator. Its not my conversion strictly, but one my father and a friend of his (who is simply the most incredible engineer I have ever met) cooked up. I will get hold of some pics and post them, though. The conversion was originally done many years ago, when Fiat engines were dead common. My father wanted a TC moggy, so asked his friend to do the conversion. Dad proposed the normal way of fitting it, and got hold of all the literature and articles on twin cam fitting he could, and showed them to him. He just laughed, threw them all away and did his own conversion.

The car has had a whole restoration in the time since then, and the engine has been upped from 100 to 170bhp in its various incarnations.

I'll see what pics I can find.

With the Turbo K series, does it not like large boost? I'm not usually a turbo fan, simply because as soon as your insurance certificate says "turbo" on it, you can be sure to pay at least twice what you need to. We wanted to build a turbo A-Series powered moggy, and asked for a quote. They quoted us twice as much than they did for our fiat engined minor, which is twice as powerful as a turbo A series could ever be!

matt993fod,
be interested in the specs for your twin cam motor, as 170 BHP is knocking on the limits of a normally aspirated 8v twin cam.

Also whats the suspension and brake set up? Interested in any picys you may have of the motor and the car.

Regards,
Wal

Sorry should have added a link for my Moggy

http://www.guy-croft.com/viewtopic.php?t=1208

Regards,
Wal

The engine spec is as follows, from the top down;

Guy Croft 3A profile inlet cam, standard exhaust cam, Vernier adjustable cam pulleys, 1" wide cam belt.
Fiat Strada 130TC Big valve head, ported. 43.5mm inlet valves, 36mm Exhaust valves. Skimmed.
Guy Croft designed pistons, 11:1 compression ratio (at least)
Balanced crank, lightened flywheel, competition rods.
Twin 44IDA downdraft webers on a ported Alquati inlet manifold.
Abarth tubular exhaust manifold, COMPLETELY straight through single silencer exhaust.

It is a wondrous engine, as far as I'm concerned. It revs and revs, and carries on (if you let it) until 8250rpm. We don't tend to rev it past 6500 though, for long term reliability. My favourite feature of the engine, though, is the noise. It sounds magical. I would argue that Italian engine noise is VERY hard to beat.

Of course, those Webers suck up the fuel in good order, and it is hardly as powerful as newer engines CAN be, but it is still well powerful enough to make the minor terrifyingly fast. 0-60 takes around 6 seconds with our axle ratio, and that is plenty quick enough for us!

As for suspension and brakes, the front is on 75% uprated torsion bars, with a thick anti roll bar (can't remember what its from), fancy eye bolts, adjustable gas dampers and modified kingpins. I'm not too sure about EXACTLY how the front is done, but that is the rough spec.
The back is an escort axle with a limited slip diff, outboard adjustable dampers, anti roll bar and panhard rod. Once again, a rough outline.

Brakes are escort on the front, both discs and calipers, and fiesta discs on the back, with XR4 rear calipers.

It goes, and stops REALLY well, but tends to be really prone to power oversteer. My dear old dad reckons a five link kit would sort it straight out.

Matt, the K series turbo was designed primarily to give business users the feel of a 2.0L motor but with the tax concessions of a 1.8L. Essentially the motor only runs shorter conrods and a few turbo specific oil returns/feeds and is almost standard. The low pressure 7-8psi is designed for low down torque which it delivers in spades, which in turn minimises the need to rev the engine to its 7200rpm limit as peek power and torque are reached before 5100rpm.
If starting from a clean sheet then I'd turbo or supercharge the 1.4L unit as it is much less marginal on tollerances and race versions of this motor have easily exceeded 300bhp.

Could you just transfer the kit onto a smaller incarnation of the engine?

matt993fod,
nice spec, sounds excellent.

I keep thinking about supercharging mine but it's a lot to change (valves & cams, pistons & rods) and I've already invested too much in the noirmally aspirated route.

Regards,
Wal

Matt, re K turbo, yes I suppose you could just fit the 1.8 turbo parts to the the 1.4, but you would have quite a high comp for a turbo, if you could lower this a little then it would make a great usable motor which should be pretty reliable,light and economic, quiet too with the turbo silencing

Hey Jon, I saw the pics of the half done Zetec swap in this months minor monthly and the mods you have done to the bulkhead look exactly like the chopping we did to get the Fiat engine to fit further back. Did you move the steering rack too?

Matt,

Any pictures of yours and more details on moving the steering rack?

thanks

John

Matt,

No, we have kept the original rack, the only other mod was our 9 piece chassis kit and a reinforcing angle plate on the reverse side of the bulkhead cross member. This needs slightly modified pedals, but nothing too serious. Fortunately the new Zetecs we offer are the lightweight design, several kilo's less than the old Mondeo unit we used for mocking up, so we could get away with even less surgery to the bulkhead cross member. If you would like to see more pics drop me your email details and I'll send more pics.

I think you already have my Email addy...

It certainly looks cool. Since the bulkhead chopping we did was even more extensive, a Zetec may fit right in once the good ole fiat wears out!