Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 4:01 pm
To clarify the perceived handling problem, I had no trouble at all in the 100,000 miles I did in my MGB engined lowlight.
This includes trips to the south of England on numerous occasions attending custom car events.
In the dry I did not have to slow down much for any corner, and would place it's handling equivalent to any Escort mexico etc in it's day (Minor was a lot quicker though).
I eventually took the lowlight to bits in order to construct a chassis for a ford V8 powerplant and have never finished it (this year maybe), but I put it's engine into a Wolseley 1500 I had purchased. I did not bother about transferring the brakes, shocks etc (they went on another Minor I built), and sold the car soon after. It definately did not handle as well as the minor - lots of body roll (even on wide alloys), but as a package was probably more refined than the minor.
If you look at the centre point of the front suspension, and measure how much of the engine sits forward of this it will give you an idea of the respective weight over the front end on the 2 cars. Not having a riley or wolseley to hand I'm guessing that with both cars having a similar floorpan, there will be more front overhang on the Riley/Wolseley making this more of an understeerer than a B series engined minor.
Incidentally, I still have most bits including proper exhaust manifolds for this conversion - I think.
My V8 engined series 2 (lowlight lookalike) has the engine placed well back in the shell, but this still likes to go straight on in the wet - mind you so does a standard minor- especially on crossplies.
This includes trips to the south of England on numerous occasions attending custom car events.
In the dry I did not have to slow down much for any corner, and would place it's handling equivalent to any Escort mexico etc in it's day (Minor was a lot quicker though).
I eventually took the lowlight to bits in order to construct a chassis for a ford V8 powerplant and have never finished it (this year maybe), but I put it's engine into a Wolseley 1500 I had purchased. I did not bother about transferring the brakes, shocks etc (they went on another Minor I built), and sold the car soon after. It definately did not handle as well as the minor - lots of body roll (even on wide alloys), but as a package was probably more refined than the minor.
If you look at the centre point of the front suspension, and measure how much of the engine sits forward of this it will give you an idea of the respective weight over the front end on the 2 cars. Not having a riley or wolseley to hand I'm guessing that with both cars having a similar floorpan, there will be more front overhang on the Riley/Wolseley making this more of an understeerer than a B series engined minor.
Incidentally, I still have most bits including proper exhaust manifolds for this conversion - I think.
My V8 engined series 2 (lowlight lookalike) has the engine placed well back in the shell, but this still likes to go straight on in the wet - mind you so does a standard minor- especially on crossplies.
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