Morris Minor Owners Club

I was looking through my folder of paperwork/service records for my Traveller today, and realised the 1275cc MG Midget engine I rebuilt and fitted to it (my first ever engine rebuild) was done in August 1994 - 30 years ago!

It's still going strong after some 65,000 miles, with just a cylinder head change in all that time, because the original head's valve guides wore out, and I replaced it with a Metro unleaded head.

This lead to me wondering, how are other folk finding their 1275s for durability?

My 1275cc engines in both 1400cc (MG Midget based) and 1380cc (Ital 'A' Plus based) form have been exceptionally reliable and both those engines have been subject to more hard driving than most 1275cc engines.
A well built 1275cc 'A' Series will be reliable and can stand a lot of abuse. Both engines were regularly run at 7.5 k rpm and shown no sign of fatigue. With the original cam (Kent 310 scatter) the engine would run to 10k + rpm without problem but 10k + rpm is no good to me so the engine is now limited to 7.5k rpm and fitted with a 649 camshaft.
What does help as regards reliability is having the engines both dynamically and statically balanced.
The selection of good parts both new and used is a must.

Pretty impressive, even daring to take it to 10,000rpm! I think I've only ever had mine up to around 6,000rpm, but then I rebuilt it pretty much to stock book spec., aside from Metro unleaded head, Maestro HIF 44 carb with MG Metro BDL needle, Accuspark in the (Wolseley 1300) dizzy. It's more of a torquey slogger as it is, really, and quite easily pulls away from 20mph in 4th gear.

Also, regular oil/filter changes always helps - mine's due another very soon...