BMC Minis disqualified from Monte Carlo rally

[chiph]

For non-standard low-beam headlights!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/2506863.stm

Chip H.

[robmcg]

Perfectly reasonable, monsieur!

These British upstarts!

There are great stories from that rally such as cars finishing stages with brakes actually on fire. The drivers were by-and-large completely mad.

The BMC Mini was by that time almost reliable, and it was a shock that a 1275cc car could do better in open competition with any car in the world. Those French didn't like it!

I have a 1275cc engine under one of the workbenches in my workshop which I might exhume and rebuild but alas it's not a 1966 version with nitrided crank and head ports would could drive a truck through, but I can make it flow as well and the EN16T crank, well, the basic saloon crank, mine is c1970 will run to 6,000+rpm safely...

Drivers didn't wear helmets and there were no roll-cages until sometime around them. A gentleman's sport.

[chiph]

Was it Stirling Moss who found he could go faster through the mountain stages by simply bouncing off the snow drifts?

Chip H.

[Kwozzie1]

Perfectly reasonable, monsieur!

These British upstarts!

Drivers didn't wear helmets and there were no roll-cages until sometime around them. A gentleman's sport.

Go the British upstarts I say!!!!!

[robmcg]

I hope you are not suggesting I should actually build a 1275 Mini engine from the bits in my workshop.

I had about ten Mini engines and boxes in there, and four Jag engines and got rid of the lot.

and only kept one BMC 1275 and it's been lying under the workbench for ten years. Brand new 4-speed AP gearbox there too in bits.

[jdm124]

I hope you are not suggesting I should actually build a 1275 Mini engine from the bits in my workshop.
.

Go ahead, do the build up and then test it to see how fast it will turn before failure. We can bet on which part will first fail.

[robmcg]

Go ahead, do the build up and then test it to see how fast it will turn before failure. We can bet on which part will first fail.

I have never had a BMC A-series engine fail. I recall a TV test where several British engines in old cars were drained of oil and set to rev at maximum until they broke, and the average was about 2-3 minutes and they stopped usually with piston seizure. The Austin 1300cc went over 5 minutes and seized. They refilled it with oil and it ran OK again...

This could be a new experience. What is failure anyway? A GM serpentine belt on my LS1 engine makes all kinds of odd noises...

[jdm124]

This could be a new experience. What is failure anyway?

s

Swallowing a valve, burning a piston, collapsing a piston, throwing a rod, breaking a cam, that kind of thing. Oil starvation does not count.

[robmcg]

Swallowing a valve, burning a piston, collapsing a piston, throwing a rod, breaking a cam, that kind of thing. Oil starvation does not count.

I put a rod through the crank of my 1935 Morris 8 after driving it fkat out at an indicated 66mph. But it still went OK on three.

Does that count? Power was down a bit... I sold it for $10. My mother used to worry about me, dunno why, especially when I bought a largish motorbike.

But no engine I've built has ever broken that I know of. Come to think of it Dave builds race engines and I don't think his engines break easily either.
Another mechanic who worked near my house here used to put wild Chev V8s into little britcars and even he never broke engines.

I suppose in America you break anything breakable

[jdm124]

I suppose in America you break anything breakable

That is called, 'defining limits.' And if there is a bit of fun involved, who is hurt?

[robmcg]

That is called, 'defining limits.' And if there is a bit of fun involved, who is hurt?

Indeed. I suggest you drain the oil out of your RAV4 and put a brick on the throttle pedal and film it...

This would be fun, and if marketed right could make national TV News...
"Lawyer USAF Fighter Pilot Makes Statement"

Imagine. You could get the scantily-clad local girls involved and make it a media event. A rage aganst the machine. A statement.
And it would cost you just one measily engine.

You could be interviewed, saying "I preferred the old 7 liter US cars and Toyota are paying me to find what customers do to their cars"...

[jdm124]

That is called, 'defining limits.' And if there is a bit of fun involved, who is hurt?

Indeed. I suggest you drain the oil out of your RAV4 and put a brick on the throttle pedal and film it...

I did the equivalent of that to the wireless connection between my laptop and router on Friday and it has taken two days to recover from it. Digging holes to create mountains to climb and all that.

[robmcg]

We must be too old.

My best dog used to dig holes, bury sticks, go away and chase seagulls, come back and re-discover the stick...

Perhaps we need a war, so that women can tremble and men take up weapons again.
Speaking of war, Margaret has bought a WinVista laptop for US$750 Compaq Presario 'free' basic printer 120GB HD 1MB RAM processor around 1.8GHz and she intends to set up broadband from scratch with a new server from her current dial-up Win98 v2 PC.

She started yelling at some point in our last conversation, so I'll let her ring me...

[misterdecibel]

My cat kills and eats small rodents and birds.

[jdm124]

We must be too old.

My best dog used to dig holes, bury sticks, go away and chase seagulls, come back and re-discover the stick...

Perhaps we need a war, so that women can tremble and men take up weapons again.
Speaking of war, Margaret has bought a WinVista laptop for US$750 Compaq Presario 'free' basic printer 120GB HD 1MB RAM processor around 1.8GHz and she intends to set up broadband from scratch with a new server from her current dial-up Win98 v2 PC.

She started yelling at some point in our last conversation, so I'll let her ring me...

She may find another MB of RAM to be helpful - I sometimes think that Vista was created by a conspiracy which included the chip makers. My 3 month old laptop is XP and I had to look a bit to find one available with that OS.

[jdm124]

My cat kills and eats small rodents and birds.

A very normal cat, does it bring you a dead one as a present?

[misterdecibel]

He hasn't brought me any presents in quite a while, maybe over a year. He is slowing down just a bit with age, he's 13 now.