classic porsche rims

From an article published on the TDC website

"In parallel to this activity, Triumph's Fletchamstead North design and engineering facility had found time to satisfy an outside contract, to develop a 45 slant in-line 4, overhead cam engine for SAAB and its 99 saloon. The company's enthusiastic sales and marketing team at Fletchamstead South, under the management of a great character, Lyndon Mills, expressed theirwishes. To keep new model costs to a minimum, the bore size of the

1709cc SAAB engine was increased to give a swept volume of 1850 and the 1500 fwd shell was modified to accommodate rear wheel drive. Badged Dolomite, after a pre-war sporting Triumph, the new model gained immediate acceptance. It was compact overall, had a practical 4 door body, was comfortable and well appointed, was endowed with a useful performance by reason of its power to weight ratio and could produce, when necessary, economic running if driven with tender loving care. The Dolomite's appeal to a wide span of users was obvious. " [..]

"By now, Rover had joined the fold and the conglomerate was known as British Leyland. Rover import to Triumph, design and engineering guru, Spen King, as always ten steps ahead of the next man, led the team devoting their energies to extracting real gains in horsepower from the slant 4 engine. The usual cost constraints ensured that the design would not be allowed to stray too far from reality and existing production components, particularly in the bottom half of the motor. The 'new' engine retained the 78mm stroke, with the cylinder bores being increased to 90.3mm, resulting in 1998cc of swept volume. Four valves per cylinder were chosen, for proven reasons, and at one point a double overhead cam arrangement was considered, but discarded.

Resident Triumph engine designer Len Dawtrey came up with the idea of operating the 16 valves off one camshaft. For the inlet valves the cams bear directly on the bucket tappets, the exhaust valves are operated by rockers operating off the same eight cam lobes. This enabled the plugs to be sited in the ideal position, centrally in the cylinder head. The design study of this engine is an article on its own, but suffice to say that two HS6 SU carburettors were chosen in place of the Stombergs used on the company's smaller slant 4.

Officially the engine gives a regular and useful 127bhp, but reliable sources claimed that well built and tuned engines, with stock components, had been known to give a sustained 150 bhp on the factory test bed, without any hint of valve gear failure. "

So it looks like Triumph did indeed design the slant 4, or at least, co-designed it with a great share of the input. And the Sprint head was definately a BL/ Triumph project. I'm not sure that the Saab engines in later form were all that similar to Triumph lumps, I suppose it's not beyond the realms of imagination to assume they might have done their own modifications to the original spec on their own. I don't know a great deal about Saabs though. I suppose it's not impossible that elements of the original project and later revisions were sub contracted either, but the basis of it all remains Triumph, so far as I know.

Owning a collection of lowly OHV 4 pot saloons, I seem to end up reading far more about Sprints and 1850s on the club board than anything else, some of the info starts to seep in, even if I'm not that interested in it!

In article , snipped-for-privacy@italiancar.co.uk spouted forth into uk.rec.cars.modifications...

Oh I know it isn't unique. Infact it is comming back into vogue for the "Front Mid-engined" sports and supercars.

Keeping the engine at the front, but close to the middle of the floor pan, and moving the transmission to the rear, and sitting the 2 seats just infront of it, balancing the car, instead of the traditional mid engine or real engine tendency for the car to suddenly loop out at a seconds notice because it's weight was right arround the pivot point of a spin.

It seems the definitive answer is that it was designed by Ricardo - Saab saw it, wanted it, but found out that it had already been sold to Triumph. Saab did a deal with Triumph to buy engines from them.

Saab then found that the original Ricardo/Triumph lump was too fragile to handle the power when enlarged to 2lt, so they designed thier own lump, based on the original Ricardo/Triumph design (this meant they didn't have to re-engineer the cars for it to fit). The original engine had a larger space between cylinders 2 & 3 than it did between 1&2 and

3&4.... in the Saab designed lump they were equidistant - but the slant remained due to packaging constraints.

Obviously, I was confused originally as I'd read articles referring to the 2lt engine as an in-house design.

And the Impreza engine is basically a VW camper lump not that WRX owners like to be reminded of it. (Not that many know it in the first place.)

In article , blank@128.0.0.1 spouted forth into uk.rec.cars.modifications...

You mean a Wasserboxer?

I think you'll find a Scooby flat-4 has more in common with the Alfa flat-4 than a campervan engine...... watercooling springs to mind.

Whereas, the 924 retained the same block and much the same head as the van engine.

During the 70's VW subcontracted Subaru to build some of there engines for the T25 camper (not all campers are air-cooled) part of the deal was to licence the engine to Subaru who promptly did something a lot more interesting to it than VW did. (Unless you count the polo paris where they mid to rear mounted on in a Mk2 square back shell and stuck a G60 supercharger on it but that was never a production car.)

And surely once its been turbo'd it has gonna have had to have undergone massive internal changes?

The 924 Turbo was a very limited production run.....

I was referring to the Impreza :)

So learn to snip :)

-- Chet

Didn't know that, and had assumed that a watercooled camper was an inline-4.

I've compared my dad's Scooby Boxer with the Boxer in my old Alfa, and they look _very_ similar.

Maybe Subaru did what the Japs did best in the 70s / 80s and ripped off someone else's designs, but made them better, IYSWIM.

No :)

They are still doing that but I think there time at the economic forefront is coming to an end, I expect china to be the next big impact on the world economy the way Japan was in the '80s.

Not a hard guess to make seeing as all motoring sources have been saying that for a year or two :)

I'm looking to the electronics industry, for the same reasons as the motor trade I guess labour is relatively cheap manual dexterity levels tend to be high as do levels of literacy not bad considering the complexity of mandarin and Cantonese. I've still only picked up a couple of written Japanese words (Japan, exit, water and sake ;) ) now I'm going to have to start again.

Is this going to end up with one of those ever increasing in size posts where nobody snips anything again? :P

Probably :)

If not defiantly. ;) (Hay I hadn't posted in the last 6 or 7. ;)