Anyone here ever perform this conversion? A friend is about to give this a try with a Minor van to use as a shop truck. Would be quite interested in photos of motor mounts, etc.
-- Mac Townsend, Adcom Graphics, Fairfield, California: Electronic Prepress & Large Format Imaging
This was common practice but with B series engines not necessarily
1800cc MGB motors tho,mac wrote:
There are better engines to use than the horrid old B-series - the favoured one seems to be the Fiat twin-cam, though if you do want to keep to the Austin/Morris/Leyland heritage you could probably use a 1.7/2.0 "O"-series from a Marina without too many problems.
Are you trying to re-invent the Riley 1.5/Wolsley 1500? Essentially they were Minors with B-series engines.
You'll need to change the rear axle, or beef it up - the standard one won't handle the torque.
Steve the grease
The fellow doing the job has a vintage race shop (currently watching after a DB3S, 300S Maserati, Chevron B23, TVR-Grantura, a bunch of Lotus 11s & 23s, etc) and is located in Berkeley, California -- probably thousands of miles from the local Riley 1500. But I think he has seen one at one time and this is what got him thinking about this crusty van (no rust, but sure looks like it went turtle at least once)
-- Mac Townsend, Adcom Graphics, Fairfield, California: Electronic Prepress & Large Format Imaging
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