A recent issue of Practical Classics rated the Rootes 1390-1725 engine family
as possibly the best 4 cylinder engines ever built in Great Britain-especially
in terms of reliability. Overall they are really good engines, their single
weakness appears to be that you can only pull so much power out of one and
then you wish for overhead cams other exotica.
Jan Eyerman
1959 Hillman Minx Series III DeLuxe
1973 Hillman Avenger
Jay_Laifman@countrywide.com wrote:
David Sosna's points on his conversion are right on, and on re-reading my
post, I realized I may have been more negative than intended. I think
conversions are great things. When I redid my car, I went the "stock"
Holbay route rather than the 2 liter overhead cam Ford route I was thinking
about. To this day, I don't know if I did the right thing. Though, I will
say that when I made the decision, I did not know of Joe Rodriguez's work.
Who knows, I may have gone that route had I known of it.
As to reliability, the Alpine engine does tend to be very reliable. In my
23 years of ownership, I have never had a failure because of anything
engine related. I have had one (just one) alternator go bad. I have had
one starter (just one) go bad. I have had hydraulics go bad. I attribute
the hydraulic failures mostly to excessively hard use by a teenager (me 21
years ago) and then poor rebuilds by that same teenager. But, other than
that, the car has just keep on humming as a daily driver - until someone
else hit it, and my recent problem with my tranny. So, don't run away from
the engine on those grounds alone.
Ok, here I go again getting negative on a swap. I repeat, it's a great
idea. Just do it for the right reasons and with the right expectations.
Jay
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