Rick Morrison wrote:
> >The '79s body is toast (extreme body rot, sills and floor pans gone,
> >etc) and it has a bad engine (rod hanging out the block) but the car
> >is complete with a good transmission and rear axle.
...or correctly, it's a transmission and axle for sale. Without
a body, there is nothing. An engine would be a bit less than
nothing I suppose. ;>
> In fact, in stock form, I believe the 74 1275 actually produced more HP
> than the 75 1500.
Well, it's a many-parted question but mostly no.
The problem is that a 1974 car is the "most emission
controlled" 1275, so is the weakest 1275 you can have.
All 1500s are pretty emission controlled on this side of
the pond. So you are comparing a 1975 car that got a bad
rap for being smogged to a 1974 car that has an engine that
has a good rep but not in those years.
We also can't forget the horsepower measuring differences,
which are the same for 1974 and 1975 but were different
for 1975 and whatever you consider the glory years of the
1275.
It boils down to this. If you are going to keep it
stock, the 1500 has overall more horsepower. It is also at
a lower RPM, which is nice for around the town driving
but might not be what you want for certain applications.
The main hinderance to the 1500 is the single carb,
which limits it's high RPM performance. If you convert
both cars to UK spec, the power difference leans even
more towards the 1500.
BUT, the 1275 is a pretty well liked engine that has
a large following for performance parts. If you wanted
to go balls out with both cars, the 1275 is likely to
get more powerful and a lot more affordably so than the
1500. (all those minis out there)
I have no problem with either engine really. I do hate
to see the 1500 get derided though, because it only
came smogged when the 1275 had a long period of not
only liberal smog laws but also nice and generous
horsepower measuring methods.
--
Trevor Boicey
Ottawa, Canada
tboicey@brit.ca
http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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