Bill Spohn's comments on the 2 liter TR engine brought back some
memories.
Especially one about a return-to-university trip from Ottawa to Toronto
in the fall of 1973 during which I (and my TR3A) ended up having a long
(half-hour) top-speed highway (Hwy 401) 'race' with a '60s muscle car.
Luckily, the police must have been elsewhere that day!!! The TR won the
race (topping out at 'around' 120-125 mph at 5000-5100 rpm in overdrive
and going slightly downhill), mostly due to non-highway gearing in the
muscle car, but paid the penalty by breaking at least one piston ring
and badly scoring one cylinder wall. With that cylinder firing, I
created a nice blue haze and got about 30-40 miles per plug change.
But, the good thing about the TR engine was that once the plug fouled
out, the engine was still happy to continue on for hours at highway
speed in overdrive, of course not burning any more oil. Even around
town, performance wasn't too bad on 3 cylinders!!! Later on, the wet
liner engine design allowed for a very simple and relatively inexpensive
repair, unlike a similar job on the A-, B-, and C-series MG engines.
That said, I still have that TR3 as a lone TR in my pile of MG and Jag
projects.
My experience with the 1500 Spi**ire/Midget engine has been mostly
boring and so can't comment on it directly, although IMHO I feel that
the 1300 version felt/worked better.
Dave Q.
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