[Spridgets] E-Type

Jim Johnson bmwwxman at gmail.com
Sun Dec 21 13:01:00 MST 2008


My recollections are a little different. Pretty car, yes. Mechanically?  It
was a nightmare. Our little racing team in England back in the late 60s
raced one at Brands and at Snetterton for about 5 months. Minis ate our
lunch. It would NOT stay in 3rd gear!  The triple SUs were a cast iron
bi*#ch to keep synchronized. Timing slipped occasionally and at very
inopportune times. The only bright spot was that we could routinely beat the
Corvettes. We gave it up for a Lotus Cortina.

That said, we didn't have the dough to put into all the performance
modifications. Those E-types that could afford the suspension, tranny, diff
and aspiration upgrades did quite well but still had clutch and tranny
problems.

Cheers!!
Jim

On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 1:10 PM, Kirk Hargreaves <khargreaves2 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Here is a guy that takes his E-Type seriously.
>
> He lives in the Silicon Valley and is a mid level manager at a large tech
> company.  So all of his work was done at night and on the weekends.  Makes
> me feel small when I have a few little things to do on my Bugeye and I
> cannot push myself out the door to continue to work on it.
>
> http://www.mckennasgarage.com/xke/index.htm
>
> PS
> Me think the early 4.3's are the most desirable, drop tops.  There will
> probably never be another body styled to such artistic perfection as the
> E-Type.  From what I have heard, the straight 6 is a bullet proof engine.
> It outlasted Ferrari in the '55 and '56 24 Hours of Le Mans.  Although
> heavy
> as a boat anchor, it was well thought out (other than the weight factor).
>  I
> have also been told by those who own these cars that the V12 is not much,
> if
> any faster, than a well tuned straight 6?
>
> A couple years ago at the Vintage Races Infineon Raceway (used to be Sears
> Point) I watched a well prepped Type E running triple Webers, headers as
> well as a lot of other refinements take an entire field of V8 tubular
> framed
> Cobra types.  They simply could not catch the "cat" in the corners.  The
> sound of that straight 6 whining down the back straight was something to
> behold!


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