[Tigers] Big Valve 260

[Ron Fraser]

Will
	Any information can be useful, we just need to put it into the
correct context.
July 1964 is when the Tiger production began.  Before production can begin
you have to have parts and assemblies on hand.

Ford/ the Cleveland Foundry Started building engines for Rootes in late
1963.  There are 6 Tiger engine groups listed by July 1964.   The Cleveland
Foundry controlled the engine parts and the engine configuration for all the
Tiger engine builds.

	The problem is there were several parts options available for the
260 engine at that time so any or all of them could have been used in the
Tiger engines.

	The other problem is the 289 engine was becoming all the rage and
many Tiger owners were jumping at an opportunity to install a 289 engine and
probably scrapping the original 260 engine.

	One day my Tiger Engine Study may determine all of the Tiger engine
part configurations.  Don't hold your breath on that.

Ron Fraser

-----Original Message-----
From: Will Seay [mailto:wseay at embarqmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 11:41 AM
To: rfraser at bluefrog.com; 'Tod Brown'; tigers at Autox.Team.Net;
Rollright at aol.com; atwittsend at verizon.net
Subject: RE: [Tigers] Big Valve 260


Don't know if this will help or only muddy the works more, but:  Graham
Rood, in his "The Works Tigers" provides a copy of the FIA homologation
papers submitted for the car in Jan of 1966.  It states that production
commenced 1 July, 1964 and that 500 identical cars had been produced by 31
Oct, 1964.  Starting serial number was B9470001, engine number 1000.
Elsewhere it's stated that the engines were of the E7KL series.  The intake
valve diameter given in the papers was: min. 1.661", max. 1.677", i.e. the
larger valves.  While we're all scratching our heads about this, I recall
reading elsewhere in the book that a car was disqualified after a protest on
the rally showed that the intake valve diameter on that car was LESS than
the 1.67" specified in the homologation papers.  I.e the engine had the
smaller valves.  There was some discussion as to whether a car should be
disqualified for essentially being detuned from the homologation baseline.
Rood also stated that the homologation papers purposely specified the 1.67"
valves in anticipation that later engines would have the larger valves. It's
pretty clear that back then the factory knew that the early engines (E7KL)
would have the smaller valves and that later ones would have the larger
ones. My description of Rood's discussion of valve size, etc, is from
memory.  I will try to dig up a specific quote from the book and post it.

Will Seay 382001570
wseay at embarqmail.com