Ed Huntress wrote:
wrote in message
...

In misc.survivalism Ed Huntress wrote:


If it takes a 20% rise in gas prices to cause a 0.25% increase in mass
transit ridership, it's going to be a slow process. g

Nevertheless, there are a lot of people trying it out. We'll see how long
they stick with it.

I think that the ratios will change; I doubt that this is a linear
phenomenon.


Oh, I'm sure you're right. If it is linear, gas prices will have to average
$14.68/gallon to produce a 5% conversion of commuters from driving to mass
transit. d8-)


I also doubt that the price elasticity of gasoline is
infinite, except for those who live in a subdivision off of a highway.
Those folks are screwed. They will pay whatever it costs for necessary
driving, or they will will move, or they will increasingly drive
lightweight econoboxes.


I suspect the lightweight cars in most cases. But many of them won't be
econoboxes.

When I was between the ages of 17 to 25, my heaviest car weighed 1850 lb. A
couple of them, like the aluminum-bodied AC Aceca, were far from being
cheap. But I wish I had a couple of them back.


I expect you do as it's most likely worth quite a bit of money if it
still exists. I met a guy recently that had an AC Ace that he and his
brother had beautifully restored. He didn't know what it was worth but
did say that he paid about £35k for the unrestored car.

--
Ed Huntress

"David Billington" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
wrote in message
...

In misc.survivalism Ed Huntress wrote:


If it takes a 20% rise in gas prices to cause a 0.25% increase in mass
transit ridership, it's going to be a slow process. g
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people trying it out. We'll see
how long
they stick with it.

I think that the ratios will change; I doubt that this is a linear
phenomenon.


Oh, I'm sure you're right. If it is linear, gas prices will have to
average $14.68/gallon to produce a 5% conversion of commuters from
driving to mass transit. d8-)


I also doubt that the price elasticity of gasoline is
infinite, except for those who live in a subdivision off of a highway.
Those folks are screwed. They will pay whatever it costs for necessary
driving, or they will will move, or they will increasingly drive
lightweight econoboxes.


I suspect the lightweight cars in most cases. But many of them won't be
econoboxes.

When I was between the ages of 17 to 25, my heaviest car weighed 1850 lb.
A couple of them, like the aluminum-bodied AC Aceca, were far from being
cheap. But I wish I had a couple of them back.


I expect you do as it's most likely worth quite a bit of money if it still
exists. I met a guy recently that had an AC Ace that he and his brother
had beautifully restored. He didn't know what it was worth but did say
that he paid about £35k for the unrestored car.

AC Aces (or Bristols, actually, as I think the Bristol-engined roadster was
known; my Aceca was actually known as an Aceca-Bristol) are, or were, worth
quite a bit in the US. But the Aceca never had the cachet of the roadster,
and when I checked some years back, they weren't bringing in a lot of money.

That's despite the fact that only 50 or 55 of the coupes ever made it to
North America. Like the Lotus Super Seven Mk. IV, which was sold in N.A. in
almost identical numbers, it never caught the imagination of collectors
here. Maybe it's different today. I haven't looked for years.

When I was 20 I had a reputation for being able to tune and maintain
Bristols, based on my experience with my car. It was a case of "in the land
of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," but I had two or three Ace
roadsters show up in my driveway many Saturday mornings, where we would swap
stories and tune the cars. That was a very complex and interesting engine.
It looked like an OHC design but it was really pushrod, with secondary
bellcrank-type rocker arms and a second set of pushrods running over the top
of the head to the exhaust side. Setting valve clearances was not a simple
task. The engine was designed by BMW.

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
"David Billington" wrote in message
...

Ed Huntress wrote:

wrote in message
...


In misc.survivalism Ed Huntress wrote:



If it takes a 20% rise in gas prices to cause a 0.25% increase in mass
transit ridership, it's going to be a slow process. g
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people trying it out. We'll see
how long
they stick with it.


I think that the ratios will change; I doubt that this is a linear
phenomenon.


Oh, I'm sure you're right. If it is linear, gas prices will have to
average $14.68/gallon to produce a 5% conversion of commuters from
driving to mass transit. d8-)



I also doubt that the price elasticity of gasoline is
infinite, except for those who live in a subdivision off of a highway.
Those folks are screwed. They will pay whatever it costs for necessary
driving, or they will will move, or they will increasingly drive
lightweight econoboxes.


I suspect the lightweight cars in most cases. But many of them won't be
econoboxes.

When I was between the ages of 17 to 25, my heaviest car weighed 1850 lb.
A couple of them, like the aluminum-bodied AC Aceca, were far from being
cheap. But I wish I had a couple of them back.



I expect you do as it's most likely worth quite a bit of money if it still
exists. I met a guy recently that had an AC Ace that he and his brother
had beautifully restored. He didn't know what it was worth but did say
that he paid about £35k for the unrestored car.


AC Aces (or Bristols, actually, as I think the Bristol-engined roadster was
known; my Aceca was actually known as an Aceca-Bristol) are, or were, worth
quite a bit in the US. But the Aceca never had the cachet of the roadster,
and when I checked some years back, they weren't bringing in a lot of money.

Do you have any idea if your old car still survives?.
That's despite the fact that only 50 or 55 of the coupes ever made it to
North America. Like the Lotus Super Seven Mk. IV, which was sold in N.A. in
almost identical numbers, it never caught the imagination of collectors
here. Maybe it's different today. I haven't looked for years.

I'm not up on Lotus 7 marks but a mate has a Caterham 7. I expect
drivers took a test drive and took a look in the rear view mirror, saw a
yank tank and decided it was not a good idea for road use, the AC was
somewhat larger. Even here in the UK I have been backed into while in my
frogeye by 4x4 as the top of the frogeye windscreen was lower than the
4x4 rear window.
When I was 20 I had a reputation for being able to tune and maintain
Bristols, based on my experience with my car. It was a case of "in the land
of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," but I had two or three Ace
roadsters show up in my driveway many Saturday mornings, where we would swap
stories and tune the cars. That was a very complex and interesting engine.
It looked like an OHC design but it was really pushrod, with secondary
bellcrank-type rocker arms and a second set of pushrods running over the top
of the head to the exhaust side. Setting valve clearances was not a simple
task. The engine was designed by BMW.

I've heard many times that the Bristol engine was war spoils so the BMW
reference makes sense. The other engine that springs to mind as being
confused as OHC was the Riley engine used in the Healey Silverstone
IIRC, the cams being mounted high in the engine block but still pushrod.
With reference to

"in the land
of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,"

I have run across that in the UK with regards US V8 engines such as 302 Ford, not very common so few people have good tuning knowledge over here in many cases and if someone knows more than you they are an expert until you realise they are talking bollucks, actually that happens here with European engines also as I have witnessed having seen work done by so called experts, not!.

Don't take that last rant the wrong way I don't mean to criticise you as you seem to have more than enough ability to investigate and analyse to cope with situations like dealing with the Bristol engine.

One other thought on war spoils IIRC the MG XPAG engine had weird fasteners like inch diameters and metric pitch due to machinery from the French Hotchkiss gun factory being used to produce them.


--
Ed Huntress

"David Billington" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"David Billington" wrote in message
...

Ed Huntress wrote:

wrote in message
...


In misc.survivalism Ed Huntress wrote:



If it takes a 20% rise in gas prices to cause a 0.25% increase in
mass
transit ridership, it's going to be a slow process. g
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people trying it out. We'll
see how long
they stick with it.


I think that the ratios will change; I doubt that this is a linear
phenomenon.


Oh, I'm sure you're right. If it is linear, gas prices will have to
average $14.68/gallon to produce a 5% conversion of commuters from
driving to mass transit. d8-)



I also doubt that the price elasticity of gasoline is
infinite, except for those who live in a subdivision off of a highway.
Those folks are screwed. They will pay whatever it costs for necessary
driving, or they will will move, or they will increasingly drive
lightweight econoboxes.


I suspect the lightweight cars in most cases. But many of them won't be
econoboxes.

When I was between the ages of 17 to 25, my heaviest car weighed 1850
lb. A couple of them, like the aluminum-bodied AC Aceca, were far from
being cheap. But I wish I had a couple of them back.



I expect you do as it's most likely worth quite a bit of money if it
still exists. I met a guy recently that had an AC Ace that he and his
brother had beautifully restored. He didn't know what it was worth but
did say that he paid about £35k for the unrestored car.


AC Aces (or Bristols, actually, as I think the Bristol-engined roadster
was known; my Aceca was actually known as an Aceca-Bristol) are, or were,
worth quite a bit in the US. But the Aceca never had the cachet of the
roadster, and when I checked some years back, they weren't bringing in a
lot of money.

Do you have any idea if your old car still survives?.

No, I wasn't into that kind of thing at the time. I bought sports cars to
sell at a profit, during my last two years of high school and first two
years of college. That's how I made most of my spending money. I kept the
Aceca longer than I had planned -- over a year -- because it drew a lot of
attention. It was a great crumpet-collector. g

I bought it for $1,800 and sold it for only $2,400, to a young guy I never
knew. That was more than a new MG Midget cost at the time. I never kept
track of the serial numbers or that sort of thing.

That's despite the fact that only 50 or 55 of the coupes ever made it to
North America. Like the Lotus Super Seven Mk. IV, which was sold in N.A.
in almost identical numbers, it never caught the imagination of
collectors here. Maybe it's different today. I haven't looked for years.

I'm not up on Lotus 7 marks but a mate has a Caterham 7. I expect drivers
took a test drive and took a look in the rear view mirror, saw a yank tank
and decided it was not a good idea for road use, the AC was somewhat
larger. Even here in the UK I have been backed into while in my frogeye by
4x4 as the top of the frogeye windscreen was lower than the 4x4 rear
window.

I was a Seven lover; at one time, before SUVs and the popularity of pickups,
it wasn't unreasonable to have one here. I almost did. I talked my college
roommate into buying a new one, one of the Mk. IVs, which he still has. It
was the pea-green Seven that Lotus showed at the Chicago Auto Show in 1971.
All of the Mk. IV Sevens were grey-market, having been brought in as crated
kits through Windsor, Ontario. My old roommate lives near Tyler, Texas and
pulls it out when no one is looking. g


When I was 20 I had a reputation for being able to tune and maintain
Bristols, based on my experience with my car. It was a case of "in the
land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," but I had two or three Ace
roadsters show up in my driveway many Saturday mornings, where we would
swap stories and tune the cars. That was a very complex and interesting
engine. It looked like an OHC design but it was really pushrod, with
secondary bellcrank-type rocker arms and a second set of pushrods running
over the top of the head to the exhaust side. Setting valve clearances
was not a simple task. The engine was designed by BMW.

I've heard many times that the Bristol engine was war spoils so the BMW
reference makes sense. The other engine that springs to mind as being
confused as OHC was the Riley engine used in the Healey Silverstone IIRC,
the cams being mounted high in the engine block but still pushrod. With
reference to
"in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,"

I have run across that in the UK with regards US V8 engines such as 302
Ford, not very common so few people have good tuning knowledge over here
in many cases and if someone knows more than you they are an expert until
you realise they are talking bollucks, actually that happens here with
European engines also as I have witnessed having seen work done by so
called experts, not!.

Well, I resemble that remark. g I was no expert, but I knew the basics and
I was given a few tips by a very generous British ex-pat who was only a few
years older than me, but a factory-trained Jaguar mechanic. He also taught
me how to maintain a Jag engine, about which I also was one-eyed. g The
two engines I really was fairly good with were the Ford 115E and the MG
A-series, (not the MGA engine, but the little one used in the Midget and
Sprite, Mini and Morris Minor) both of which I owned at various times.

Regarding the middle-aged American V8s, there is so much info available
about them now that it's not hard to accumulate a lot of detailed knowledge.
Dobie Dave ("Why"), who I was speaking to here in another thread, knows the
big-blocks like nobody's business. The small-blocks like the 302 Ford are
even easier to learn.


Don't take that last rant the wrong way I don't mean to criticise you as
you seem to have more than enough ability to investigate and analyse to
cope with situations like dealing with the Bristol engine.

Oh, I don't take it the wrong way. I wasn't even a so-called expert. I was
the last port in a storm. g Older British engines, even ones designed by
Germans, usually succumb to some common sense and general engine knowledge.
You do need to collect a bag of tricks for individual engines, especially
those with multiple sliding-throat carburetors.


One other thought on war spoils IIRC the MG XPAG engine had weird
fasteners like inch diameters and metric pitch due to machinery from the
French Hotchkiss gun factory being used to produce them.

And the single Whitworth-threaded bolt on an A-Series MG engine -- the
bronze water-drain plug in the block.

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
"David Billington" wrote in message
...

Ed Huntress wrote:

"David Billington" wrote in message
...


Ed Huntress wrote:


wrote in message
...



In misc.survivalism Ed Huntress wrote:




If it takes a 20% rise in gas prices to cause a 0.25% increase in
mass
transit ridership, it's going to be a slow process. g
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people trying it out. We'll
see how long
they stick with it.



I think that the ratios will change; I doubt that this is a linear
phenomenon.



Oh, I'm sure you're right. If it is linear, gas prices will have to
average $14.68/gallon to produce a 5% conversion of commuters from
driving to mass transit. d8-)




I also doubt that the price elasticity of gasoline is
infinite, except for those who live in a subdivision off of a highway.
Those folks are screwed. They will pay whatever it costs for necessary
driving, or they will will move, or they will increasingly drive
lightweight econoboxes.



I suspect the lightweight cars in most cases. But many of them won't be
econoboxes.

When I was between the ages of 17 to 25, my heaviest car weighed 1850
lb. A couple of them, like the aluminum-bodied AC Aceca, were far from
being cheap. But I wish I had a couple of them back.




I expect you do as it's most likely worth quite a bit of money if it
still exists. I met a guy recently that had an AC Ace that he and his
brother had beautifully restored. He didn't know what it was worth but
did say that he paid about £35k for the unrestored car.


AC Aces (or Bristols, actually, as I think the Bristol-engined roadster
was known; my Aceca was actually known as an Aceca-Bristol) are, or were,
worth quite a bit in the US. But the Aceca never had the cachet of the
roadster, and when I checked some years back, they weren't bringing in a
lot of money.


Do you have any idea if your old car still survives?.


No, I wasn't into that kind of thing at the time. I bought sports cars to
sell at a profit, during my last two years of high school and first two
years of college. That's how I made most of my spending money. I kept the
Aceca longer than I had planned -- over a year -- because it drew a lot of


Does the lingo "crumpet" carry over with the British car?, or do you get
a pamphlet of British words and phrases to go with the car as I was not
aware of it being a US term.
attention. It was a great crumpet-collector. g

I bought it for $1,800 and sold it for only $2,400, to a young guy I never
knew. That was more than a new MG Midget cost at the time. I never kept
track of the serial numbers or that sort of thing.

You sound like a mate of mine that has probably almost never lost money
on a car whereas I look at them as money pits. In the UK, at least in
recent years you can check if the registration number of the car is
still valid, although you have 50 such units in which cars are
registered IIRC.


That's despite the fact that only 50 or 55 of the coupes ever made it to
North America. Like the Lotus Super Seven Mk. IV, which was sold in N.A.
in almost identical numbers, it never caught the imagination of
collectors here. Maybe it's different today. I haven't looked for years.


I'm not up on Lotus 7 marks but a mate has a Caterham 7. I expect drivers
took a test drive and took a look in the rear view mirror, saw a yank tank
and decided it was not a good idea for road use, the AC was somewhat
larger. Even here in the UK I have been backed into while in my frogeye by
4x4 as the top of the frogeye windscreen was lower than the 4x4 rear
window.


I was a Seven lover; at one time, before SUVs and the popularity of pickups,
it wasn't unreasonable to have one here. I almost did. I talked my college
roommate into buying a new one, one of the Mk. IVs, which he still has. It
was the pea-green Seven that Lotus showed at the Chicago Auto Show in 1971.
All of the Mk. IV Sevens were grey-market, having been brought in as crated
kits through Windsor, Ontario. My old roommate lives near Tyler, Texas and
pulls it out when no one is looking. g


Must have been some years back. I lived in the US from 1970 till 1982
and the cars all seemed big even than. A friend of my sister wanted to
buy a small car, US compact?, and was told by here father that she could
not as he felt it was unsafe. They lived, live, in Hungtington LI, NY.

When I was 20 I had a reputation for being able to tune and maintain
Bristols, based on my experience with my car. It was a case of "in the
land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," but I had two or three Ace
roadsters show up in my driveway many Saturday mornings, where we would
swap stories and tune the cars. That was a very complex and interesting
engine. It looked like an OHC design but it was really pushrod, with
secondary bellcrank-type rocker arms and a second set of pushrods running
over the top of the head to the exhaust side. Setting valve clearances
was not a simple task. The engine was designed by BMW.


I've heard many times that the Bristol engine was war spoils so the BMW
reference makes sense. The other engine that springs to mind as being
confused as OHC was the Riley engine used in the Healey Silverstone IIRC,
the cams being mounted high in the engine block but still pushrod. With
reference to
"in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,"

I have run across that in the UK with regards US V8 engines such as 302
Ford, not very common so few people have good tuning knowledge over here
in many cases and if someone knows more than you they are an expert until
you realise they are talking bollucks, actually that happens here with
European engines also as I have witnessed having seen work done by so
called experts, not!.


Well, I resemble that remark. g I was no expert, but I knew the basics and
I was given a few tips by a very generous British ex-pat who was only a few
years older than me, but a factory-trained Jaguar mechanic. He also taught
me how to maintain a Jag engine, about which I also was one-eyed. g The
two engines I really was fairly good with were the Ford 115E and the MG
A-series, (not the MGA engine, but the little one used in the Midget and
Sprite, Mini and Morris Minor) both of which I owned at various times.


Know it well, the A series, having built a few, the tuning bible is by
David Vizard .
Regarding the middle-aged American V8s, there is so much info available
about them now that it's not hard to accumulate a lot of detailed knowledge.
Dobie Dave ("Why"), who I was speaking to here in another thread, knows the
big-blocks like nobody's business. The small-blocks like the 302 Ford are
even easier to learn.


Much easier now with the internet, I worked for a company briefly about
1991 doing a GT40 replica and they came unstuck with relying on
"experts" in the UK. Wrong experts as some seemed to know what they are
doing, often knowledge is expensive to acquire. The internet does make
information more accessible but you still have to weed out the good
from the bad.

Don't take that last rant the wrong way I don't mean to criticise you as
you seem to have more than enough ability to investigate and analyse to
cope with situations like dealing with the Bristol engine.


Oh, I don't take it the wrong way. I wasn't even a so-called expert. I was
the last port in a storm. g Older British engines, even ones designed by
Germans, usually succumb to some common sense and general engine knowledge.
You do need to collect a bag of tricks for individual engines, especially
those with multiple sliding-throat carburetors.


One other thought on war spoils IIRC the MG XPAG engine had weird
fasteners like inch diameters and metric pitch due to machinery from the
French Hotchkiss gun factory being used to produce them.


And the single Whitworth-threaded bolt on an A-Series MG engine -- the
bronze water-drain plug in the block.


Would that be a BSP thread, IIRC most of the world has pipe threads
based on BSP even if the dimensions are given in mm.

--
Ed Huntress

"David Billington" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

snip

No, I wasn't into that kind of thing at the time. I bought sports cars to
sell at a profit, during my last two years of high school and first two
years of college. That's how I made most of my spending money. I kept the
Aceca longer than I had planned -- over a year -- because it drew a lot
of

Does the lingo "crumpet" carry over with the British car?, or do you get a
pamphlet of British words and phrases to go with the car as I was not
aware of it being a US term.

It's not. Remember, I raced British (and Italian) sports cars as a young
guy. We read British car magazines. d8-)

attention. It was a great crumpet-collector. g

I bought it for $1,800 and sold it for only $2,400, to a young guy I
never knew. That was more than a new MG Midget cost at the time. I never
kept track of the serial numbers or that sort of thing.

You sound like a mate of mine that has probably almost never lost money on
a car whereas I look at them as money pits. In the UK, at least in recent
years you can check if the registration number of the car is still valid,
although you have 50 such units in which cars are registered IIRC.


That's despite the fact that only 50 or 55 of the coupes ever made it
to North America. Like the Lotus Super Seven Mk. IV, which was sold in
N.A. in almost identical numbers, it never caught the imagination of
collectors here. Maybe it's different today. I haven't looked for
years.


I'm not up on Lotus 7 marks but a mate has a Caterham 7. I expect
drivers took a test drive and took a look in the rear view mirror, saw a
yank tank and decided it was not a good idea for road use, the AC was
somewhat larger. Even here in the UK I have been backed into while in my
frogeye by 4x4 as the top of the frogeye windscreen was lower than the
4x4 rear window.


I was a Seven lover; at one time, before SUVs and the popularity of
pickups, it wasn't unreasonable to have one here. I almost did. I talked
my college roommate into buying a new one, one of the Mk. IVs, which he
still has. It was the pea-green Seven that Lotus showed at the Chicago
Auto Show in 1971. All of the Mk. IV Sevens were grey-market, having been
brought in as crated kits through Windsor, Ontario. My old roommate lives
near Tyler, Texas and pulls it out when no one is looking. g


Must have been some years back. I lived in the US from 1970 till 1982 and
the cars all seemed big even than. A friend of my sister wanted to buy a
small car, US compact?, and was told by here father that she could not as
he felt it was unsafe. They lived, live, in Hungtington LI, NY.

They were bigger than they are today, but they weren't so damned *tall* as
these big SUVs and pickups. I'd be afraid people couldn't see me. If I drove
a Seven today, I'd want to have an 8-foot flagpole on it with a day-glo
orange flag and a spotlight on the flag.


When I was 20 I had a reputation for being able to tune and maintain
Bristols, based on my experience with my car. It was a case of "in the
land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," but I had two or three
Ace roadsters show up in my driveway many Saturday mornings, where we
would swap stories and tune the cars. That was a very complex and
interesting engine. It looked like an OHC design but it was really
pushrod, with secondary bellcrank-type rocker arms and a second set of
pushrods running over the top of the head to the exhaust side. Setting
valve clearances was not a simple task. The engine was designed by BMW.


I've heard many times that the Bristol engine was war spoils so the BMW
reference makes sense. The other engine that springs to mind as being
confused as OHC was the Riley engine used in the Healey Silverstone
IIRC, the cams being mounted high in the engine block but still pushrod.
With reference to
"in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,"

I have run across that in the UK with regards US V8 engines such as 302
Ford, not very common so few people have good tuning knowledge over here
in many cases and if someone knows more than you they are an expert
until you realise they are talking bollucks, actually that happens here
with European engines also as I have witnessed having seen work done by
so called experts, not!.


Well, I resemble that remark. g I was no expert, but I knew the basics
and I was given a few tips by a very generous British ex-pat who was only
a few years older than me, but a factory-trained Jaguar mechanic. He also
taught me how to maintain a Jag engine, about which I also was one-eyed.
g The two engines I really was fairly good with were the Ford 115E and
the MG A-series, (not the MGA engine, but the little one used in the
Midget and Sprite, Mini and Morris Minor) both of which I owned at
various times.


Know it well, the A series, having built a few, the tuning bible is by
David Vizard .

Yes. And the basic tuning manual when I was playing with those things was
"Tuning for Speed and Tuning for Economy," by Philip H. Smith. I still have
it, an early edition.

Regarding the middle-aged American V8s, there is so much info available
about them now that it's not hard to accumulate a lot of detailed
knowledge. Dobie Dave ("Why"), who I was speaking to here in another
thread, knows the big-blocks like nobody's business. The small-blocks
like the 302 Ford are even easier to learn.


Much easier now with the internet, I worked for a company briefly about
1991 doing a GT40 replica and they came unstuck with relying on "experts"
in the UK. Wrong experts as some seemed to know what they are doing, often
knowledge is expensive to acquire. The internet does make information
more accessible but you still have to weed out the good from the bad.

Oh, yes. But it's a revolution. If I had the Internet 25 years ago I'd
probably still be playing with cars.


Don't take that last rant the wrong way I don't mean to criticise you as
you seem to have more than enough ability to investigate and analyse to
cope with situations like dealing with the Bristol engine.


Oh, I don't take it the wrong way. I wasn't even a so-called expert. I
was the last port in a storm. g Older British engines, even ones
designed by Germans, usually succumb to some common sense and general
engine knowledge. You do need to collect a bag of tricks for individual
engines, especially those with multiple sliding-throat carburetors.


One other thought on war spoils IIRC the MG XPAG engine had weird
fasteners like inch diameters and metric pitch due to machinery from
the French Hotchkiss gun factory being used to produce them.


And the single Whitworth-threaded bolt on an A-Series MG engine -- the
bronze water-drain plug in the block.


Would that be a BSP thread, IIRC most of the world has pipe threads based
on BSP even if the dimensions are given in mm.

It may be. I just know it was odd, and that nobody knew what the heck it
was. I assumed Whitworth. It was a straight thread, not tapered.

That was before I was involved in machining. I didn't know threads at all
then.

--
Ed Huntress