Austin 850 performance conversion

[abri]

I'll let some pictures do more of the talking from here...

Head was received back and chamber volumes found to be 22.5 cc which is unfortunate, but not the end of the world.

As I said before, I went for the Minispares "Performance" Small Bore head gasket. I removed the head and was happy to find the bores looking excellent with no sign of wear, no ridges, all good.

Here is the head gasket



And here is it on the block after the block had been thoroughly cleaned and all the studs turned in all the way nice and tight.



I was contemplating leaving the head in its original maroon paint as would have been standard for the 998 engine that it came from, but eventually decided it would look nicer if it was green (surprize!   ).


With the manifold off and plenty of space behind the head, I checked whether the twin H1 carbs on the Sprite manifold that I had would fit. Sadly there wasn't enough clearance, so a search for a better manifold was started. 

I asked on the Mk1 Forum whether anyone had something lying around that I could buy off them. The helpful folks on there quickly responded and pretty soon I had some options to choose from. The first option was an Aquaplane manifold like the one used here...



I was on the verge of buying that when Mr Forster of Mk1 Forum responded and said he thinks he has a tubular Downton manifold to spare. A deal was done at a very reasonable price without me seeing what the manifold looked like. I had only seen this Downton manifold  setup before (pic below), but wasn't sure what was on its way to me. Luckily the manifold I bought came with free delivery to SA as the Forster family were on their way to visit friends in SA. Small mini world 



The manifold that arrived looked similar to the design Maniflow uses these days, so its almost as if one can see the continuity (pics later).
I had in the mean time ordered a rebuild kit for the H1 carbs from Burlen Fuel Systems in the UK and set about cleaning and rebuilding the set of carbs . 

The carbs started out like this (on the Sprite manifold here):


More in a bit...