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A friend of mine's dad has a Triumph, a 4-speed with I think a 1300, and it has been sitting in his warehouse for about 20 years. I runs, but needs a battery, new tires, new carpet. It only has around 40K miles, and I was wondering how much it would take to make it nice enough to be a decent daily driver. It only has around 90HP, any cheap engine swaps that could boost it to around 150?
[QUOTE=Smokescreen]A friend of mine's dad has a Triumph, a 4-speed with I think a 1300, and it has been sitting in his warehouse for about 20 years. I runs, but needs a battery, new tires, new carpet. It only has around 40K miles, and I was wondering how much it would take to make it nice enough to be a decent daily driver. It only has around 90HP, any cheap engine swaps that could boost it to around 150?[/QUOTE]
Try it with 90 before you go swapping engines. Triumphs aren't fast, but they're TONS of fun. Plus you lose the flavor of it being a Triumph Spitfire. You could probably get it running for $500-1000, and to make it really nice would take about 2-3 grand. by my estimates anyway, YMMV.
my friend has a late 70's (i think) triumph tr6. its a little yellow convertable. its a blast! its decently quick (its got a couple mods on it like some dual weber carbs) but its just a blast to drive.
90 ? out of the original 1296 ?
Unless you've a "79X" works race engine that's a stretch :D
At an absolute push you might get 100 if you tweak everything and don't mind a very peaky, horrible off-cam engine :)
You could put in a later 1500 Spit engine - needs different clutch IIRC. But you're still short of yoru 150 goal and even tuning woudl be a stretch to reach it. Superchargin might but then you're WAY off "original".
As already stated, have soem fun driving it enthusiastically using the very free-revving 1296. It delivers performance to match the handling. Puttin g LOTS of power in and the limits of the chassis are going to become VERY evident :(
Lol, no way there is 90hp coming out of that. As matra said, it'd take some serious motor work to get 100. A possible swap is a RX-7 13b, I'm doing one this spring.
that sounds awesome johnny.. which gen rx7 is the donor? i would imagine a gen1. such a shame such a beautiful car losing its soul, but it will find a good home.
personally, if i had a 1980 with 40k, i would try to keep it as original as possible. and any restoration would be to original specs. such as the 1981 rx7with 42k i will be getting. i wont be taking it far from original, just some upgraded suspension.
Either a mid 80's one with some work done to it, or a early gen turbo. I'll probably just buy a front clip from some jdm company or find a local place to get a good quality engine.