Speedy engine upgrade

[Ian Williams]

I have just seen this post and can offer some personal experience, I own a Nippy that was fitted with a Speedy engine from new. When I purchased the car the Speedy engine had been sitting under a bench since the 60's and it ran a mildly tuned ruby engine, it was slow and uninspiring to drive in this form. I already had tuned specials so decided to return the car as close to factory spec as I could to experience driving it as Austin intended. The original inch and a half crank was retired and a phoenix fitted to protect the rest of the engine but otherwise everything else remained as std including the Factory high lift cam. Now I did run an Nippy cam in one of my special engines a few years ago, and whilst it was fast in comparison to other cars I was able to make some worthwhile gains to the low down torque by using a reground cam with less lift and altered duration. This translated to faster times on the track than my previous set up, so it stands to reason that I could achieve similar results with the Speedy engine, however like Tony suggested, that to my mind defeats the object of the exercise. In practice the Speedy engined Nippy is great fun to drive, I used it daily for a while, it needs to be kept on song to get the best from it, yes let the revs drop and the power tails of quickly especially up a hill. But the driving experience is authentic, a dam sight quicker than a std tourer, and a few specials I might add, plus I have my own special for the times when I want to go for really quick seat of the pants drive. I have had no issues with any breakages of excessive oil leaks, the pump was over bored slightly to ensure a good flow, and I improved the oil seal around the starting dog but that is about it other than careful assembly.