“Just having returned from an extended trip to the Donnington Historic Festival, I’m happy to report, our Spridget behaved properly and found a very positive reception by admirers within EU. At Donnington we got special treatment by being waved away from “All Cars” to the “Invited Clubs” lane on entry and after paying the entry fee, we obtained access to the infield as our car seemed to be interesting enough for an exhibit. Not knowing where to go, I proceeded to Redgate corner, where last year we had met with a nice lady in charge of her (late ?) husbands yellow Midget and crawling up there, we immediately spotted the little beauty, together with a number of quite attractive other MGs, mostly B’s and C’s. I have to apologize to members of the MGOC for intruding onto their territory, because I took a shortcut through Mazda and Triumph exhibits and realized too late that this was their club only. Hoping to see again that lady, I did not want to go away and nobody complained anyway, despite my MG Car Club sticker. Unfortunately, we did not see her or any other person belonging to that car all Saturday and we did not return on Sunday because of other commitments.
The racing did not disappoint, whilst no Spridgets were showing up, the Speedwell A30/35s, A40s and a very hot Morris Minor Low Light were very lively driven, albeit with varying skill. Particularly impressive was the looping the loop of an Academy A35 in front of us, fortunately all without bodily hurt.
We covered alltogether more than 2500 km, most of the time pottering at British or Belgian Motorway limits. With closed sidescreens the wind noises of Andrew’s little insert slide windows are very unpleasant, so for the outbound leg which included heavy weather, we had to go slow, but the return was similar in speed, as we took off the screens to enjoy the cooling air against the hot sun. The engine rumble at around 3 to 4000 rpm in fifth is fine and consumption at a rate of 5 to 6 liters per 100 km as well, so the excessive prices of V-power and excellium fuels becomes bearable. Germany still offers 100 to 102 octane (Shell, Aral), but Belgium only 98, despite also calling it V-Power and Britain is worse, with 97 excellium and V-power without any octane numbers indicated!
I had some tuning session at Dominic’s Midland Classic Restoration rolling road to re-map the 123 ignition, which helped, but did not solve my pinking problems fully. Below 3000 even lightly touching the pedal can create ugly noises at load, even in lower gears, above 4000 I don’t hear it, which Dominic diagnosed that as likely due to my advanced age hearing. I had obtained in Donnington’s paddock a small flask of Millers octane booster, however did not see a real improvement on our way back.
From my 1460 Peter May engine, which gGrman TUEV did not like in my subtly modified car, I had taken the H4s also for the “original 1100” now installed and Dominic suggests that gas speed and subsequently vaporisation and combustion are suffering. Recommendation is to go to the original small H2 set which I had refurbished by Burlen years ago and I will follow that, apart from taking the heavy boot off.
Driving barefoot is not an option, it gets very hot there!
Another issue might interest also: Whilst trying to optimize the ignition over here in Germany, I had faced starting problems. The engine took very long to fire and then surprisingly often just when was giving up and shut off the starter. Dominic measured now a heavy voltage loss from 12 to 9 Volt before the voltage stabilizer when the high torque starter was drawing. I had moved the starter battery from the engine room to behind the drivers seat using there a rather small gel battery and the extra long line seems to have caused too high loss. We put it back to the front and this works now.
And one more: Thanks to Alistair Ross kindly providing me a computerized outline of my car for the weather vane, I have got laser cuts, which clearly showed an extreme “rake”, what may be Adrian Newey’s trick on the Red Bull F1’s, but my rear wheel arches look rather empty. Overall the car has very low ground clearance, despite me now having raised the front by removing a sort of lowering kit and installing silicone spacers for the springs.
Combined with the standard 4.22 axle ratio, the small 165/70-13″ wheels create high revs and noise, which are quite annoying on long motorway drives. Can anyone advise on a 14″ wheel ? Are there historical applications documented?”
Original Dual Oil/Water Guage for the Mk2 Sprite (also ideal for Sebring Replicas based on non-Frogeye Sprites) – with the correct Mk2 part number (GD1502/06) £25 on ebay (exp 10 June)
Downton twin-SU inlet for Minis
£130 on ebay
(Expires Sun 10 June
An original early Downton inlet manifold to fit the Weber DCOE (or Dellorto DHLA) to the Sprite/Midget:
£175 on ebay
Expires Sunday 10th June
An original Speedwell Throttle Pedal
£50 on ebay
(expires Sunday 10 June)
Richard Hart has the above items for sale on ebay – be quick, expire Sunday 10 June.
Richard Hart’s research reveals some fascinating history of an XSP engine.
“Ever since first reading Spritely Years, I have been curious about the fate of the XSP engine fitted to 5983AC – the first Sebring Sprite press road test car – in 1959. In his book (p.152) Tom Coulthard notes that it was registered ‘on 2 April 1959 with the engine number XSP 581-1.’ Since this car was listed in Spritely Years as being then used as the basis of the Super Sprite prototype of 1960 (which used a Coventry Climax engine), it suggested that engine XSP 581-1 had gone to another use. Subsequently, I have read on your site that the surviving Super Sprite prototype “XQHS” was built up from an even earlier pre-production Sprite shell – though the Philip Young article you have on the XQHS page states there may have been three Super Sprite prototypes originally built…? So perhaps 5983AC was also re-modelled in this way…?
Adding to my general confusion on the matter, nearly 20 years ago I happened to meet Louis Cassoni, who was JS’s salesman at Lancaster Mews. He told me the story of how he had written-off a supercharged Sprite demonstration car in a road accident – and how he read the road test of the car in a magazine while recovering from his adventure in hospital. Judging from the significantly deranged state of the steering wheel he showed me, that was salvaged from the wreck, it was clear that both he and the car had been quite knocked-about, and that either might have been fortunate to survive.
Many years later it occurred to me that this crashed supercharged sprite was probably 5983AC in it’s later supercharged form, as road tested in ‘Motor Sport’ (Nov 1959) and ‘Motor Rally’ (Dec 1959).
[When I met Louis Cassoni, I had thought he might have been referring to the later white 1960 supercharged sprite that was tested, I think, in ‘The Motor’ – but this might have been a replacement demonstration car to replace the crashed one…?] So perhaps now it seemed possible that 5983AC might then have been broken to scrap…?
[The registration was, of course, transferred to the Falcon Sprite – but only in the spring of 1960 before the Sebring race – when the Falcon appeared at Nassau in Dec 1959 it was unregistered… If the registration had been switched, perhaps other parts of the car had been re-used elsewhere…?] A couple of years ago I stumbled across a list of all the Briggs-Cunningham team cars online
Although mildly curious, I made note of it, but thought nothing more about it…
…until several months ago I looked at it again, and spotted something I had missed:
The 1960 Briggs-Cuningham Formula Junior Cooper chassis FJ/3/60 is listed as having “engine # BMC XSP 581/1”
The exact same engine from 5983AC in 1959. I can only imagine the convoluted chain of events leading to a sprite XSP engine ending-up in a formula junior Cooper in the USA… Perhaps Briggs-Cunningham was over in Europe as part of his Le Mans preparations, decided to buy a formula junior car from the Coopers, and then bumped into Geoffrey Healey, who offered him the spare XSP engine – possibly forgetting to mention it was from a wrecked car…?
Perhaps… …but who knows…?
(Since Rob Walker bought his Formula One Cooper for Stirling Moss from John Cooper as a bare rolling shell, and then bought engine and gearbox direct from Coventry Climax and Colotti respectively, maybe Briggs-Cunningham did something similar to save on his already-stretched racing budget…?)
Anyhow, whatever the fate of the first 5983AC, it seems that this is where the XSP engine ended-up.
I have no idea as to whether the engine still exists in the ex-Briggs-Cunningham formula junior Cooper, or not.
I hope you find this a useful addition for your XSP page, Kind Regards, Richard Hart”.
photos:John Baggott
LAST MONTH’S STEVE EVERITT MEMORIAL RACE
AT BRANDS HATCH
Left, Stephen Collier’s Midget leads the Frogeyes of Paul Campfield and Ian Burgin into Paddock on Lap 1, and right, Graham Marchant explains the history of the Memorial Trophy to 2018 winner Stephen Collier.
Webmaster’s Note: I must apologise to all our regulars site viewers and contributors for not having kept the website fully up to date recently. Since our house move we have been extremely busy working on both house and garden and it has been very difficult to fit in the time to work on the site. Hopefully we are now getting near the stage where I will have a place to hide in order to do this valuable work. Please bear with me in the meantime.
