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MG MGB Technical - 0 to 60mph in 8 seconds

Can anybody advise what engine modifications are required to a MGB GT to make 0 to 60mph in 8 seconds without going to V8 status.

Thanks
J Blackburn

You may want to look in the archives under i think MGB General as there has just been a very similar thread put on here, only about a month ago actually.

It went long the lines of "email peter burgess" ;->

Good luck ~PHIL

Phil

I guess it depends how many times you want to do it... if it's just the once, how about a 150Hp shot of Nitrous Oxide?

:o)
--
Olly S
Oliver Stephenson

No engine mods at all - just lighten the car sufficiently!!
Chris Betson

Chris, great idea. How much weight can we save by removing our chassis rails?

<g>
--
Olly
Oliver Stephenson

In all seriousness, how much do the rubber bumpers weigh? That has to be a significant weight saving dumping them?
Top gear showed a Jaguar XJS improving it's acceleration time by over a second to 60 by dumping all unnecessary bits totalling about 212kgs I think.
Martin

Two JATO units; one on either door. Oh, and a parachute.
Eric King

If you achieve this, you may also want to consider how you get it from 60 back to 0 again.....
T J C Cuthill

I don't know whether you're sticking with a 4-banger, but to do 8 seconds in a GT you're going to need about 140 HP, or just a tad more. That's a hell of a task for a B motor.
Ted

Two words -

Super

Charger
John Z

The bottom end will take that kind of punishment easily of course, it's the top that lets you down. I suspect that a fully-burgessed 7-port head with a couple of fat webbers and a 285 cam would get you there. My neighbour once had a fully stripped B roadster (not even a windscreen...) with a 130 Hp B-series, and aparrently it was about that quick. A pain in the wossname to drive around town though.

fwiw, if you're serious about getting to 60 in 8 seconds, the most important thing you need is Money!
--
Olly
Oliver Stephenson

Mmmm, supercharger.

:o)
--
Olly
Oliver Stephenson

I think the review of the supercharged car on Han's website only managed 9. something seconds...

Mind you the boost wasn't anything special on that car.

I reckon good strong bottom end, decent head, and a bottle of nitrous is your answer. Thats got to be the cheapest way of doing it.

A supercharger will give you near 100% power increase if you were prepared to spend you're money well, but it is pricey to do properly.

You could knock a couple of seconds of the 0-60mph time however by having a serious re-think of gear ratios. Therefore a peter burgess engine and new gearbox with custom ratios might be your answer.

~PHIL

Phil

Drive it off a cliff. I'd be one of those one time only deals.
John A

Bore out to 1868cc, raise compression to 9.5:1, a Peter Burgess fast road modified head, a Piper 285 cam or better yet a 270 with high ratio rockers, SU's modified for better flow and with K&N filters, stock exhaust with the center muffler replaced by straigt pipe, flywheel lightened by 5-6 lbs, Aldon modified distributor to suit the cam. All this will get you close to 8 seconds. Adding a modded crossflow head with dual Webbers will get you close to 7 seconds. Lighten the car wherever possible-wheels, spacesaver spare, aluminum bonnet, new lighter material rear springs, etc. Whatever you do, have final setup done on a rolling road by experts to maximise performance.
Terry

Stick a Octagon Badge on a Ferrari! :O)
Robert Dougherty

For those cars with crazy engines and standard 4-synchro gearboxes, what kind of life expectancy does 1st gear have? I've been told that the V8 used to wear them out fairly quickly, but that made 185 lbs/ft of torque... what numbers are hot B-series units pushing out?

Taraa,
--
Olly
Oliver Stephenson

If you really want a 4 cylinder engine that will give 140 bhp then a multipoint injected M16 will do that in standard tune.

Rubber bumpers wiegh in at 40 kilos the pair and a spare wheel is another 15 kilos - petrol weighs quite a lot too - a full tank holds about 40 kilos - so you will get better figures on a nearly empty tank.

With a standard engine producing 100 ft lbs of torque you would need to get the weight, including driver, down to 1600 lbs from around 2500 lbs for a GT so that's 900 lbs to go!

Just taking off the rubber bumpers and the spare wheel will drop the 0 to 60 time by 0.5 seconds.

An empty fuel tank shaves another 1/4 second off...

For those interested the formula is 2 times the weight in lbs divided by the max torque all to the power of 0.6

So work out the first bit - 2 x weight / torque, take the logarithm of the result, multiply by 0.6 and then anti log that!
Chris Betson

Thanks for all your comments including the humorous ones. The M16 sounds interesting.
J Blackburn

Suprised no one mentioned close ratios gears, quick shift lever and a limited slip/torque sensing diff.

I think a Caterham 6 speed box would be worth close to a second with whatever engine and power mods you used.
Daniel

Chris, I'm surprised you didn't suggest the driver shed a few pounds! Of course that would mean staying off the OSH, which some of us are not prepared to do even if we could shave .01 seconds off our 0-60 times.

I remember in my cycling days that some guys would spend a couple hundred bucks buying titanium bolts to cut a couple ounces off their bike weights. It was pretty funny to see the carbon composite frames and all that hi-tech hardware being pedaled by a guy with a 10 pound beer-gut! - excluding myself of course ;)
Bud G

How about a K series engine with a Ford 5 speed 'box?
Michael Watkins

Bud, I can back you on that one. I was the head mechanic in a bike shop for years. One guy in particular comes to mind. He would come in and weigh chainring bolts and nuts with his own electronic scale. He would weigh as many as we had to find the very lightest set of five. He was obsessed! But he would overlook things like his fork, which if replaced would save half a pound for the same price as a handful of titanium bolts that saved only grams. He spent far more time sitting on the floor with his scale than he did riding the bike. THe worst of it is, he would sacrifice performance and effeciency to save a couple ounces. That kind of weight savings does not make you faster, but quite the opposite!
Steve Simmons

Hey Steve, But his wallet was a lot lighter!
Chris Betson

I think a big shot of Nitrous would help out a lot. A engine that is bored out high compression with a cross flow head and dual Webbers and a little of the nitrous and good traction should help. I would also recommend skinny front tires like you see on drag cars (to min rolling resistance). Also get all weight out of the car you can that will help some as well. No need for the passenger seat boot lid, bonnet, and the hood. Then you need to drop the clutch at 4500 rpms and if every thing holds together maybe just maybe you can get into the 8 sec 0-60 zone.
Jim

And of course an appropriate CWP to ensure you hit maximum revs in top gear at about 65 mph.

Why would one want to do this with a 4 cylinder car though?

Build or buy a Rover V8 - I see John Eales is now offering V8 engines at very good prices.

How about a new 5.2 litre short engine block, crank, rods and pistons. Fully balanced. Camshaft and timing chain assembly. Assembled and Crated. Built from all new parts. Outright sale NO exchange unit needed £3,150, or a complete 4.6 litre for £2,250 !

http://www.beestore.co.uk/johneales/

No connection save for being a satisfied customer.

Safety Fast

NJSS

Nigel Steward

Interesting thread. I drive a much modified GT, and the actual car and spec can be seen at http://www.oselli.com/grad.html (the gold bits are long gone!). As you can see, with around 130bhp and pushing 140lbft torque at 4500rpm, the builders still reckon on 0-60 in the 9's. Using Chris's maths I come up with 8.7 seconds as the theoretical best, and so would suggest that both weight and aerodynamics need addressing to get right down into the 8's.

That said, IMHO achieving that sort of poke will give a car best suited to the track (and this may be what you're after?), whilst my GT gives me tremendous driving pleasure and it's still comfortable for use as a daily driver. When it comes to speed, the power delivery delivery is soooo different to a modern engine and this seems wrongfoot other motorists. This makes me think about gearing. I take the point about close ratio boxes but I frequently find the other secret weapon on a B is the overdrive. There aren't that many six speed boxes around even now, and being in the right gear can make up for a ton of difference in horsepower!

I'd better stop as I'm in danger of starting on the "it's not what you've got but how you use it" theme!

Steve Postins

Aerodynamics aren't much if any kind of any obstacle to dropping zero to 60 times.
Daniel

Understood Daniel. I'm still wondering if there are expected losses between the calculated and real world results such as all the points of friction between the flywheel and road wheels? If so are there other areas to address to help get to 8 seconds?
Steve Postins

The one big factor is how fast you can make the gear changes......

Chris Betson

A point which should be made on this subject is that when road tests are done by the "quality" magazines, the test cars are subjected to enormous abuse to achieve the published result

Thus, various experiments will be conducted to see what rpm should be held before dropping the clutch. Dropping is just that : the foot is slid sideways off the pedal, and the shock to the transmission is enormous, particularly if say 3000 rpm is being held

Thus, to be a representative comparison, a more gently treated( and longer lasting ) car , should have at least 0.3 seconds (and probably realistically 0.5 secs)deducted from the times you or I would measure

As a matter of interest, for those who have mentioned gear ratios, my 4 litre Westfield was quicker 0 -60 if one started in 2nd gear because the extra time taken was more than outweighed by the gear change time of about 0.5 sec - in 2nd I cd do it in just about 4 seconds! and every 20 mph after that came up in about 2.2 secs

Sadly, I no longer have it

Christopher Storey
chris

Hi,

0-60 in 8 seconds with a little MGB motor? sorta like bailing out the Queen Mary with thimble. Forget it. To go fast the answer is : cubic inches or cubic money. Save the sweat,go watch TV or something. The only little beater that I ever saw that could actually move a bit was a Lotus Super 7. It was a bag of aluminum tubes and an engine that had to be wound so tight it hurt my hair. Alan
Alan

Alan, I like the way you write :o)

However, small engines can go just as fast as big engines if everything else is equal. The sub-2-litre supercharged / sub-3-litre natasp special category at Shelsley Walsh is still held by Rob Oldaker's (and another chap, can't remember his name) turbocharged 1100cc A-series prototype, which was pushing out about 350 Hp.

The record was set some time ago and has yet to be beaten, which is just as well as I've seen the car that did it... it's got a rod poking through the side of the block :o)

It's when you put the big engines in the small cars that it gets fun. Even more so if you then start applying the techniques that make the small engines go quick...

ttfn,
--
Fast Olly
Oliver Stephenson

May work, may work only once from the darwin awards http://www.darwinawards.com/ - a moldy oldy:



Jet Assisted Take-Off
1995 Darwin Awards Winner
Confirmed Bogus by Darwin
The Arizona Highway Patrol were mystified when they came upon a pile of smoldering wreckage embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The metal debris resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it turned out to be the vaporized remains of an automobile. The make of the vehicle was unidentifiable at the scene.

The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and pieced together the events that led up to its demise.

It seems that a former Air Force sergeant had somehow got hold of a JATO (Jet Assisted Take-Off) unit. JATO units are solid fuel rockets used to give heavy military transport airplanes an extra push for take-off from short airfields.

Dried desert lakebeds are the location of choice for breaking the world ground vehicle speed record. The sergeant took the JATO unit into the Arizona desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, accelerated to a high speed, and fired off the rocket.

The facts, as best as could be determined, are as follows:

The operator was driving a 1967 Chevy Impala. He ignited the JATO unit approximately 3.9 miles from the crash site. This was established by the location of a prominently scorched and melted strip of asphalt. The vehicle quickly reached a speed of between 250 and 300 mph and continued at that speed, under full power, for an additional 20-25 seconds. The soon-to-be pilot experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners.

The Chevy remained on the straight highway for approximately 2.6 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied the brakes, completely melting them, blowing the tires, and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface. The vehicle then became airborne for an additional 1.3 miles, impacted the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, and left a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Most of the driver's remains were not recovered; however, small fragments of bone, teeth, and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Ironically a still-legible bumper sticker was found, reading
"How do you like my driving? Dial 1-800-EAT-SH*T."



rn
RN Lipow

Excellent...
Anthony Morgan

I'm glad the Darwin awards website is stating this JATO story is actually an urban myth. For a while, they were one of the sources that presented it as truth. It was explored ad nauseam on a show called "myth busters" on The Learning Channel... they actually conducted the experiment (a long story but... if you ever are flipping through the channels and catch this program, stay and watch, it's half way interesting). I can go into the details but suffice to say in the information gathering stage, they called the Arizona highway patrol and they stated there was no record of any such incident. Makes for a damn fine story though.

After reading this thread, there are definitely some mods here I would like to use on my car, but I'm a little worried about the engine's life with the higher-end mods. What’s the story behind that? How’s the engine behave with all the modifications and high revs? Does it have as long a life?
Thanks,
eric.
Eric King

My B might come close when setup for the track at Mission, BC, Canada. Probably 135 or 140 HP, close-ratio transmission, 4.88 rearend, 22.8" diameter racing slicks and weighing in at 1850. Not much top-end but it gets there quick.
Leland Bradley

And then for the other side of the story... Out driving today I discovered that full throttle in 3rd makes for interesting driving as the revs climb past 3 grand and the rear tires begin to break loose. They're 265/50-14's so as you might imagine things are happening fast at that point. I haven't a clue how long it takes to get to 60, it comes and goes before I can even notice it and then the needle's sweeping past 90 and I have to let up just for the sake of sanity. It's what happens when you blow 12 lbs into a 215. Run an 1800? Why???

Jim
Jim Blackwood

Jim, that sounds like a lot of fun. Is that turbocharged or belt driven?

--
Olly
Oliver Stephenson

Jim, sounds awesome. I still need to come by and see that thing, mine will probably off the road for a while, took the seats out and figured I might as well fix the rust..... plus getting things done around the house. Note the new e-mail.

Bud
Bud G

Forget the 4cyl.
Come down and have a ride in my 4.0L V8 GT
200hp at the wheels, 1000kg, 0-60 about 5.5secs
Serious grin factor.

Mark
Mark Rawlins

Hey Mark, where did you lose 250kg from your GT? I quite fancy a bit of lightening myself...

--
Olly
Oliver Stephenson

Oliver
Composite rear springs, Fibreglass tailgate/C bonnet,
Single battery, spare wheel, perspex etc. plus lots of ally bits.
Actually since I had it on the weighbridge Ive replaced the minataur 5.5j wheels for 7j Compomovive MLs and added a rear custom anti roll bar, which must add another 15-20 kg.
Oh! and weighed with tank near empty.

Mark
Mark Rawlins

Mark, what rear end are you running? I ask because although my 4.2 car's been dyno'd at 235 at the rear wheels, and I'm running a limited slip 3.07 rear, the best time I can do (according to a G-Tech meter anyway) without winding it up and dumping the clutch (which I've avoided as it seems particularly brutal on the drive train) is about 8.0 seconds. My car weighs about 2500 pounds, and I tested it with a full tank of gas. I weight 180. What approximate shift points are likely to yield optimum acceleration?
Bill Withum

Oliver, most definitely belt driven. Big Eaton M-90 sitting up on the manifold. I doubt 12 lbs from a turbo would even come close.

Bud, come on by any time. We'll go for a spin... uh, I mean a drive that is. My cell # is 816-2187.

Jim
Jim Blackwood

J, have you any mates in the Navy that might let you shoot it off a carrier catapult? That would do the job and save you a few quid.
Cleve

Jim,
Eaton blower on a Rover V8 sounds nice... but turbos are plenty capable of making it move. Nick Mann has a twin-turboed RV8 in his Morris Minor, which breifly was the official fastest street-driven hot rod in the UK (not the fastest unofficially though :o)

Mark,
Does the fibreglass tailgate look alright? It sounds like a good weight saving but I don't fancy it if you can tell it's not original.

Cheers for the ideas,
--
Olly
Oliver Stephenson

Olly,

Not sure if this the same with all fibreglass tailgates, but the one i saw on a GT was held on by pins and circlips so you could tell it wasn't original...

Whether that was because the owner was too lazy to attach the hinges, i don't know! ;->

~PHIL
Phil

Bill
I am running a 3.07 axle with quafe LSD.
Composite springs, anti Tramp,Panhard rod and rear anti roll bar.
I have found the composite springs to be excellent at getting the power down to the road.
What spec is your engine? 8 secs sounds a bit slow.
What size and type of tyre are you using.
I have 7x15 compomotive wheels with 205/55x15 Bridgestone SO2's

Oliver
I modified my fibreglass tailgate to take the perspex without any fixings, just stuck there with glue. The edge of the perspex has a black band around maybe slightly wider then the glass rubber. I have pics.

Mark
Mark Rawlins

Olly, not debating that, I was thinking about what 12 lbs was capable of. With a blower that's a bunch. Nice thing though is that it's always there, like having a motor that's several sizes bigger. Sounds bigger too! The other nice thing is that it's docile and easy to drive. Things only start getting hairy when the go pedal starts to go down. Definitely not a car for granny or the teenager though.
Jim
Jim Blackwood

I had my Mg b 75mph the other day still had a little a leaved
james

Mark, sounds pretty similar driveline-wise. I don't know, I just hooked up the G-tech meter and tried it out. I certainly have no idea where the optimum shift points are or anything. And nothing on the car is lightened, etc. But I was surely hoping for better than 8 seconds. That being said, I don't know that I should be doing this too often because surely it really hammers the driveline ... the meter says "GO!" and you can't help but just absolutely mash that gas pedal!
David

small engines can be really quick. I had a 1300 turbo in 1986 that was quite capable of 0-60 in less than 6 seconds. We used to thrash the thing up and down the runway at Cranfield (after the airport using airport transfers sevenoaks was closed - natch) to see how low we could get the time. 5.5 secs was the best as I remember. The guys on site who looked after the 1950's jet fighters said it was more fun than the fighters......

But there again, the engine was lighter and rather more developed than the MGB engine. I do find however that I get a lot of bemused looks when speeding. On the French Autoroute I have done just under the ton (MPH) in my MGA, which really surprises the average driver. Best of all is that the toll booth operators (looking at the average speed, which can ofetn mean a fine if you are over the limit) just laugh and say "It must be a mistake, your car can't go that fast....."
dominic clancy

Hey Cleve, Don't hold out too much hope on the aircraft carrier. I was on HMS Victorious in 1967 and we shot a VW beetle off the catapult. It broke up before it left the flight deck.
Bob Anderson

This thread was discussed between 10/03/2003 and 23/03/2003

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