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MG Midget and Sprite General - The Weslake Cylinder Head Is Back?

Does anybody know anything about this? http://www.weslake.co.uk/mini.htm
Stephen Strange

You mean aside from the problems of casting shifts, bd flow, peter burguss wont work on them anymore , needs a special camshaft to work with the head, and the sellers seem to have a history of taking peoples money then never shipping un-less serious begging is commenced on the part of the buyer

Mmmmm, no i havent heard much about this head.

My experiance comes from rumor, others personal experiances and all allegaedly speaking of coarse

Perhaps rhe allegade issues have all been solved.


Prop
Prop

Hi Prop

I work on all heads, do you mean Sean not working on MSX X-flow Bs anymore?

Mind you we have had to work hard on the 7 port A series msx to get it right, the plughole shrouding in the chambers was a particular problem. the head is almost ready to fit but we are now going to have to see how well we can get the exhaust rocker arms to sit centrally over the valve tips.

Peter
P Burgess

Prop please be aware of the harm you van do when you go and spread hear say rumors about companys or products!
Onno Könemann

Oh Gez,

Ive made a mistake... yes peter is correct, im thinking of the MXS head thats now common on ebay... im aware of the westlake head, but never followed its progress vary close.

To the westlake people my appolloggies... im in the wrong !

Prop
Prop

maybe not Prop...wait til we see a Weslake one. We have experimented with a few Weslake specials used in MGs and some of the designs didnt quite work but could well have intimidated the opposition on the race track , for example the Ulster heads on the MGAs :)

We also had the chance some 20 years back to compare flow measurements on our home made flow bench on his home made flow bench and considering we have a reputation for having a flow bench which under reads cos it isnt a posh bought one,tis odd Harry's bench gave very very similar figures.

Peter
P Burgess

Intimidate ...Sort of like that guys that reversed the flow on the old nail head buicks. They switch the intake and exhaust ports and ran a trick cam and forced induction.

http://www.carcraft.com/thehistoryof/65502_buick_nailhead/photo_07.html
Trevor Jessie

"Little is known about the effectiveness of this mod, but the visual shock" ........I love it :)

Peter
P Burgess

Trevor,

I've heard of the same sort of thing, reversing the inlet and exhaust use, on an Austin 7 engine. Apparently it was quite effective in competition.
David Billington

Isn't the standard 5 port A series head based on a Weslake design?

Having said that, the website appears to draw on past glories rather than current developments - I'm not aware of Weslake as a player in the A series modified engines market... Most of the parts on the site that are actually for sale appear to be sourced from general supply - the cam timing gear for example looks very much like a Kent timing gear.

The 8 port looks interesting - but I've never heard of one in competition and you have to ask whether if it wasn't taken up in the sixties, why it would work now.

The Mini Spares 8 port head (for example) has taken a considerable amount of 'customer' development to arrive at a reliable product - I recall in the early years tales of woe relating to dropped inserts etc...

Potential buyers need to be wary of ending up as acting as this company's development tester as that has the possibility of getting rather expensive...
James Bilsland

"Isn't the standard 5 port A series head based on a Weslake design?"


Yes.
Deborah Evans

The reason that I'm interested it the Weslake eight-port cylinder head is that, according to my research, it outflows both the Pierce and the Arden crossflow cylinder heads. Supposedly it outflows any other cylinder head, despite the fact that Harry Weslake designed it back in the late 1950s! I notice from the image that it appears to use the intake-exhaust-intake-exhaust valve arrangement like the Arden cylinder head, thus making camshaft availability something of a quandry, although I'm confident that a four-port exhaust system could be fabricated without too much trouble. It also appears to be a cast iron item rather than aluminum alloy, perhaps for the purpose of cost reduction. Used ones are rare as hen's teeth, and unbelievably expensive when you can find one for sale. However, if the Weslake company is bringing it back into limited production, I figure that they just might be worth looking into.
Stephen Strange

Jim Whitehouse designed the Arden head for racing 850s in the Special Saloon series in the late 60's - it wasn't designed for use with big bore engines

Bill Richards has utilised an Mini Spares/Arden 8 port on a 1480 in the DMN series in a Mini with some success, The engine produced big power, however they had problems with it on big circuits in that the power appeared to fall off the edge of a cliff at high revs - effectively the theory is that the head reached the limit of flow for the large capacity cylinder at high revs... (Not a problem I hasten to add that has ever occured on road cars).

Bill is now campaigning a 1480 KAD 16v engine much to the annoyance of the bigger cars he keeps beating...

If the Weslake 8 port head is the same as that used by Special Tuning on the works Minis and Midgets in the late 60's (as it occurs to me it might be) then it may well be of interest. That head certainly did work on 1300 engines - now where can one find a mechanical fuel injection set up for an 8 port...
James Bilsland

Reversing the inlet and exhaust?
Tricky cam?
No need for a tricky cam, simply reverse the direction of rotation of the engine LOL. Not sure how this would be of benefit?
Robert (Bob) Midget Turbo

No problem Robert, just keep it in reverse!
HALL JOHN

What about reversing the engine as it sits in the bay.... shouldnt be to hard to hook up the trans to the cooling fan

Stephen.... there is another cly head option you may not have considard.... it does get the board fired up, about why do this head at all.

Sorry guys.... but at least this should bring about the end of my bin laden is dead thread....lol

BMW MOTORCYCLE HEAD.... THE K-100....16 valve or 8 valveif you want the cam to come on alittle earlier down lower in the rpm range.... lots of mini coopers on youtube are doing this... really wicked... duel cam and x-flow 8 ports... super charge it, turbo it, or stick 4) HS1 on it

Im not certian thats the correct head name.... k-100....but its easy to google

So the quetion you have to ask, is why ?, cause you can get a nice ztec, thats just like this for about the same price and ave a lot stronger engine.... you can do a suzuki swift drive train... the debate is .... does the Bmw motor cycle head violate the spirt of the bmc 1275 engine... after all it is a compltely diffearnt animal... but it does do what your looking for

Let the blood bath begin.

Prop
Prop

Prop-
I prefer to remain "Period Correct", not because I'm a rabid Purist, but because I like my car to stay in the spirit of being a classic MG. The Weslake head would be in keeping with that. If all that I wanted was more power, I'd shoehorn in a Chevy V6 with a GM six speed transmission and adapt a Ford rear axle, along with wider wheels and wider tires. But then, all that I'd end up with would be a Hot Rod that just looks like a Midget.

So, just to keep this thread on track with my original intent, does anybody out there know anything about the Weslake cylinder head? I Emailed the company yesterday for more information, but no response as of yet.
Stephen Strange

I do not have any specific info, but it seems like I remember seeing an announcement about 3 years ago that it was "coming soon". However, I'm not certain.
Trevor Jessie

Revor-
The copyright on their website is 2010, but I don't know when the cylinder head was added to that particular webpage that its listed on.
Stephen Strange

This thread was discussed between 09/05/2011 and 12/05/2011

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