Reassembling the Tiger May 29, 2007
The first step in any reassembly is to analyze your parts needs and make a spreadsheet of what parts you will need and where you will source them.
We are rolling along pretty nicely on our Tiger reassembly. The project is slated to start in the magazine in the January 2008 issue, which will hit the streets in late November of this year.
With our car painted, we are starting reassembly. Analyzing your parts needs should be the first step of any reassembly. List the parts you need on a spreadsheet along with the supplier you plan on sourcing the pieces from to help keep things organized. We made a list and put a large order in with Classic Sunbeam Auto Parts. Kurt, who owns the Otega, New York company, prefers to deal via email, which fits our busy schedule just fine. With any old car, there are varying degrees of quality when it comes to sourcing restoration parts. So far, everything we have received from Classic Sunbeam Auto Parts has been good quality at reasonable prices considering the rarity of these cars. Orders have been dealt with in a relatively prompt fashion.
We have been sourcing used parts from Tiger East/Alpines East club members, and the Rootes Group Depot. As mentioned earlier, we have also ordered some parts from Victoria British. They have an extensive line of Sunbeam parts.
Start Your Engines Jun 5, 2007
We’ll get to the full story in an upcoming issue of one or both of our publications, but we’ll give you the end results now…421 hp at 6100 rpm!
Progress continues on our Tiger. This past week we spent a couple of days at Abacus Racing where we assembled and dynoed our Tiger’s engine. After much consideration and a few miss starts we decided to go with a five bolt 289 that has been stroked to 331 cubic inches.
This engine uses K1 crank and rods, JE Pistons and Edelbrock’s Power Package Top End Kit, complete with aluminum heads, and a matching cam and intake manifold.
We’ll get to the full story in an upcoming issue the magazine, but we’ll give you the end results now--421 hp at 6100 rpm! Looks like we better rethink our chassis mods a bit with that kind of power on tap.
Next we will bolt the engine and transmission together to test fit it with the headers. Then we'll send the headers out to Swain Coatings. They claim they can lower the header temperature some 300 degrees with their unique coating process.
A New Heart for the Tiger Jul 11, 2007
After nearly a three week hiatus--we took readers to both Germany and England for classic car tours--we are back working on our Tiger. Last time we told you about the monster stroker motor we built. This time we are pleased to tell you we got the new engine into the Tiger.
People who are familiar with these cars know that the engine install is not an easy job. Especially if you start changing stuff around. We got some headers from Abacus racing that the owner, Chuck Botwright, had bought for his own Tiger project but had decided not to use. They are from Sunbeam Specialties. We are not sure how they fit a stock Tiger with a 260, but with an aluminum head 289, these headers needed a bit of massaging to fit the car. Once everything fit correctly, we shipped our headers to be coated by Swain Technology. Swain offers a special coating system that they promise will lower header temperature by at least 300 degrees. As hot as Tigers tend to run, especially when modified, we thought this was a good idea.
Next, we will assemble the front suspension in an attempt to make this car roll again. We want to get it off our lift where it has sat for the last six months.
Headers Aren't Headaches Oct 1, 2007
With the headers back, we could bolt in the engine and transmission for real. After a lot of grunting, groaning pushing, shoving, lifting and lowering, it was in.
We’ve been working on our Tiger a bunch, but haven’t been writing much. We got our headers back from Swain and they look beautiful. We’ll let you know how the finish holds up once we get driving the car. We’ll also lay a pyrometer on them to see how much heat they really cut out of the engine compartment.
With the headers back, we could bolt in the engine and transmission for real. After a lot of grunting, groaning pushing, shoving, lifting and lowering, it was in. Damn, a V8 is a tight fit in one of these chassis.
With that step completed, the next thing we did was install a Canton finned aluminum oil pan. Not only does it look really trick, but it will supposedly cool the oil a bit too. The pan itself was slightly lighter than stock as well. We are for anything that is lighter, looks good and cools the oil. We were told that this oil pan could have been installed after we put the front cross-member on, but we figured it would be way easier with no cross member in the way of installation.
With the transmission completely in place we filled it with Redline MTL. We use Redline fluids in pretty much everything we build.
From there we went to work on the shift linkage. As our shift lever was rusty we bought another one from our buddy Tiger Joe and then installed new side bushings and greased everything up real well and put it together. To adjust the shift linkage on a Ford Top-loader, you need to make sure every gear is in neutral and then stick a 1/4-inch rod into the side of the linkage. There is a space there to hold all the shift levers in the right place. From there, you just retighten the linkage and the shifter should work fine.
This is easier said than done and when we tried it, we had problems. When we asked Tim from Volusia Drivetrain to do it, he had it shifting perfectly in five minutes. It seems we did not have reverse disengaged before we attempted the procedure.
Tiger Front Suspension Rebuild Nov 12, 2007
We next turned our attention to the steering. Tiger steering is notorious for having Ackerman angle problems, especially when trying to back the car up. Our wheels were not turning in unison, as one would go one way and the other would go the opposite way.
With the engine finally in place, our attention turned to the front end. On a Tiger, the entire front suspension and brakes attach to a separate cross-member. This cross-member is then held to the unibody (yes, a Tiger is of unibody construction) with four massive bolts.
As we will outline in the magazine in more depth, the Tiger front cross-member has some issues that need to be addressed. Although our cross-member had not failed, we did some strengthening in the spring tower area before we had it powder coated. With these mods completed and the entire assembly powder coated, we began reassembly.
One of our front springs had collapsed, so we sourced a pair of good used springs from a local Tigers East/Alpines East club member. We installed new control arm bushings, ball joints and Koni shocks. We've had very good luck with Konis on many of our project cars, and since this car is a definite keeper, we again wanted to use the best.
While we might modify the front suspension further after some testing, we wanted a near stock baseline before we dove into changing things like spring rates. We made one exception to this rule when we installed a 7/8” Addco front anti-roll bar. These are recommended for Tigers and I don’t think we have ever built a British sports car that didn’t need a bit more front anti-roll bar.
We next turned our attention to the steering. Tiger steering is notorious for having Ackerman angle problems, especially when trying to back the car up. Our wheels were not turning in unison, as one would go one way and the other would go the opposite way.
Again, we will cover this in more detail in the magazine, but we used a Midget steering rack along with a kit from Dale’s Restorations that allows this rack to be mounted on a Tiger. The Midget rack positions the front wheels at better angles to each other. While the kit is well-made, it comes with very poor instructions and is not straightforward to install. We’ll outline complete installation in an upcoming article.
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