Advice please on a 1972 HC engine

[Chris_R]

JamesE aside of course.

But of course. But then he is an Interceptor owner = good taste!

[Trevithick]

Quick way to tell an SP engine, externally balanced on the front pulley due to larger rods. When new they were matched with a uprated gearbox, the serial number should include 850.

[Steve Payne]

Quick way to tell an SP engine, externally balanced on the front pulley due to larger rods. When new they were matched with a uprated gearbox, the serial number should include 850.

Not that easy I am afraid, I have an old engine sat in my unit that is externally balanced but is low compression. It also had an SP water pump pulley so I thought I had struck gold until I took the heads off.

I have also seen an engine with figure 8 water ways in the block, this I was led to believe was Police and Motor Home spec, unless Jensen were trying to get the Police to buy Interceptors or get motor home conversion done why would that have happened?

This is why I believe Chrysler were just sending anything they had over when they had an order. They were making 100s of thousands of these engines at the time for there domestic market, I cant believe they were going to make a batch of ''Jensen'' spec engines. How many were they ordering at a time? If they were making 12 cars a week even 3 months supply is only 150 engines. Not exactly a big order when you are making a 1000 engines a week and I am sure I read somewhere they were only paying £100 each or was it $100?

Steve

[Trevithick]

That's interesting, I wonder why they would externally balance a low comp engine? Unless it had bigger rods or something else to cause the engine to need the external balance? Normally the crank would be enough?
I know the SP engines were built in Detroit and I think there is a part number difference, I'll have to look it up. The Detroit plant was still producing engines for warranty claims into 1973, at the original 1971 spec. The J series SPs had the 131 spec engines as far as I can tell.

[Steve Payne]

That's interesting, I wonder why they would externally balance a low comp engine? Unless it had bigger rods or something else to cause the engine to need the external balance? Normally the crank would be enough?

As you say interesting but who knows what they were getting up to? Maybe this was one of ''supposed to be High Compression engines''? I have seen SP water pump drives on some early 440's so maybe this was one of those?

The other odd thing is the torque convertors, most have small convertors but there are a few with big convertors. All SP's have the bigger convertor but there are quite a few 440's out there early and late with big convertors.

Steve

[Trevithick]

Who knows what happens over 40 plus years of motoring and bodges. Also Jensen may not have had complete control over the parts supply.