The Jensen Owners' Club

Hi

Have a spare 383 engine here , apparently from an Interceptor ;

Recently on examination , I noted that this engine has an August 1965 casting date , which seems early for an Interceptor.

On the RHS front of it , is stamped A383 ( = 1965 383) & 52 52 HP .

The LHS front is stamped 127416A , guessing this is the Jensen number .

It would be interesting to know what chassis the engine came out of !

Has it survived & what country was it delivered to originally ?

Engine number 1274/16A belonged to chassis number 116/3073, a UK delivered car, with the original registration number SGA 261G
It was finished in Mist Grey, first registered 5/12/1968
As this car does not appear as a survivor on the "Mk 1 Survivors" web site http://www.joc.org.uk/Interceptor_Mk_1/ ... -3530.html and as you have the engine, I would guess it no longer exists as a car

Very efficient response !

Car must have been scrapped in Ireland , many years ago so.

Interesting that it was a manual .

Also I'm curious that even though the block casting date is 1965 , it was only registered first in 1968 .

That is a very cool spare engine to have, one out of a manual Interceptor. It would be useful for someone doing a manual conversion. Apart from the association with the original manual car, it will have the correct crank for a manual car, which is different to the automatic one. Something to think about if you are going to rebuild it for an automatic.

Something to bear in mind is that the Chrysler model year applies not only to engines but also gearboxes. This is relevant throughout Jensen production because gearboxes differ from year to year, same as engines. Jensen bought engine/transmission assemblies, not engines and transmissions separately.

The 1965 manual gearboxes proved a hard sell. Two were used in C-V8 IIIs but most were sold in the Interceptors up to 1969. The manual was not popular and Jensen considered various ways of shifting the stock. One thought was to rebuild the power trains as automatics but this would have entailed a lot of work and would have meant Jensen would have had to assume the warranty rather than Chrysler UK. The problems of the crankshaft, shifter console and pedal setup were regarded as too great to overcome.

Instead, the dealers were offered better discounts on the manuals and that is what made the last of them saleable in the marketplace. The 12-month warranty applied from date of sale, not from date of manufacture of any of the components.

Whoever separated the gearbox from this engine after the car was (presumably) broken must have had a buyer for an A833 who was not interested in the manual crank 383 engine. It may be that an owner of another of the manual Interceptors ended up with the gearbox out of 3073. Only about half the 24 manuals are known to have survived into recent times.

There was an advert (I think in the JOC magazine) in the 1980s, for a manual Interceptor being broken for parts in Ireland. I wrote to the vendor asking about the gearbox, thinking it would be a useful spare for 116.3328 that I owned at the time, but I never received a reply. So, it was scrapped a long time ago.

Mike

Thanks guys , some great detectives on here !

Mike, the owner of the crashed manual in Ireland joined the JOC in 1982. His details are in JOC51 at p18. He described the car as a "badly crashed 1966 Interceptor with manual transmission which I am dismantling for parts."

There are no 1966 manuals. After the first manual was made in late 1967, they were all 1968 and 1969 builds. He may well have written 1968 in his letter to the editor but it could have been misread or mistyped as 1966 in publication.

In 1980, Ulric was advertising a complete Mk I grey interior taken from a 1968 car (see JOC39 p44), along with other Mk I parts. The only manual which I can identify by chassis number as having been broken is the second one, 2801. This had a grey interior. Its identity was transferred to an automatic in the 1980s so there is still a 2801 running around but it is not the original manual chassis. Grey is a relatively rare trim colour. Only two of the manuals had grey interiors (the other one is alive and well).

The third manual was 2856, PWO 393F, which was discussed here recently. This was the car built up for racing in England by JP&S in the 1980s.

It may be that the Irish car came back to the factory after 1982 and served as a donor for 2856 but that's just a guess. In short, I don't know which car was offered for parts in 1982, unless it was 3073.

So it is not usual practice for Jensens to have engines knocking around for a number of years before being put into production cars (the antitheses of the Japanese "Just in time" method...,) but it does occasionally happen .

I was thinking of the '61 541S with Chrysler N0 61 on the chassis plate that left the factory with Austin Powers (groovy baby) ....

Frankoid wrote:So it is not usual practice for Jensens to have engines knocking around for a number of years before being put into production cars (the antitheses of the Japanese "Just in time" method...,) but it does occasionally happen .

I was thinking of the '61 541S with Chrysler N0 61 on the chassis plate that left the factory with Austin Powers (groovy baby) ....

With some coach built Rolls Royces, a few never made it to the road until long after the chassis was discontinued, wars intervening, etc.

Frankoid wrote:So it is not usual practice for Jensens to have engines knocking around for a number of years before being put into production cars (the antitheses of the Japanese "Just in time" method...,) but it does occasionally happen .

I was thinking of the '61 541S with Chrysler N0 61 on the chassis plate that left the factory with Austin Powers (groovy baby) ....

With some coach built Rolls Royces, a few never made it to the road until long after the chassis was discontinued, wars intervening, etc.

Thanks Richard, good no know my memory isn't that bad, in spite of what my wife says!

I remember at the time asking the vendor what the chassis number was, but no reply.

Mike

This (for me) is a very interesting posting, Strangely, I looked at a rough old black Manual Car years ago(in the 80's) sitting outside a repair garage and went in and asked about the car and if it was for sale, I remember the reply being that the car was either going or came from Ireland!!

johnw wrote:That is a very cool spare engine to have, one out of a manual Interceptor. It would be useful for someone doing a manual conversion. Apart from the association with the original manual car, it will have the correct crank for a manual car, which is different to the automatic one. Something to think about if you are going to rebuild it for an automatic.

As far as I know John.. there is no difference in the crank on the manual cars to the automatic cars..I could be wrong though .. what do you think the difference is then please John?

Grant wrote:This (for me) is a very interesting posting, Strangely, I looked at a rough old black Manual Car years ago(in the 80's) sitting outside a repair garage and went in and asked about the car and if it was for sale, I remember the reply being that the car was either going or came from Ireland!!

johnw wrote:That is a very cool spare engine to have, one out of a manual Interceptor. It would be useful for someone doing a manual conversion. Apart from the association with the original manual car, it will have the correct crank for a manual car, which is different to the automatic one. Something to think about if you are going to rebuild it for an automatic.

As far as I know John.. there is no difference in the crank on the manual cars to the automatic cars..I could be wrong though .. what do you think the difference is then please John?

There is a pilot bushing in '68 manual trans motors, the end of the crankshaft will not be reamed out on the Auto engines. So the pilot bushing won't fit in. It can be machined/reamed to size, or you could use a later pilot bearing. I read about this on Bob Cleaver's Pirate Jenny gearbox swap page. In summary there is a difference but it is not a show stopper these days.

johnw wrote:There is a pilot bushing in '68 manual trans motors, the end of the crankshaft will not be reamed out on the Auto engines. So the pilot bushing won't fit in. It can be machined/reamed to size, or you could use a later pilot bearing. I read about this on Bob Cleaver's Pirate Jenny gearbox swap page. In summary there is a difference but it is not a show stopper these days.

Yes, I see John, becuase the only reason I was confused was when I do the manual conversions that I have done 2 of now I just insert the correct bearing to fit the Manual gearbox input shaft that also fit the diameter of the bore size that is already in the rear of all the Crankshafts you see, I never realised that the cranks for the manual cars was different. I also know that recently they fitted a new crank to Mike Williams (in postings from above) original Mk1 Manual Car, so I guess they probably inserted the same bearing that I have used, In fact I know who did it so I will ask him what he did in this case.