Club Triumph

Quoted from thescrapman-

i am sure some did a kit for converting to a cam belt manyyearsago.

or perhaps it was just someone's project

A chap in Mayland (or was it Woodham ?) did it.  I seem to recall one of the specilaists subsequently offered a kit - Jigsaw maybe?

Interesting idea and I love crazy mods as much as anyone......  However, I can't help thinking that you are trying to do something really very difficult for no very good reason.

Basic point to consider is that even with the original valve gear and head the 1300 small crank bottom end can be tuned to the limit of it's strength so alrge amounts of tricky and expensive engineering work is not likely to gain you much in the way of grunt.  I would say drop the whole D-series in and have done with it, but then you come back to the reason why they are rarely used outside of Hondas - wrong direction of rotation.  Also bear in mind that even the original block with a OHC head on it might be too tall to fit under the Spitfire bonnet?

I know there is the fairly successful A-series 16v twin cam conversion using the BMW K series bike head, but that is alot easier in technical terms as the bores and even most of the head studs line up and both engines are designed to rotate in the same direction.  It was also driven by the regs in some competition series requiring the OE pattern block to be used but allowing free choice of head.

If you are determined to keep with a OE (ish) Triumph block then perhaps a small turbo or supercharger?  Mr Bowlers supercharged Mk3 was a bit of a monster!

Nick

Well the idea behind the Honda lump is that the bores are so close to lining up and some of the coolant passages line up as well, so why not see if it's reasonably do able and if it is then I can start toying with it to see what I can get out of the bottom end and at what point I have to look at the bottom end.

Remember a d16 head also gives immediate use to cheap turbo kits (around £500)as well as a fuel injection manifold designed for it so it could make life easier when coming to fuel inject it as no manifold has to be made 

It might also make sense from a driveability and fuel economy sense, that head flows so much better and with the cams it has it might be even more fuel efficient yet have a bit more power, not to mention it should be more drivable than a highly tuned engine that idles higher and the such 

Well after spending some time measuring and staring at the old and the new head doing a few measurements, I have concluded that although it is possible to get them to mate, it is far beyond economically viable first big problem is that there are studs in the block right where cooling passages need to be, the block would have to be sleeved to move cylinder two and three together a couple of mm together, more cooling passages have to be put into the block new studs have to be drilled and tapped the list continues