Harley vs Norton Hemi and prior era

While hunting up hemi heads Harley vs Norton, stumbled on this
early engine discovery era history. WestLake head developer with Harry Richard as his race bike tuner to boot! A short teaser below

http://thevintagent.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... swirl.html

In a curious side note, while Vandervell was a Board member at Nortons, he 'took' Kusmicki's design for the four-cylinder, watercooled DOHC racing 500cc Norton engine with him when he left the Board, during the A.M.C. takeover of Norton in 1955. This design was expanded and used in one of Vanwall F1 cars.... so in effect, the legendary 4-cyl Norton engine WAS built, only in a 2.5 liter form.

Leo Kuzmicki is mentioned in various places as chief engine designer for Vanwall F1 cars, Steve, so I'd be a little dubious about some details in your quote there ?

He is also listed as being involved in the all alloy Hillman Imp engine, a 4 cylinder ohc engine 875cc. Quite an advanced design for a british 1960s car engine, although not particularly powerful. Light and compact, and basis for a few specials of the featherbed variety. Ugly to look at though, being on display obviously wasn't part of the design brief. ? Anyone have a lead on Leo's full bio anywhere ?

Nortons, of course, had had hemi heads from the 1920s. And even earlier for some motorcycles and race car engines - from France in particular - Peugeot had a race DOHC parallel twin engine in a motorcycle prior to WW1. Chrysler patenting that 'hemi' word in the 1950s was just a nonsense when the design had already been around for 50+ years, and in common motorcycle use for 30+ years...

Cheers.

The Hillman Imp alloy engine was designed for the then Rootes Group by Coventry Climax, as I understood the story. A college classmate worked at the Hillman plant where the engine was made. It was actually de-rated for the auto installation, as a rear-engine car with swing axle suspension was considered hazardous with over 70 horsepower. It was de-rated to about 45, to make it comparable to the original Austin Mini.

It turned out to be very unreliable due, so my friend said, to some major manufacturing problems. The cast iron cylinder liners were supposed to be an interference fit in the die-cast aluminum block. One of the machines was supposed to position the four liners on top of the block and then push them into the interference. He said most times at least two of them fell in under their own weight. The tolerances on the blocks were really poorly maintained. Even some of the crankshaft bearings were a sloppy fit. It wasn't unusual for engines to need replacement at 20,000 miles.

I think eventually they switched to sand casting, but the car had got such a black eye with the public, it never recovered. It would have made quite a decent liquid-cooled motorcycle engine, aluminum block and head, 875 ccs and 70 horsepower.

According to the article WRTTEN by Leo Kuzmicki, who productionized the Coventry Climax derived engine, the iron liners were cast into the diecast light alloy engine components.
The first all alloy engine for a volume british car....

440,000 were said to have been made.
In rally tune, 110 bhp was available..

Cheers.