Originally posted by Dennis
I'm sure you had more of 'em running around down there, Ray. I had a friend with a little '50s era Austin 2dr sedan, that he drove for over 20 years. Of course, that may have been one of a million! He might have never stopped driving it, but was "T-Boned" by a pickup. (Luckily, only got a scratch, himself) My impression was the engines were tough as nails. Isn't that the same engine family as the mini cars used?
I agree about the Datsun engines, too. In fact, I have a 1200 Datsun push-rod engine sitting my garage, while I try to figure out what to put it in. It was rebuilt after nearly 200,000 miles! A .010 overbore cleaned up the cylinders and the crank miked out perfect!
While we had plenty of A40s, we didn't get the Metropolitan here. Those engines, which were a larger engine than the Mini used and smaller than the BMC B-series (A55, MG A etc) never had a good reputation for durability.
That Datsun 1200 pushrod is a generation on from the engine that Nissan made out of their licence to go on with the A40 engine. It became a good thing with Japanese engineering, and the smaller 1200 engine had a number of further advances.
Many Morris Minors here run around with Datsun 1200 engines and gearboxes.
I hope, by the way, you're not confusing the A40 with the A30, which was the first car to use the smaller A-series engine, again, the one used in Minis and Spridgets.
