The engine room at HCS exhibits the sheer range of motors Julian and his team of nine other mechanics get themselves into.‘ We have an eight-cylinder inline Maserati 26B engine. We’ ve got a four and a half litre Blower Bentley engine in for power upgrades. Two Alfa 6C 2500 engines to rebuild and for power upgrades. We’ ve got a BRM P25 Grand Prix engine and a supercharged 1750, six-cylinder, double overhead cam Alfa 1750 Gran Sport engine. In fact, I’ ve got two of those in for rebuild at the moment. A Talbot-Lago T-150C 4.2-litre six-cylinder, this is for a racecar.
‘ We’ ve got a Lancia Astura V8, which is a 1936 V8 engine with a very narrow angle, a bit like a Golf VR6. It’ s actually 16 degrees standard, but this one’ s been widened very slightly to 17 degrees. This one is just under 4 litres now; it was 3 litres. We’ ve increased the stroke on that, kept the standard bore size. We’ ve tested one of these engines, before we did anything it was giving just under 80hp. This one is now 170hp, and masses of torque. From 1000rpm, it’ s got almost 200ft lb of torque.’
‘ One Lagonda 2-litre four-cylinder, which we will take from 50hp to around 110.’ That’ s another big leap in power.‘ We’ re lucky that it’ s a very badly designed engine. So with some sensible changes, it makes a massive difference. We take this from 2-litre to 2.5-litre by increasing the bore a bit, but the stroke a lot. We design new camshafts for it, higher compression, flowing the cylinder head, some other bits and pieces, and yeah, it absolutely transforms the engine.’
A lot of engines. And they need a lot of space.‘ We’ ve got seven big engine frames, which are pivoted on either side of the engine. Most of the engines that we deal with are pretty big, so you can’ t just hang it off a flywheel bolt, so these are big rotating frames.’ And Julian has also managed to squeeze a flow bench in there, too.
A 1909 Wolseley engine that HCS has rebuilt and upgrade, sympathetically of course
The main workshop where the cars are assembled is separate from a machine shop and engine build room
‘ We’ ve got a machine shop too, with a couple of mills, three lathes, two big drilling posts, linishers, benders, guillotines, rolling machines and a big press brake.’ But it’ s not all traditional knuckle-scuffing craftsmanship at HCS; Julian knows when to employ modern technology, too.
48 The Engine Rebuilder Issue 04