[Geoff Kingston]

Claude,
The survey is an excellent idea but I can't seem to get the link to it to work it takes me to the part of their site that allows you to create a survey rather than answer questions, any idea what might be wrong or what I am doing wrong or is there another way to get to it?
I will try and find the details of the firm I spoke to last August about the cylinder heads I put the information somewhere and the magazine their detail were in and of course can't find it!
I suspect that currently it is not to difficult to get new rods pistons and camshafts but not sure about the crank and how many suppliers are out there. Nor am I aware of the current prices for those items, it would be interesting if anyone else dose know if they could give us some indication. The big problem is the lack of availability of heads and blocks, several people have apparently been talking about making or having some made but as far as I am aware only Peter Jaye has so far actually produced new heads , he will be doing them in small batches and I understand they will be to a better specification than the original, if memory serves me right I think he said they were lighter and stronger than the original and slightly deeper / thicker on the actual head face.
When I spoke to him he mentioned that IN Racing were about to start producing blocks including a 2.5 litre version but I have not made any enquiries with that firm. In both cases I think the prices were going to be around £7.5k contrast this with some reproduction alloy heads I saw recently advertised for the. 6 cyl Austin Healey at around £2.5k and the effect of a larger potential market in unit cost is quite apparent, I suspect also the Healey head may be a simpler casting and easier to machine?
Tom suggested in his posting alternative ways of making a head,someone more knowledgeable in these matters than me may know if it is possible to use CAD to produce the patterns for the initial castings and if this would work out cheaper than the traditional methods, this might bring the costs down a bit but as I said previously if production of the first casting including the pattern making works out at £20/£25k, and subsequent casting average out at say £500 each, a batch of 10 is going to cost £2500 to £3000 each before machining. on the estimated cost I was given. The only way to reduce this is if someone can be sure of selling a larger number. If you consider that a good 401 or 403 will probably make around £30000 for a really nice car I think that to be viable a new engine or kit of parts to build one up would need to come out around £15000 maximum to stand much chance of significant sales , coincidentally roughly the price of one of Al
Mellings new V8 engines, an engine I am thinking about to put in one of my own cars.
If the price were nearer £20000 then for me at least it would probably be the alternative engine route and at £40000 no way, I would rather buy a good used Brigand from Bristol Cars or a nice coachbuilt Bentley Mk6 or R Type!
Geoff.