Special 313 engines? - 407 and 408 MK1

[Geoff Kingston]

Kevin,
I did not personally dismantle my 408's 313 engine but when John got it all apart and accessed the extent of the damage I had to find the parts.
Competition Cars were a wonderful company run by two or three brothers who knew everything about American cars and parts, the set up was amazing , a counter, parts books produced and phones behind, they had all the parts books for the USA and Canada and could cross reference everything so no I did not personally dismantle my 313 engine myself but I bought every component to allow it to be rebuilt and they were all Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, original or after market parts , not one component Bristol specific.
Geoff

[Roger Morrall]

My impression is that Tony Crook talked up the Canadian engine, focussing on the variations as against the US variant, and managed to infer that this was in some way special to Bristols, when it was in fact bog standard. He did I believe once claim that Bristols "blue printed" the engines, what ever that might have meant, and got extremely cross when this became the subject of discussion on the BOC forum. One has to admire his mastery of Marketing Speak but I’ve done a bit of that myself, not that I was at all good at it, and I do know that it is essential to defend one’s words to the hilt, otherwise the whole edifice is liable to crumble.

The key thing is that they were and remain most excellent cars

[Geoff Kingston]

Roger,
I got a similar impression when he was talking about the 603E and S though in that case he was talking the 318 engine down saying that production of the E was stopped because customers preferred the more powerful S, however this has never been supported by the respective numbers of each model owned by members of the BOC over the years, very few 603S' have been listed, far more 603E's until the S2 came along in far greater numbers than both, I have always had a suspicion that this had far more to do with the engines he had available or could get hold of as opposed to customer preference.
The other thing that amused me when I had the 411 was when I purchased a replacement starter motor from Bristol Cars and it came in a Chrysler Marine box, perhaps my 411 had a boat engine!
Geoff.