Did Bristols modify the Torqueflight

[Geoff Kingston]

I seem to recall that what they did was to disable the part throttle kick down option on the gearbox and If I remember correctly this was all down to how the linkage was set up, certainly my 603 will do it sometimes but when I changed to an Edlebrock carb on my 411 and its associated adapter kit we suddenly had part throttle kick down. I can understand why Bristol might have set the cars up like that for London traffic, but in the early 80's traffic light dash between traffic lights on Brighton seafront it was a useful feature to have, especially if a local Jensen was about, if the local Lincoln Continental driver lined up against us though we were in for a hiding, that thing could shift off the line so generally we used to let him go just to see his efforts to haul the leviathan in before the next set of lights.