POSITIVE ANCILLARY DRIVE SYSTEMS

For some time now, Mini Spares has been selling a positive water pump drive system – primarily designed for the race-car fraternity.  The system used the ubiquitous “Gimhler” (or toothed) best method of drive at all times.  It is also self-compensating for any slight misalignment of the pulleys as the crank pulley has guide rails, whilst the water pump pulley is extra deep.  Another advantage is that the belt will not turn over, or fall off- obviously decreasing the likelihood of overheating due to belt failure to a bare minimum.

The range of usage has recently been greatly expanded by the production of an additional kit to drive the charging system.  The kit contains a large alternator/dynamo pulley and relevant belt.  The large pulley reduces over speeding of the charging system – especially when constantly used at high revs.  This is of importance to those whose race regulations require the charging system to be fitted and connected – reduction of the charging speed equates to less horsepower consumed to drive it.  The alternator/dynamo pulley is driven by a separate belt from the water pump instead of the standard one long belt.  This has been done so that not only can the kit beaded to the aforementioned water pump drive kit at minimum cost, but more importantly should the charging system belt fail, the car can still be drive (i.e. complete a race) as there is still drive to the water pump.  Obviously if the standard type single belt comes off – it’s all over!

The very latest development in this line has been the production of a system utilising an oversized water pump pulley.  Developed mainly for the out and out racers, the larger water pump pulley decreases the drive speed.  Gains from this are two fold – reduced cavitation of the cooling system giving more efficient cooling, and reduced power consumption to drive it.  The cooling system is much like a hydro-engine dyno (or “water-brake”), the faster the pump turns, the more load is required to drive it.  This, of course, consumes horse power.  Using a larger pulley reduces the speed of the pump considerably, therefore releasing more horse power to drive the car as less is consumed by the engine in driving its ancillaries.  It comes as a new system consisting of the new larger pulley, a longer toothed belt, and the crank pulley (which is the same as the previous systems).

The multitude of applications for these systems have been greatly enhanced by the re-production of the split damper ring as used on the original “S” engines.  The damper ring bolts directly to the crank pulley as per original, making the belt drive systems suitable for even the longest stroke engines where a damper is considered mandatory.

C-AEA534    Large w/pump pulley        £57.58
C-AEA536    Std w/pump pulley        £48.00
C-AEA536A    Alternator pulley fits C-AEA536    £38.28
C-AEA538    Poly V road kit + atern/pulley    £74.61

NEW RISING-RATE VALVE SPRINGS
Using current state of the art spring design technology, we can now offer a single linear-rate valve spring set that replaces all other previously available double spring-sets, as used from standard road p to .480”lift, and developed by the most common combination of a Kent 286 cam with our 1.5 rockers.  These springs do not need different spring caps as most other types offered do, nor do they require the head to be machined.  Essentially, the more lift used, the higher the spring rate becomes.  This also means that higher spring rates can be achieved by placing shims (SS4) under the springs, to alleviate spring crush problems.

ROVER SLUMP
Rover, Britain’s biggest manufacturer is slashing production of its Metro and Mini models after an August sales slump.
Two thousand production workers at Longbridge, Birmingham, will transfer to other areas on full pay.
A Rover spokesman said:  “Every car manufacturer has a slowdown at the end of the year as demand tails off after August.  You can say that again!

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