911hillclimber wrote:Forgive my obvious ignorance everyone.
Is there a connection to this engine for the Climax water pump engine and the Hillman Imp engine, or ate the 3 miles apart or just simply totally different?
Post WW2
Coventry Climax ET 199 (1949 model)
In the late 1940s, the company shifted away from automobile engines and into other markets, including marine diesel, fire pumps, and forklift trucks. In 1946, the ET199 was announced, which the company claimed was the first British-produced forklift truck. The ET199 was designed to carry a 4,000 lb (1,800 kg) load with a 24-inch (610 mm) load centre, and with a 9 ft (2.7 m) lift height.[4]
In 1950, Harry Mundy joined Coventry Climax, and a new lightweight all-aluminium overhead camshaft engine was developed in response to the government's ambitious requisition outline asking for a portable fire pump that was capable of pumping double the amount of water specified in the previous outline, with half the weight.
This was designated the FW for "Feather Weight". The engine was displayed at the Motor Show in London and attracted attention from the motor racing fraternity for its very high "horsepower per pound of weight". With strong persuasions at the show, including those by Cyril Kieft (who had Stirling Moss as an F3 driver) and a young Colin Chapman, Lee concluded that success in competition could lead to more customers for the company, and so the team designed the FWA, a Feather Weight engine for Automobiles.
Kieft 1100 at 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans
The first Coventry Climax racing engine appeared at the 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans in the front of one of two Kieft 1100 sports racers, but both cars (one with an MG engine) failed to finish the race due to problems unrelated to the engines. The FWA became popular in sportscar racing and was followed by the Mark II and then by the FWB, which had a capacity of nearly 1.5-litres. The new Formula Two regulations suited the 1.5-litre engine, and it quickly became the engine to have in F2 racing. By 1957, the first Climax engines began to appear in Formula One in the back of Cooper chassis.
Initially, these were FWBs, but the FPF engine followed. Stirling Moss scored the company's first Formula One victory in Argentina in 1958, using a 2-litre version of the engine. In general terms, however, the engines were not powerful enough to compete with the 2.5-litre machinery, and it was not until the 2.5-litre version of the FPF arrived in 1959 that Jack Brabham was able to win the world championship in a Cooper-Climax. At the same time, the company produced the FWE engine for Lotus Elite, and this enjoyed considerable success in sports car racing, with a series of class wins at the Le Mans events in the early 1960s.
In 1961, there was a new 1.5-litre formula, and the FPF engine was given a new lease on life, although the company began work on a V8 engine, designated the FWMV, and this became competitive in 1962 predominantly in Lotus, Cooper, Brabham, and Lola chassis, with Jim Clark's Lotus outstandingly the most successful. There were a total of 22 Grand Prix victories before 1966 with crossplane, flatplane, two- and four-valve versions of the FWMV. When the new, 3-litre, formula was introduced, Coventry Climax decided not to build engines for the new formula and withdrew from racing after the unsuccessful FWMW project, with the exception of the new 2-Litre version of the FWMV.
Also, in the early 1960s, Coventry Climax was approached by Rootes to mass-produce FWMAs for use in a compact family car project called Apex with an all-aluminium alloy overhead cam engine combined with a full-synchromesh aluminium transaxle. This combination was considered very radical at the time, especially the synchromesh on all forward gears, which had been declared 'impossible' by Alec Issigonis of BMC Mini fame. The adoption to mass-production was successful, and the project came out to the market as the 875cc Hillman Imp totaling over 400,000 units made by 1976, including the later 998cc version.
