Vintage Thing No.37.1 - MAE head (Modified Anglia Engine)

Following my recent amazement at discovering Ford Modified Anglia Engine head at Adrian Booth's workshop, not only have I been in contact with the owner of such a device (more on that later) but I also stumbled across this illustration of one in a most unexpected place.

This is a scan of a black-and-white illustration from Dave Vizard's book, How to modify your Mini. This work was subsequently expanded to embrace all A series engines, whether fitted to a Mini or not, but whereas the later book concentrates purely on the engines, this volume also covers suspension and braking. In terms of modifying Minis, bigger engines have always been popular and in the chapter that I find most appealing a number of big for long stroke Mini engines are proposed. But right at the end of this chapter is an engine transplant involving a kit produced by Richard Longman allowed the fitting of a Ford cross flow engine.

A series engines can be enlarged up to 1600cc but this is a very time-consuming and expensive business. Dave Vizard pointed out that the resulting engine, whilst not lacking in power and more importantly torque, was something of a brute. It was quite a harsh unit and suffered from vibration that did not really make it suitable for a road car. A far more practical proposition was to use the Ford engine on the Mini gearbox, even though this was, in itself, quite uninvolved operation.

And what sort of head did they use on this hybrid? An MAE head. If you look closely you can see the inlet passages onto which would be bolted onto the curved elbows that allowed the figment of the much coveted twin Webers.

Of course, nowadays there are much more sophisticated and powerful engines to put in your Mini but I really like this idea. It shows the ingenuity of the competitive engineer to good effect and I can understand the thought processes that they went through as they weighed up the pros and cons of the highly modified but still long stroke A series engine compared to the relatively unmodified short stroke Ford engine. Due to the bigger bore that short stroke engines inevitably determine, the Ford cylinder block is longer than the BMC A series block so various adapters and gearbox extension parts had to be developed. It was still felt to be worthwhile, though, and allowed engine capacities of up to 2000cc and the use of not only with the downdraught MAE head but also Lotus and BDA twin cam heads.

The example of an MAE pictured was produced by Holbay at the arrow in the bottom left-hand corner points to a Holbay dry sump oil pump.

It's unlikely that anyone would go down this route today but there are probably conversion parts still out there somewhere may be whole powertrains.

Ford MAE downdraught heads are just as rare because beyond the historical racing formulae there is very little real need for them to be used. Like grafting Ford engines onto Mini gearboxes, they have been overtaken by more modern tuning options.

But there is a classic simplicity about them both and they are a tribute to the craftsmanship and skill of racing engineers and in some circles period tuning parts have taken on an appeal all of their own, despite being outclassed in sheer power terms by more modern developments.