Sunbeam + Ford 5.0 + T5??? (Page 1 of 2)

Doable, yes
Under budget, possible
Believable by other teams, probably not

The 5.0 was out of an Explorer for a core charge ($150)... the trans is from an old mustang I traded a GM 7.5" diff for ($100) and the sunbeam will be from pair of two. The Parts car is BARELY a car and is $200.

So IF... big IF... we do this it will be $450 to get it running. Keeping it cool will be hard with the remainder of the budget. But we are not sure how much we can get from the parts we can sell.

that sounds sweet. it would sound even sweeter running too!

We can hodge podge a GM shaft to work with it...

I believe that you can get a 302, T5 and beater Alpine for under $500. Will your competitors believe it? That's between you and them!

If you want to go underpowered, I've got a really wrecked 4AG that I could let you have for a song...

That and I have the Ford 5.0 sitting around...

We actually have have some crazy ass plant o splice three vehicles into one for even more lemony fun.

As long as the blocks don't split right?!

A buddy of mine owned a Tiger and a few alpines.  One of the tricks to keeping them cool involved keeping the trailing edge of the hood raised a few inches to allow better airflow.  He used to just wedge a crushed soda can in there and close the hood to the first latch.

If you build a working shoe phone for the theme, that'll really stick the landing!

As the owner of a stock Alpine, I'd say it's doable, but that it will be difficult.  The Alpine's steering box gets in the way with V8s, which is why Tigers use rack-and-pinion steering that gives them terrible steering geometry.  This, rather than the size of the engine bay itself, will be the biggest obstacle in putting a v8 in.  Besides just swapping the motor, you'll need to devise a whole new way of getting the front wheels to steer.  If you're going that far, you might as well cut the firewall and move it back a little bit, both to get some extra room and to keep the car from being a nose-heavy pig like stock Tigers.  Also, the transmission tunnel is a bit narrow for a T5, but you can widen it without too much work.  Still, an Alger on a $500 budget seems entirely doable for someone with good fabrication and engineering skills.

Even if the Small-Block Ford was put into the Alpine's bodyshell at the factory back in the day, it's far from the easiest motor to shoehorn under the hood.  A Ford 2.8 v6 is a popular conversion now, as the wonky exhaust port arrangement allows the headers to clear the stock steering box.  It should be even easier to use a more powerful four-cylinder motor.

Whatever you do, you should probably go to sunbeamalpine.org and check out the Alpine club's website.  You'll probably be able to get a lot of technical help--we're surprisingly tolerant of crazy hack-jobs on old Alpines.  Good luck!

Believe it or not, that sounds less complicated to me than just shoehorning a V8 into an Alpine.  You'll get to use all the Corvette suspension, steering, etc, without doing quite as much re-engineering.  It should be faster than a normal Tiger, too-- and a whole lot more awesome!  I still think you should put build photos on the Alpine Club website-- some people might get a kick out of it.

By the way, I apologize if I came off as kind of a buzzkill in my earlier post.  I just didn't want someone to think that a V8 drops right in to an Alpine without some major changes.  Good luck!