Triumph Repair: Triumph MKIV 1972, british sports cars, head studs

Question
Hi just a quick question - a friend of mine has been fixing his Spitty for about 6 months now after blowing up the engine!! Anyway, to cut a long story short, is it possible to fit the cylinder head from a Dolomite onto a Spitfire engine?  
Thanks in advance

Answer
As in all things mechanical, there's no such thing as "impossible".   There are however the unlikely to work well.  I fear that your idea falls into that latter category.

At minimum the head studs won't line up between the 2 engines.  And the TR7 has different bore spacing, making it more difficult to mod a Dolomite head to fit the Spitfire block.

In the past decade there's been interesting work in fitting non-original cylinder heads to the small british sports cars.   An interesting mod has been to fit a BMW 16V motorcycle head to the classic Mini.  

For the LeMans 1147 Spitfires the factory did develop an 8V cross flow cylinder head.  What's surprising is that no one has done a repro of that head, especially for the later 1296/1493 engines.

So the quick answer.. the Dolly cylinder head won't be an easy fit.   Not to rule out other options though.



Cheers,

Jim