[Max Banks]

With regard to 75/Milano twin sparks - Out of the box they give 148BHPish on standard EFI - this syetem fits in a late GT fine, but if you have an early GT/Duetto/Giulia with the shallow inner wing, you can't fit the EFI, unless you don't mind butchering the inner wing. In terms of tuning the standard engine in its standard configuration, there isn't a huge amount you can do, you can get a chip and change cams, but most people I know who have done this only report modest power gains of around 8-10 BHP. IMO to get real power, you have to chuck the EFI and carb the car, junking the VVT at the same time. Throttle bodies are a luxury, but extra expense again (3-d mapped carbs are a good halfway house). You can do it all around standard pistons, but the exhaust valve runs too tight with a decent cam so you have to pocket and lose compression, not an ideal situation. This means that you really need a set of h/c forged pistons, its better to go a touch oversize as obviously new liners are not available on their own, this enables you to retain your original liners and bore them.

So as you are fitting h/c pistons, billet cams and 45's to get any worthwhile power increase you may as well just fit the stuff that gives the most performance. This used to be about 180BHP, but we have now breached well past that, whilst retaining perfect driveability. I get people asking me for a 185BHP t/s and I say sure I can supply this, but as the process to get this is the same getting 198bhp, just with less optimised parts, it has to cost the same. At this point they go either 1 of 2 ways - "OK i'll have the full shabang" or "i'll just tune my nord then". If money is an issue then the Nord route is sensible. We get up to 175BHP from Nords pretty sensibly. What the Nord ALWAYS lacks is the torque AND driveability, because you have to work quite hard to get the power. The issue with building Nords is that its also harder work, blocks are always in poorer condition, as are heads and you spend hours changing studs for the main bearings/head etc, line boring and other arduous tasks.

Although the bottom end of the engines are very similar, the heads are completely different - flat top pistons and narrow angle head similar to a GTAm motor constitute vast leaps forward for the t/s.

On costs - I remember when we could buy donor t/s motors for £50, now we regularly have to give £300 or alternatively £500 for a whole car just so we can get the lump out of it!

So I guess what I'm saying is that if you want 175ish BHP, its cheaper to do so from a Nord, especially as most people already have an engine, most of this due to the ancillaries that make a t/s more expensive. If you want more than this then really there is only one way to do get it with driveability... t/s.

HughQV - Seriously driveability is not an issue - if you run 3-D mapped igintion you really have all the driveability you need - foot flat at 1200 rpm in any gear, clean through to 7,200....not shabby and something a Nord can only dream of in a good state of tune.

I hope this has helps to answer a few questions for you guys.