My New Dutton

[James Doulton]

Today I bought another Dutton. This one has a 3.1 litre Essex V6. It's MOT has lapsed and it has a number of issues, the biggest one being that it has had a front end shunt which has upset the suspension geometry, and the bonnet fit, and the steering. The last 6 inches of the main rail is crumpled, moving the ARB. Finding a good reference to work from to restore the geometry looks to be an interesting puzzle. In this picture you can see that the nearside wheel has a different camber to the offside. It was the nearside that was hit.

I will do some investigation over the weekend and post some pictures of the damage. It was dark by the time I got home, and I was worn out. The journey was 400 miles in total, all but a handful were motorway : M5, M42, A42, M1. The car was about 15 miles south of Sheffield.

[James Doulton]

Another view of the nearside rail

[James Doulton]

And from the nearside

[James Doulton]

Here is the front viewed from above.

[James Doulton]

At the moment, there is no radiator in it (other than the oil cooler). But Scott (the previous owner) had bought a nice new radiator with twin fans, which was included. If the front of the car was bent then maybe the old rad leaked. There was also some evidence that it used to also have a water spray system to spray the radiator, so overheating may have been a long term problem. I don't see why it should overheat in normal road use unless there was something wrong. Any 'design' issues would have been worse in a heavier car, like a Capri, so I'm optimistic on that front.

[Steve Kerswell]

Does it really matter. James has bought the car. Any V6 with a 60 thou. Rebore is on target. Port cleaning and matching ?? Dubious. As for selected blocks, another myth, do you really believe that Ford would own up to a  A grade or B  grade casting.  James go out and enjoy your car, whatever it is :-))

[Dave Adams]

the story related to me was that the guy took the car to be tuned and the rolling road guy had no data to go by, so some research was done an engine number was found and looked up, the answer came back as 3.1 RS one of 250 engines made for homogenisation purposes......he said in a phone call to me once he was given the engine type  if i thought it was worth contacting them to offer the engine for a 3.1 RS restoration. i said not. one MK1 capri's are rare.... and two 3,1 rs capri's even rarer the likely hood of someone owning a genuine car needing an engine is remote. it would more likely get used in a copy ....it might as well stay in your dutton.

now i dont care which engine it has just what was related to me. i do know that the car is VERY fast, and is prone to overheating......i tried to help the original owner with advise but he chose to use it over the summer last year and planned to change the rad over winter.

[Big Vern]

@Dave Adams, There are many replica RS3.1 Capri's let alone engines and many tuning companies in the '70's and '80's built copies of the engine. Rumour and hearsay suggests there are around 5000 'genuine' RS3.1 engines, even CCI finds it difficult to prove a genuine engine as many blown engines were rebuilt with new blocks that wouldn't have has any numbers. A genuine engine would be the one the car left the end of the production line with.

[Dave Price]

Very nice looking car. Should be a nice project. I once bought an Essex block that was sold to me as a Capri block, when I sold it on, the chap who it off me said it was a Scimitar block - engine number was the give away.

[James Doulton]

I can't see an engine number at all, the area looks to be virgin metal. There is one thing stamped on the level face nearby, see the picture.

[James Doulton]

The word on the web is that, apart from the pre-production one, 249 of the 250 were built in November 1973 and their chassis numbers all start with "BBECND" followed by 5 digits. The "ND" and the 5 digits would be the engine number. They were expensive just as the oil crisis hit and didn't sell, so 50 went to Australia.

I'd prefer to think that mine is not one of those 250 because if it was then that'd make it worth stealing. Theft is the spectre that stalks the Capri world.