During 1927 Charles Van Eugen convinced the directors of Lea-Francis to allow him to design a completely new chassis assembly. Extended by 3" compared with the P-Type frame and fitted with the somewhat unreliable Vulcan built six-cylinder twin overhead-camshaft 1LFS engine the chassis was designated the T-Type.
Engine: | Vulcan 1LFS 14/40 |
Wheelbase: | 9' 6" |
Track | 4' 2" |
Lea-Francis fitted the Vulcan 14/40 1,600cc six-cylinder overhead cam engine to their new chassis to produce a light-six. The car was not particularly sucessful due to the poor design of the engine, which, bothin this model and the 1LFS gave a lot of trouble and cost the company a lot of time and money in putting right faults on customers’ cars. Many cars had the six-cylinder 14/40 engine replaced with a Meadows 4ED by their owners, often after already having had a replacement 1LFS engine fitted by Lea-Francis at the company's expense.
One significant owner of a T-Type was Eric Findon writer for, and later Editor of, The Light Car. Findon was convinced light six-cylinder engines were the way of the future and the new LFS1 powered, T Type Lea-Francis was the ideal basis on which to build his own idea of a very special type of car. To keep the T-Type as a light car he required the factory take the 1600cc 1LFS engine no. 414 and sleeve it down to below 1,500cc. Chassis no. 15022 was fitted with a version of the blue fabric Sports Saloon body being made by Cross& Ellis for the new Hyper S-Types.The car wasfitted with a brake servo from Clayton Dewandre, Ki Gass starting, and a Humfrey Sandberg free wheel device, which, in turn was coupled to a close-ratio gearbox - rare amongst the LFS powered T-Types. The superbly finished split dashboard was crammed with every instrument imaginable. LFOC member Ian Goldingham wrote an excellent article about Eric Findon and his T-Type in the February 2018 editon of the LeaFlet, which is available to members to download here.