Our Services

Our fully equipped workshops include catalyst and diesel test equipment backed by a machine shop with lathes, milling machines, blast cabinet as well as state of the art SERDI valve seat & guide cutting machine.

In addition to the basic servicing business of Tipton Garage, the specialist side (Tipton Tuning) has grown in line with the increasing interest in classic motoring and motorsport. An ever-growing number of customers are those wishing to deal with a Company with a proven track record for engineering sound solutions for such vehicles rather than only knowing how to clip an engine up to an electronic analyser. Our sound engineering and attention to detail is applied to all we do, including routine servicing and MOT work.

Above all, we are a business with which you can communicate, from initially listening to your aims, through discussing various different approaches to then agreeing precise requirements and budget.

Rolling Road / Dynamometer

Even the most mundane of vehicles can benefit from a tune up under road conditions, yet within the controlled environment of a rolling road. The dynamometer provides the only real way of monitoring the effectiveness of engine improvements and enables final adjustments & fine tuning to be undertaken… without having to leave the garage.

At Tipton Garage our rolling road can cope with engine outputs as high as 270 hp. As well as being used in routine servicing, it is regularly used on competition, modified road and sports cars. The ability to work on the car under road conditions whilst making adjustments is a major benefit. An hour's work on the rolling road costs little yet can bring huge benefits in fuel savings let alone the car's performance.

Our rolling road is accompanied by SUN testing equipment which, as well as being essential for modern MOT testing of petrol and diesel engines, is used with the rolling road in ensure optimum results are gained from modifications we have carried out. All work is computer recorded & printed out.

Head Cases

We can give extended and practical life to older classic cars by converting their cylinder heads for modern unleaded fuel. This is the only truly practical solution for older cars in regular / hard use and it totally eliminates having to use expensive leaded fuel or additives for unleaded fuel.

Fitting 'modern' valve seat inserts to enable classic cars to be run like any other car is a skilled task requiring specialist equipment so we have invested in equipment from the leaders in this field, SERDI. First the existing ('old') valve seats are machined out. The head is then heated (to expand it) whilst the new valve seats are considerably cooled in liquid Nitrogen (to 'shrink' them). The "frozen" valve seats are then inserted into the recesses which have been machined to very close tolerances in the head. When all items reach a uniform temperature the inserts are immovable within the head. Each valve seat is then carefully machined on the special SERDI machine which results in the seats, valves and guides all being engineered to the highest precision. The whole head is now ready for thousands of miles of troublefree motoring on normal modern pump fuel.

Our expertise with this machinery can also be applied in modifying cylinder heads.
For increased power and efficiency, combustion chambers shape can be improved to provide more 'squish' , a better shape for the combustion burn, and the capacity of all chambers can be balanced. Ports can be reworked & polished for improved gas flow often with larger valves to improve matters still further.

Our special gas flow bench enables the flow of the combustion mixture into the chamber and its exhaust to be optimised and balance achieved between each of the chambers.

In addition we can turn our expertise to repairing damaged heads - even those which look well beyond repair at first sight. Not only does this sometimes enable rare engines to be kept running but also it frequently proves considerably cheaper than buying a new part.

Apart from improving engines by modifying cylinder heads and improved porting; lightening and balancing; better exhaust manifolding and carburation, we are pleased to supply and fit Piper camshafts, Weber carburettors as well as Lumenition, K Star; MBE and UniChip - all designed to help deliver the engine characteristics for your precise requirements, whether increasing torque for easier driving or towing, or increased power for road or track.

Complete engines can be hand built to original specification or for improved performance utilising some or all of the above specialist techniques. Such work has recently been completed on modern and classic engines for road & track use alike, ranging from BMW M3 and Mercedes to Sunbeam, or Austin Healey 3000 to Sprite.

Usually concentrating on particular agreed aspects of a car, our work in this area can nonetheless extend to a complete vehicle rebuild - as we have recently undertaken on an MG Midget prepared to better than ex-works, concours condition or a 1275 Mini Cooper 'S' Mk 2, restored to original condition. Work can be undertaken on a project or 'budgetted stages' basis.

At the other end of the scale, we are pleased to simply supply components for engine improvements - such as camshafts, electronic ignition - to those clients who wish to keep costs down and feel sufficiently confident to fit them themselves.

The vast majority of our work is undertaken in-house giving us precise control over the standards achieved.