On Sep 9, 9:19 pm, John Byrns wrote:
In article om,
Andre Jute wrote:

The particular aluminium engines that came from Buick to Rover were
marine engines, if that gives a clue to their carburettors and tune.

This basic engine block was sold in the US by both Buick and Oldsmobile,
but equipped with radically different head designs. On other engines
the Oldsmobile heads had bigger valves and could flow more air than the
Buick heads which due to their somewhat odd design couldn't accommodate
valves as large as the Oldsmobile heads, I assume the same rule held on
this engine. Also the Oldsmobile version of the engine was sold in two
different states of tune, one with a 2V carburetor and the other with a
4V carburetor and a different cam. I can't remember if Buick offered a
version in a higher state of tune like the Oldsmobile.



If you're right and they picked up so many horses on being fitted with
SUs, they couldn't have put out more than about 110-120hp in US trim.
We had one out of a Rover Coupe on the dyno in the middle 60s and it
was good for less than a four and a quarter Bentley engine, which was
pretty choked and good only for a smidgin under 130bhp. (I seem to
remember people often spoke of 135 horses for that engine in the Mk
Vi.) We were looking at the Rover V8 because back then it was the only
engine we knew with any power that two guys could pick up between
them, a wonderful thing. It wasn't much chop though; a very unreliable
engine if you breathed on it even lightly. Still, a decade later it
made the SD1 into one of the greatest cars BL ever built; such a pit
they didn't see fit to carry forward the second-best thing about the
P8, the De Dion rear axle, a beautiful thing of 300B-like purely
linear motion..

Just as a mattter of historical evidence, Ford apparently between the
wars made their flathead V8 in England, possibly in a tax-friendly
smaller size as well.

I don't know if it has any relation to the engine you are speaking of,
but Ford also had a smaller flathead V8 that was sold for a few years in
the US, also "between the wars" IIRC. A friend and I shoehorned one of
these into an MG-TC.

V-8/60. It replaced the A/B Ford flathead 4 (unfortunately) and was
later made by Simca: they were sold stateside by Chrysler dealers.
Midget racers occasionally would buy the cars new to pull the engines
out and leave the dealer with the rest of the car.

They'd get turned into Altered drag cars or garden planters.

On Sep 8, 5:44 pm, John Byrns wrote:
In article om,
Bret Ludwig wrote:

90% of carbs on the US road anymore, if not 95% are four barrel
Holleys with progressive operation, two small and two large.

90% Holleys, that seems far fetched, do you have any hard evidence to
support this contention?


I'm guessing he's probably right because all the carbed vehicles are
either muscle cars and trucks or Volkswagens, and there's a two barrel
Holley that's popular on those.

Interesting point was that just about the only US V-8 that ended up being
made in the UK was the Buick unit which became the Rover one - and gained
some 20 bhp when being fitted with SUs. Of course that wasn't the only
mod. But I'm not sure what the original carbs were.

The RR V-8 is not an exact copy of any US engine but is very close
to the Olds in some ways and IIRC Chryslers in others. Bristol of
course simply used a blueprinted Chrysler: Jensen used them out of the
box.

In article om,
Andre Jute wrote:
Interesting point was that just about the only US V-8 that ended up being
made in the UK was the Buick unit which became the Rover one - and gained
some 20 bhp when being fitted with SUs. Of course that wasn't the only
mod. But I'm not sure what the original carbs were.

The particular aluminium engines that came from Buick to Rover were
marine engines, if that gives a clue to their carburettors and tune.

The engine was first seen by William Martin-Hurst, the MD of Rover, in a
boat yard, according to legend, but then it was and is common to use car
engines for some racing boats. That unit was shipped to the UK for
evaluation and fitted to a Rover 2000 mule. But Martin-Hurst was already a
fan of the engine as fitted to a Buick Skylark he'd driven, and it was
only on seeing the bare engine in the yard he realised it was short enough
to fit his 2000.

The Rover V-8 is based on the Olds/Buick 215 which was fitted to cars
between 1961 - 63, and bought by Rover in '65. It was considerably
modified for UK requirements and production - by a combination of GM and
Rover engineers working together in the UK.

If you're right and they picked up so many horses on being fitted with
SUs, they couldn't have put out more than about 110-120hp in US trim.
We had one out of a Rover Coupe on the dyno in the middle 60s and it
was good for less than a four and a quarter Bentley engine, which was
pretty choked and good only for a smidgin under 130bhp.

The first Rover V-8 was quoted at 160 bhp - but I dunno about export
versions with lower compression ratios, etc.

(I seem to remember people often spoke of 135 horses for that engine in
the Mk Vi.) We were looking at the Rover V8 because back then it was the
only engine we knew with any power that two guys could pick up between
them, a wonderful thing. It wasn't much chop though; a very unreliable
engine if you breathed on it even lightly.

Hmm. Just what broke?

Still, a decade later it made the SD1 into one of the greatest cars BL
ever built;

I've got one. ;-)

such a pit
they didn't see fit to carry forward the second-best thing about the
P8, the De Dion rear axle, a beautiful thing of 300B-like purely
linear motion..

Snag is the space such a design takes up - you wouldn't have had the same
flexibility of the hatchback design with vast load area which is
originally why I kept mine.

--
*Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article om,
RapidRonnie wrote:
On Sep 7, 1:48 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
In article om,
Bret Ludwig wrote:

Dunno where you get the idea Lucas distributors are not reliable.
Growing up in a family with several British cars.

I grew up with only British cars.;-)

Surely they have French, German and Italian cars over there-they did
each time I was there. What freaked me out in the 70s was the Russian
cars-I saw a Zaporzhets at a dealer not far from Charing Cross in the
70s.

Heh heh - I 'grew up' long before the '70s and imports became common in
the UK. In the street where I lived there was only one - a Borgward
Isabella owned by a guy who worked out of the country. Come the '70s
things were very different.

My uncle was a John Bircher so I had a photo taken of myself in
this thing. It was very tinnily constructed and had a V4 engine that
looked like a copy of the old Wisconsin V4 industrial engine used in a
lot of road construction equipment.

The Lada was fairly common in the UK but I don't remember seeing any
others - apart from embassy cars.

--
*I got a sweater for Christmas. I really wanted a screamer or a moaner*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article .com,
RapidRonnie wrote:
Interesting point was that just about the only US V-8 that ended up
being made in the UK was the Buick unit which became the Rover one -
and gained some 20 bhp when being fitted with SUs. Of course that
wasn't the only mod. But I'm not sure what the original carbs were.

The RR V-8 is not an exact copy of any US engine but is very close
to the Olds in some ways and IIRC Chryslers in others. Bristol of
course simply used a blueprinted Chrysler: Jensen used them out of the
box.

I suppose there's not really that many different designs for pushrod V-8s,
but it was never mentioned at the time that the Rolls engine was based on
any other - nor did they, as far as I know, pay any royalties etc unlike
Rover who bought their design outright from GM. And of course the Rolls
engine was several years earlier - IIRC 1959 being the first year of
production. And still going...

--
*You can't have everything, where would you put it?*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sep 9, 10:11 pm, RapidRonnie wrote:
On Sep 9, 9:19 pm, John Byrns wrote:

In article om,
Andre Jute wrote:

Just as a mattter of historical evidence, Ford apparently between the
wars made their flathead V8 in England, possibly in a tax-friendly
smaller size as well.

I don't know if it has any relation to the engine you are speaking of,
but Ford also had a smaller flathead V8 that was sold for a few years in
the US, also "between the wars" IIRC. A friend and I shoehorned one of
these into an MG-TC.

V-8/60. It replaced the A/B Ford flathead 4 (unfortunately)

The 60 can't stand for cubic inches; that's only one litre. So what
does it stand for? Horsepower. Actually, before the war 60 real horses
pretty the sturdiest of the British engines, the 3 litre Austin
Princess engine as fitted to Austin Healeys, didn't cross the 100bhp
barrier (except advertising puffery) until you breathed on it.

and was
later made by Simca: they were sold stateside by Chrysler dealers.
Midget racers occasionally would buy the cars new to pull the engines
out and leave the dealer with the rest of the car.

Mmm. I drove the largest (still tiny by American standards) of the
1950s Simca's with the V8 engine (presumably the same pre-war Ford
Flathead, and certainly under 2.7 litre which was the top tax bracket
in France) at Cannes in the 1960s, and it wasn't much chop.

Trivia for you: Edith Piaf's last lover, after she took the drugs
overdose that killed her, decided a French national icon should not
die anywhere but Paris, so he drove her body, sitting in the passenger
seat beside him, through the night from the Mediterranean coast to
Paris. The car was a Simca V8.

They'd get turned into Altered drag cars or garden planters.

I like your trivia too, Ronnie.

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
"wonderfully well written and reasoned information
for the tube audio constructor"
John Broskie TubeCAD & GlassWare
"an unbelievably comprehensive web site
containing vital gems of wisdom"
Stuart Perry Hi-Fi News & Record Review

On Sep 10, 3:12 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article .com,
RapidRonnie wrote:

Interesting point was that just about the only US V-8 that ended up
being made in the UK was the Buick unit which became the Rover one -
and gained some 20 bhp when being fitted with SUs. Of course that
wasn't the only mod. But I'm not sure what the original carbs were.

The RR V-8 is not an exact copy of any US engine but is very close
to the Olds in some ways and IIRC Chryslers in others. Bristol of
course simply used a blueprinted Chrysler: Jensen used them out of the
box.

I suppose there's not really that many different designs for pushrod V-8s,
but it was never mentioned at the time that the Rolls engine was based on
any other - nor did they, as far as I know, pay any royalties etc unlike
Rover who bought their design outright from GM. And of course the Rolls
engine was several years earlier - IIRC 1959 being the first year of
production. And still going...

--
*You can't have everything, where would you put it?*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Quite a bit of this is insidiously erroneous. I spoke to the
distinguished motoring journalist Edward Eves about 25 years ago about
the origins of the Rolls-Royce V8 engine. He had total access to the
RR archives for a book he was writing. He said that the story that RR
copied a Chrysler engine was quite untrue (as for lesser breeds of
engines, gee...). Nor is Dave quite right in saying RR paid no
royalties. They did pay Chrysler a royalty for the tappets in the RR
V8which were manufactured under license from the American company,
which is perhaps where the "copy of a Chrysler engine" story arises.
But in automobiles everyone pays everyone else royalties; Rolls-Royce
even in the time of Sir Henry, who prided himself on making everything
himself if he could make it better, licensed their brake assistance
from Hispano-Suiza, more recenlty self-levelling suspension technology
was licensed from Citroen, and so on, so that the tappets licensed
from Chrysler fits neatly into the pattern. After all, no one will
claim just because RR licensed Citroen technology that they build a
copy of the 1956 Goddess!

Andre Jute

On Sep 10, 1:00 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article om,
Andre Jute wrote:

Interesting point was that just about the only US V-8 that ended up being
made in the UK was the Buick unit which became the Rover one - and gained
some 20 bhp when being fitted with SUs. Of course that wasn't the only
mod. But I'm not sure what the original carbs were.
The particular aluminium engines that came from Buick to Rover were
marine engines, if that gives a clue to their carburettors and tune.

The engine was first seen by William Martin-Hurst, the MD of Rover, in a
boat yard, according to legend, but then it was and is common to use car
engines for some racing boats. That unit was shipped to the UK for
evaluation and fitted to a Rover 2000 mule. But Martin-Hurst was already a
fan of the engine as fitted to a Buick Skylark he'd driven, and it was
only on seeing the bare engine in the yard he realised it was short enough
to fit his 2000.

The Rover V-8 is based on the Olds/Buick 215 which was fitted to cars
between 1961 - 63, and bought by Rover in '65. It was considerably
modified for UK requirements and production - by a combination of GM and
Rover engineers working together in the UK.

Thanks for the historic refresher. There are no conspiracies;
happenstance rules. What if he hadn't gone to wherever the marine
engine was sitting on the floor...

If you're right and they picked up so many horses on being fitted with
SUs, they couldn't have put out more than about 110-120hp in US trim.
We had one out of a Rover Coupe on the dyno in the middle 60s and it
was good for less than a four and a quarter Bentley engine, which was
pretty choked and good only for a smidgin under 130bhp.

The first Rover V-8 was quoted at 160 bhp - but I dunno about export
versions with lower compression ratios, etc.

I've heard about 160bph being claimed. I just never saw it on a dyno
under my control.

(I seem to remember people often spoke of 135 horses for that engine in
the Mk Vi.) We were looking at the Rover V8 because back then it was the
only engine we knew with any power that two guys could pick up between
them, a wonderful thing. It wasn't much chop though; a very unreliable
engine if you breathed on it even lightly.

Hmm. Just what broke?

Usual British crap production. The heads wouldn't seal properly
without double-O-ringing, threads stripping, conrods coming through
the side of the engine before we even exceeded the rev limit. My
mechanics were student engineers, supervised by couple of real racing
mechanics with a lot of experience. The engineers were fascinated by
this lightweight engine, the real mechanics advised me (or rather my
girlfriend's father who was paying for all this) to waste no more time
and money on the Rover engine, to continue with our very successful
development programme of the unbreakable Chrysler hemiheads which had
served me well until we went off on the lightweight wild goose chase.

Still, a decade later it made the SD1 into one of the greatest cars BL
ever built;

I've got one. ;-)

Must take some TLC to keep it on the road.

such a pit
they didn't see fit to carry forward the second-best thing about the
P8, the De Dion rear axle, a beautiful thing of 300B-like purely
linear motion..

Snag is the space such a design takes up - you wouldn't have had the same
flexibility of the hatchback design with vast load area which is
originally why I kept mine.

All my mates who previously drove 3.5 V8s, the 2000 shape, as company
cars. decided that without the De Dion rear they would switch to Jags.
They weren't family men, or at least not one-car family men, so they
didn't care for the space. Rover lost a lot of prestige those years,
and partly because of decisions like that one.

We should take time out here for a moment of silence for the lost
opportunity of what the Rover SD1, born to greatness, could have
become with proper development in a company with proper management
rather the British Motors Leyland rolling fiasco. (Not that I can
think of one: all the British motor companies were up to **** those
years, so pick a German car company, say VAG.)

--
*Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?

What are you doing in your wife's dressing room when she is working?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.


Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
"wonderfully well written and reasoned information
for the tube audio constructor"
John Broskie TubeCAD & GlassWare
"an unbelievably comprehensive web site
containing vital gems of wisdom"
Stuart Perry Hi-Fi News & Record Review

On Sep 9, 7:19 pm, John Byrns wrote:
In article om,
Andre Jute wrote:

Just as a mattter of historical evidence, Ford apparently between the
wars made their flathead V8 in England, possibly in a tax-friendly
smaller size as well.

I don't know if it has any relation to the engine you are speaking of,
but Ford also had a smaller flathead V8 that was sold for a few years in
the US, also "between the wars" IIRC. A friend and I shoehorned one of
these into an MG-TC.

Regards,

John Byrns

--
Surf my web pages at, http://fmamradios.com/

The TC, and the TD following (smaller disk wheels instead of high
spoked wheels), were such gutless little cars, even a Singer Sewing
Machine treadle would have improved them. -- Andre Jute