V6 Complete Motor Wanted

Hi,

I bought a couple of essex's (question plural?) and have them in a mates cellar in Leeds. Both he and I had a "rush of blood to the head" a year or more ago and bought them intending to put them into some Capri's, it never happened and probably won't.

Big heavy lumps, one part rebuilt and from the pair you should make one good one.

Bring a sack barrow, six blokes and £60 quid and they're yours.

HTH

Nigel Remove "ns" to reply

Always prefered the V6 to V8, power to weight ratio is more suited. Easier to fit and just as reliable. Also lighter than the V8, less strain on body and drivetrain etc.

A very nice all round engine without going OTT.

Most people go for the V8 as it is keeping with the marque and it is the most common conversion going.

Less weight? The bare block on an Essex weighs nearly as much as a complete V8!! They do rev quicker, though... Range Rover V8's make about the same figures as an Essex from memory.

There's always the problem of always having 2 spark plugs left in a set, as well...

You mean a heavier engine is more suited? In what way?

Well, since the V-8 is fitted by LR I'd have thought it an easy job. Haven't heard the Essex called reliable before though, compared to the Rover engine.

You are joking? It's a cast iron lump. The Rover engine is all alloy.

That's possible since it has less torque.

Hmm. The only good six is a straight six.

Not if you buy them 6 at a time from a Ford dealer!

Why on earth ? -- the Essex V6 is a truly dreadful engine rough, with high fuel consumption, unreliable and now very difficult to get parts for, the only thing worse is the Essex V4

Get some reality pills -- the Esssex V6 is about 100 lbs heavier than the Rover V8 unit which is lighter than a 2.25 litre Landrover engine. The Rover V8 is only slightly heavier than a Ford 2 litre SOHC Pinto engine

A v6 is the roughest runing layout for a multi cylinder 4 stroke engine possible -- even a 3 cylinder is smoother running because it hasn't the rocking couple of the V layout.

In standard Landrover tune a Rover 3.5 V8 isn't exactly that powerful -- some years ago I had the use of ab ex Airfield Ops V8 Landrover 90 station wagon at work i though it well suited to the chassis.

Each to their own @ the end of the day :-)

Have had V6's in the past, never a days problem with them, then mind you we come from a country of ingenuity and have had to make do with what we can get our hands on. I just enjoy breaking the mould and doing things differently.

Dont worry, you wont change my mind or persude me to stick a V8 in, unless of course you were to dump a fully recon motor on driveway for free ;-) !!

Any v6 you are likely to come across uses additional counter balancing shafts to try and reduce the vibration to an acceptable level -- a major power saping complication. Although invented by Lanchester about 100 years back balancing shafts are almost unknown outside the V6 world apart from the few nasty odd ball in line 3 and 5 cylinder engines that are around the only other engine I can think of that uses counterbalnce shafts is the big block Honda 4 cylinder used in the Accord/Rover 600.

Not my Alfa, but then that's a 60°

Porsche 944 4-pot has one, doesn't it ?

I agree. I've had several Ford V6s over the years (still got one) and they are the roughest dog's arses of engines.

It's better than the Pinto four. Having said that, most things are. No worse than a BMC B-series either, but definitiely at the bottom end of the order of things for a six. Even the Rover 2.6 in the SD1 (not a great engine) was much nicer. Certainly smooother.

There are a few inline 4's which use them - The Mistubishi (i.e. EVo1-VIII) lumps use them, as did the Porker 944 (but that was HUGE for a 4-pot).

The Essex V6 (at 60 degrees) does have the capability for a balance shaft, but was only used in the V4 (totally necessary!); it's due to the Ford "streching" policy for common castings that the holes are there in the block.

The trouble with the Alfa is the transaxle gearbox. A great design, but hard to just drop one into a Landie.

I understood it was a perfectly ok engine apart from the tendency of the oil feed to the cam getting blocked and causing it to seize. There are aftermarket mods to stop this happening.

The Rover six came out just s the "black sludge problem" reared its ugly head due to the 73 oil crisis oil; companies had changed they way they cut the crude oil and also the way the feedstock was cat cracked as a result a rather nastier than usual black sludge started to appear in some engines, it took a while for fuel and lube oil companies to deal with the problem. The main change was a number of improvements in SAE lube oil spec standards almost year on year through the 1980s.

Apart from the top end lubrication problems it wasn't that bad an engine but the O series and later its M16 and T16 variants had turned out to be much smoother and more powerful units than they had a right to be considering the B series origins of the unit.

Never ran into those troubles - probably because they'd been sorted by the time I met the beast, but it was always - to me - less than an outstanding donk. Pulled well enough, smooth enough, didn't like to spin (when it lost smoothness fairly quickly, from memory). Suffered badly by comparison with the V8, which was probably inevitable, the V8 being an excellent donk.

Not bad, but not outstanding. Better than the Essex, but wouldn't fit into the same holes.

But with its own bell housing it would bolt right on to 5 speed Landrover box, come to think of it so would a Montego 2 litre turbo or that matter its 16 valve sibblings.

The one I had was nowhere near as smooth as my T2000

It only has a four main bearing crank too and as with all Triumphs bar the slant 4's is a bit weak in this area. You know that noise..."did I just hear a big end starting to rattle a bit" Jonners