Wanted : Rover SD1 V8.

"Pete M" realised it was Fri, 16 Apr 2004 03:35:42 GMT and decided it was time to write:

I've got a car like that. The previous owner spent insane amounts of money on hiring professional restorers to get it spot-on, nearly concours material. It was completely restored from top to bottom, with all the right stickers in the engine compartment, that sort of detail. It's a gorgeous looking car, but I found a lot wrong with it and only dared take it out on the road after I'd worked on it for a few weeks. There was virtually no oil in the diff or the steering box, some of the grease nipples could never have been functional because they had been painted over, the carbs and valve settings were way off, the brakes were maladjusted, it has a new loom, but the electrical system was unsafe, there were lots of loose nuts & bolts, parts were missing, the sparking plugs were all wrong... I could go on for a while.

Bottom line: looks are only skin deep. even a beautiful, professionally restored car can be a duffer from a technical point of view.

Sounds like he was working to the wrong blueprints. ;-)

Stag overheating is usually down to a faulty waterpump - it's driven off a layshaft and the gears can strip - or an inadequate rad. The original was marginal.

This story was told about the XJ40 Jag - it was originally designed only to take an inline engine, which is why the V-12 wouldn't fit either.

I've not seen a fuel injection one - but carburettor ones are common. Vitesse engines have always been sought after and expensive.

Assuming you've got the latest type (kiekert), it seems to be caused by voltage drop in the switch unit. The nearside doors are worst effected as the loom goes via the boot - a hangover from the earlier central locking system which had the control unit in the boot. If you feed the loom at the connector beside the rear fuse box, you'll find that they all work - even with a battery that's not 100% fully charged. I've got a spare switch unit, but it is no better.

I've got remote locking via a motor piggy backed onto the switch, so what I'm going to do when I have some tuits is to make up a relay pack which takes the output from the switch and feeds a new supply - picked up from the rear fusebox, as original, into the centre of the loom. The extra motor I'll simply wire in with the rest, and use the switching signal from the remote to switch the new relays.

Ahh, yeah, I remember that.

Still trying to recall how Triumph managed to get their V8 past BL management when the Rover V8 was the obvious choice for it.

Maybe engines once removed from the car are worth something, but it's not long since whole (abliet rusty) cars were available for just a few beer tokens ;-)

The Rover V-8 was in short supply for quite some time - the UK casting methods didn't lend themselves to an easy increase in production. It could also be that the Triumph range of engines was finalised - and the production line bought - before the amalgamation. There were plenty of other examples of similar sized engines being used by Leyland - the Rover

2000, B Series, E Series, Dolomite 1800. Perhaps the most obvious one was the A Series and Triumph unit which were *very* similar. They went down the Triumph route with the Midget, then reversed it with the Marina. Perhaps because the A Series had to be kept in production for the Mini. Who can tell?

'Twas Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:02:47 +0100, when Dave Plowman decided to declare:

According to Graham Robson's 'The Rover Story' it was GM who put the knockers on their engine being fitted to the Stag. It was OK for it to be fitted to a luxury saloon and also to a 'niche' sportscar (The Morgan Plus8) but apparently, they thought ithe Stag might be too much of a competitor to the Corvette!

Del

-- STOP PRESS - Microsoft buys Electrolux and finally manage to produce something that doesn't suck... To email me, you must remove YOURCLOTHES

I find that hard to believe. It was an engine they'd discarded as being of no further use. IIRC, Rover bought the rights with no restrictions.

Probably more because the A series is just a far far far better engine. Far better.

Did I mention it's better? :)

I've got 2 running Triumph 1300/1500 engined cars, and one 998 A series. Have a guess which one is the smoothest, most economical, pleasantest to drive?

Which annoys me, because I don't want my most pleasant to drive engine to be in my most bouncy shaky car, I want my comfy soft car to have the smooth quiet lump!

But it does (!), without to much work, and if BL had engineered it for production it would have been even neater.