Blown engine

Well I had lots of different incarnations... And I built two cars, one was the one on the page, my quiet smooth tow car with SU carbs, stock (ish) but blueprinted P6 10.5 to 1 compression, but with cleaned up ports and opened up 3 angle valve seats. It also had a modified advance curve, luminition, different needles and springs, the guts taken out of the air box, the intake "protruding carb thingys" removed and with standard 4 ito one cast manifolds it only made 140bhp on a certain Dyno (that always read low!) at the Rear wheels but made loads of torque everywhere. Nice to drive, and could spin up the rear wheels easily when changing from 2nd to 3rd.

Problem is that this Dyno showed 68 BHP at the wheels on 3 new XR2is, Same for lots of lightly modded pinto engiines, and 100 for a 2.9 V6 Granada. It read 125 for a stock rear drive cosworth sierra too... So everyone including the operator was convinced it was wrong!

In an attempt to find out I was going to put my bike on, because that was dynoed on lots of my own bike dynos, several dynojet ones, and a modern bosch one as well as a superflow engine dyno, they all said 135, to 137 without Nitrous. But he wouldnt let me run a bike... So I dont know how valid the data is. But it is at least comparable.

With Tubular (Stag i think) manifolds it went up to 152 or so. With 70 Nitrous it did Exactly 50 more... With 140 Nityrous it did 110 more. So it read 260bhp give or take a few. But... It would scrape the back of the car on the deck, and spin tyres from 2000 rpm in first three gears. Overtaking was easy!

Then My stupid (much) younger brother wanted one... But he wanted it a bit "hotter" to impress his mates who all had the usual 17 year olds front drive shopping trolleys...

So I made him (poor student!) build up a motor on my garage carpet... Starting with a "used" scrap yard (30 quid because it was "dead") motor he stripped ALL of it. All the block was re machined, exept cam bearings and main bearing carriers. New bolts. Reground crank with carefully polished mains and big ends. Stock rods polished (for no good reason except it amused me to watch him struggle!) with new bolts. Omega Race forged flat top pistons. Bores bored 1.5 though oversize and platough (how do you spell that???) honed. Carefully rebult with new bolts, Lots of micrometer work (and THREE new cranks than you engineering company! useless b*****s) And a set of solid lifters, and really thick tubular pushrods, stronger dual valve springs etc - new stock rockers/shafts/pumps, etc. Inlet manifold modded (I cut off the top, milled it flat, made a plate on my lathe for a pair of 38 DGAS webers, and bolted it on. The plate was drilled and fitted with the nitrous injetors of course! Heads had bigger valves but mainly the exhaust valve because this was to use lots of nitrous....

Cant remember what CC it was...

This was fitted into his Saphire, and run in with stock jets in those used carbs (all different I might add! Ran like a pig on roller skates..) One set up properly on the (same) dyno it ran and sounded great, with fast pickup etc.

Then without gas it made 255bhp at the wheels but unlike any cossie it just buggered off on a whif of throttle squeeling tyres even in 2nd gear by mistake...

With gas, (two stages, both 140bhp) it made 380+ bhp on one stage, and with both stages it went a bit mad on the dyno, and shook and spun, and everything so we couldnt get a reading. (Probably his students secondhand tyres found washed up on the beach didn't help!) Then it bust a steel Quafe diff that cost him a students grant... So we never found out what it really did on the rollers.

On the drag strip, it bust 2 more diffs... But it ran 12.7 secs 2nd run it did. More was to come if his supply of diffs/student grants could keep up! That reved to 7200 before rev limiter stoppped play and he abused it at every opertunity, as you do when you are

17... I am not sure he ever mentioned it the insurance company? At least in the first year, but Adrian flux insured him at a cheap price. It was cheaper than his previous Astra GTE toy car.

He sold it due to lack of finances eventually after all the work!

I presume he borrowed a lot of tools from you. I wouldn't mind doing some engine fiddling but simply don't have the tools and someone's brains to pick. Might see if the local college has clobber I'd be able to use if I went there. I need something quicker than a 60brake Ka :P, preferably RWD, and cheap. I keep wondering if there's anything that I'd be able to cram a Jag straight 6 into, seeing as whole, oldish Jags are bloody cheap now and the engines seem to last forever. There's a Rover SD1 in the autotrader for £750...

The two heaviest boat anchors are:

Essex V6 Jag engines...

I'm thinking of the alloy AJ6/AJ16 (in the XJ40, and X300 AFAIK) engine, not the iron block XK6. I've not managed to find any weights for them, but surely they can't weigh that much?

Never seen an alloy one? Didn'y know they did them.

Yeah, I was thinking about the bits like remachining the block etc. I know spanners aren't horrifically expensive :P.

Fancied something different, and the thought occured that it's already pretty powerful, lasts a long time and you can get XJ40s very cheap, though I think the length of the thing would be a problem in a lot of cars. It's all very hypothetical anyway, as I could probably get enough cash together to cobble something together, but insurance is another matter entirely.

A locost appeals because once you've made one the insurance is very cheap, and you can generally sell it for a fair price, but I've not really got enough money to build a decent car (can't weld, so I'd be buying a chassis etc.). I was under the impression that the Rover V8 was fairly sought after, what kind of price do they fetch? ATM I'll be doing a lot of reading...

Thought about a Capri, they look better now than they used to, if you see what I mean. If I had one, it would have to be orange or yellow :P.

This is the truth ... was going to box the car up and leave it in the garage, but then I thought .. bugger it ... its only money.

PS Nice wheelchair btw. does it really sit up and balance ?

Yep, but its too slow! It can stand up and balance long after I am too pissed too. (if my legs worked!)