S1 Engine
A Rover V8 3500cc
from a Rover P6 saloon. Adequate horsepower and loads of torque
equals plenty of performance. At the moment the engine is a bit
tatty but it’s coming along.
As you can see
there is not a lot of room in there and I am glad I was not the
one to go through the hassle of trying to fit it all in. The
engine is supposed to be in a fast road tune but without ripping
it apart or putting it on the rollers there is no way of knowing
although any modification will be strangled by the carbs.
The beauty of this
engine is the way that it will gently burble along in top
effortlessly cruising but when asked to perform all that is
needed is to plant the accelerator to the floor and without
hesitation the revs rise at an incredible rate with the
corresponding increase in road speed. When the revs reach 3500rpm
the whole engine note changes and things really start to happen
quickly and at 5000 the noise is fantastic a real howl from the
rear pipes – at this stage the engine runs out of breath a
little which makes me think that the heads are restrictive which
is the case for the early cars. A change to later heads and a
warmer cam will have it revving cleanly to 6000rpm which is the
absolute maximum for a standard Rover bottom end.
Addendum - Turns out that it was not the heads causing the drop off in performance but the old throttle linkage system being so worn that is was not allowing the butterflies in the carbs to open fully, a bit of tweaking and filing in the right place had them opening fully and the result was quite dramatic.
Whether you just
plant your foot or snick down a couple of cogs in the gearbox the
only difference is the soundtrack because the rate of
acceleration is pretty much the same either way, very, very RAPID
A similarly
equipped car was tested by Hot Car magazine in the 1983 and
achieved the 0-60 sprint in 4.75 seconds using the not exactly
scientific method of a stopwatch on the speedometer, still even
if the figures were at little out - I can testify that “this”
car is pretty bloody quick.