My Rover

[trikey]

If your looking for horsepower on a budget, forget the Buick lump, expensive to tune reliably.

You need a small block Chevy if you want power at an affordable price.

[mystabe]

Constructive advice:


Find a formula to race in before you start building a car - engine swaps usually mean it's extremely hard to find a formula that doesn't mean you're up against cars with a HUGE amount of money and development behind them. As has been said, buy a race prepped ZR or ZS and develop it if it really must be a Rover. The usual rule of thumb I find is that if a car isn't a common sight on race tracks then there is usually a very good reason why.



Come up with a price to build a race car........ then triple it at least. Almost certainly even more if you're building a car that doesn't have off the shelf racing upgrades you can buy.


I used to race in a kit car formula that used standard tune 1300 Ford X-Flow engines and people used to turn up who would brag they were used to driving 500bhp cars so this should be easy - then almost without fail they would then disappear into the scenery on a frequent basis when sat in a 500kg car with 90bhp. Think hard about how good a driver you actually are and how expensive it will be to repair if you do crash. I should add that these were pretty simple Caterham type cars but to build your own that was able to be anywhere near the front would cost about £10k (and that was about 15 years ago)


Have you thought about gearbox Karts, Grasstrack or something similar to see how good you are before spending a small fortune?


I'm trying hard not to sound negative - It is genuinely great fun and I highly recommend the experience but you need to think carefully before spending any money!

Originally Posted by Ian G

300 BHP ish with throttle bodies and full house forged steel internals at 3.9 litres.

I think 190-200 max is the best you can hope for from a 3.5 on SUs.. Remember the standard 3.5 was only about 160 BHP.. when I had my V8 I was often left eating the dust of Golf GTis and Astra GTEs.



Cheers

The plane company bought off rover back in the 80s as a 3.5 and every little thing got replaced making 530 horsepower shame of the back story was meant to go in a ww1 plane but the guy only lived to see the engine done wounded what happened to the ww1 plane


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[mystabe]

Originally Posted by ROVER2003

The plane company bought off rover back in the 80s as a 3.5 and every little thing got replaced making 530 horsepower shame of the back story was meant to go in a ww1 plane but the guy only lived to see the engine done wounded what happened to the ww1 plane


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Ok, we'll say it makes that power because it's been blueprinted and tuned to within an inch of it's life, when it breaks can you afford to fix it to the same standard?


As Trikey said you need a Chevy V8 LS crate engine, way more power as standard, fairly cheap, easy to tune...... and replaceable!

[P-Nut]

If you are serious about racing you'd actually be better off using a standard engine, the vast majority of series don't allow extensive modifications.

You can run the ZT as is in a low class, something like 750mc Roadsports, very little restrictions as they work off hp per ton, there's a 145bhp per ton class which should be achievable.

Quite frankly you'd be murdered in any class of racing with a 1 and a half ton car.

[Groundsman Willie]

Originally Posted by ROVER2003

What you think of the engine 530 horsepower may put in a prototype or in my 75




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May be a stupid question, but what is the deal with the second set of, what looks like,dizzy and ht leads? The green set?

[trikey]

Originally Posted by Groundsman Willie

May be a stupid question, but what is the deal with the second set of, what looks like,dizzy and ht leads? The green set?

If that’s the plane engine then it’s a back up if one fails you don’t fall out of the sky! My mate runs two magnetos on his VW powered plane.

Originally Posted by Groundsman Willie

May be a stupid question, but what is the deal with the second set of, what looks like,dizzy and ht leads? The green set?

16 spark plugs so needs 2 red and green


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[kaiser]

No way that engine will make much over 200 hp, on a good day.
Simply impossible with 2 SUs.

Looks like an old (type) block and old heads?. Means no cross bolts near crank and serious impediments to flow in heads.

Standard engine with hc makes about 160 honest ponies. To get 500 ponies you need to flow 3 times the volume. That would be serious money!!

The second dizzi could be to do with aviation requirements of dual ignition, driven off the attached disk near the pulley.

[mystabe]

Originally Posted by kaiser

No way that engine will make much over 200 hp, on a good day.
Simply impossible with 2 SUs.

Looks like an old (type) block and old heads?. Means no cross bolts near crank and serious impediments to flow in heads.

Standard engine with hc makes about 160 honest ponies. To get 500 ponies you need to flow 3 times the volume. That would be serious money!!

The second dizzi could be to do with aviation requirements of dual ignition, driven off the attached disk near the pulley.

Posting this kind of thing is useless, Thomas just won't believe you - that engine makes 500bhp