spitfiremk1uk
Active Member
Stripped down an engine today. Described as reconditioned and one of the "sweetest engines" heard running. The idea is to rebuild it with competition in mind. The block has been rebored and crank reground with lots of new bits and cleaning done. This should be a quick rebuild and I am only stripping it to check it out. It was fitted into an efi range rover in its life previous to me and painted a rather cheap looking red. The trouble starts with 4 out of the 8 pistons being fitted into the wrong bank of cylinders. 1 cylinder head is the larger volume combustion chamber with small valves and the other a smaller volume chamber which should have larger valves but fitted with small valves that sit well below the normal hight causing cam follower pre load on one side only to be miles out. Only 1 cylinder head had cut outs for the fuel injectors the other bank must have just dribbled fuel after hitting the head! This had been "professionaly" rebuilt and with the machining costs must have cost a pretty penny. I pity the poor sod who paid for this job and whoever rebuilt this engine needs his arse kicked! And if this was a "sweet" engine I can only suggest standards are pretty low! Scratch 1 v8 and its time to strip down another one. I might even make that v8 glass table or an 8 bottle wine rack after all! Need to get rid of the damn crap red paint though. Anyone worked out what the swept volume of a rover 3.5 v8 will be at 40 thou over bore is?