What is it? Well, this should be a clue:
Or if that isn't close enough:
It's a Ford 302 V8 called a Windsor. With a cubic inch coming in at around 16.4 cc, it's a 5 litre. What am I going to do with it? Put it in the TVR of course. Now, it looks like a rusty piece of crap, and it currently is. The plan is to rebuild it to a high spec and drop it in. My rationale for this is as follows - the 5 litre Rover (GM/Buick/Rover/TVR Power) engine is a real stretch from the 3.5 litres it started out with. Even Range Rover only took this engine to 4.6, and in nowhere near as high a state of tune as TVR used. Added to that, the Rover engine doesn't really like to rev - it's a bit of a cruising engine really. Because I plan to take the 302 to 331 cubic inches (5.4 litres) with a longer stroke crank (what the Yanks call a stroker kit), there's no way I could get this size of engine with the original engine by means of boring/stroking. I also think that TVR should have used this engine to begin with. Some people say that because the Rover engine is 'British' (it isn't really), then it's a great candidate for use in a British sports car, well that holds no truck with me (see this post on this very blog). TVR have used Ford engines going back years, and should have stuck with them for the Griff/Chimeara in my opinion.
Why this engine in particular? Well, it's origins are from the same era as the Rover/Buick engine, so again, I'm trying to build the car TVR could have done if they'd looked at Ford engines of the same vintage as the Rover/Buick. It also has been used in TVRs before - in the TVR Griffith 200 (the original Griffith named after a TVR dealer in the US called Jack Griffith who fitted a TVR Vixen with a 289 Ford V8 - the 302 being an evolution of the 289 used by Griffith and by Carol Shelby in the 289 AC Cobra, and by the Sunbeam Tiger). It also has great heritage - as well as the aforementioned recipients of the Windsor V8, it also saw service in the GT40 which won Le Mans in 1968 and '69. There's nothing that the Rover/Buick has been used for that's come close to this. It's also the engine in this car which belonged to the late Peter Wheeler who was in charge of TVR at the time of the production of the Chimeara, which in my book, vindicates the choice.
What about the weight of it? It's not actually that heavy. The block is actually very small in this engine, and Ford pioneered a technique called 'thin-wall casting' in producing it, which means that the block is not very bulky. There is a wide selection of aluminium cylinder heads that can be used, which save an enormous amount of weight, I will be running a light flywheel and light, small pulleys too. Over all, I'm not expecting it to weigh significantly more than the engine that's already in it. I estimate that it will produce a true 365bhp at the wheels once it's built, meaning that it will have well over 100bhp more than it has now, so even if it weighs 20-30kg more, this will be insignificant to power to weight, and given where the engine sits in the car (well behind the front axle line), it won't make any difference to the handling.
Unfortunately it's still on the garage floor at the moment, on a trolley:
I have an engine stand, but not the correct bolts to bolt the engine up to it.
Once again I am happy that I started this blog. This poor fella started his thread on Pistonheads explaining his efforts in fitting an small block chevy to his TVR Tuscan (replacing the Speed 6 engine it came with), and you should read the vitriol and idiocy he's had to put up with. There are some nobbers in the world...
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