Well I decided that the sunbeam hasnt enough powah for me, so thought id look into engine conversions, xe's zetecs the like nothing really took my fancy bang per buck, so I thought whats ideal for a compact hatchback not too heavy and rwd so a little bidding on ebay saw me net this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... :EOAB:UK:6

Anyway just need to find a suitable gearbox and then , keep the car from being written off - game on

Oooooooooh, baby. Both thumbs up anda lot of nodding of approval from this direction! 8)

Don't encourage him to mutilate his lovely car...

It's obvious that what Gaz really wanted was a TR7V8 rally car...

being a bit of a triumph boy I can admit to the occasional filthy dream of owning a tr7v8. theyre such god awful cars in every aspect yet every now and then I find myself trawling the 'bay for them. I feel dirty afterwards though.
a friend of my old mans had a 7v8 tony pond rally replica for a while- that was feckin nice - had the big riveted on arches, had the red white and blue chevrons like the pond car, stupidly wide rear tyres, went like stink that thing.
I met haris mann (the guy who designed the 7) a few months back - nice bloke.

I often find this too - suddenly a TR7V8 just pops in my head.

They're not actually that bad. Well - ok - they are. But for ragging around in a rally type fashion they're bloody good. I could only ever own one if it was outrageous and rallyfied with big arches.

oh yeah - it needs to be a big dirty rally slag of a car - all grumbling v8, wide arches, buckets and driven slideways everywhere.

Well I decided that the gf needed a good drive so I lobbed £30 in her tank and off we went to sunny cleethorpes, 2.5hours later we were there - one slight detour and we found the place, loaded it up and got driving

Bit of rubbing from the rear but we carried on regadless - stopped off just the other side of woodhead for a break, check the rear tyres nothing untoawrd could see wherte they are catching a tad but nothing to worry about

anyhow carries on towards glossop/manchester the gf says the car is pulling and it was feeling a little rough so we carrys on for another half a mile and we can both smell burning rubber slightly - I assume someone is buring old tyres anway another 3/4 corners it gets worse so we pull over, bumps it up a curb to have a good look - rear tyre fine front passnger tyre - shreaded! it looks like it was wayy ouut of balance and with the extra weight ect its wobbed expanded and cut into the tyrewall on the trackrod end and the outer wheel arch - it was leathal another 50yards or so and I reckon the tread would have parted company with the tyrewall ,

anyway after realising there is a rover v8 on the spare wheel I fishes up lugging the engine forward and eventually got the spare out and threw the shit tyre over a 5foot wall in sheer frustation, but moral of the story is if theres any funny noises etc stop and have a good look

Nice choice of lump Gaz. can't beat the sound of a burbling V8!

Hate to spoil the party though, but were'nt Range Rovers fitted with the Low compression V8?? Seem to remember a mate who had an old 3500 Vitesse with an ex-Rangey lump in saying something about that.

In a word, YES.
But there's still nowt to stop you going ahead with it. Things can be changed....just be more work than maybe you'd anticipated.

My dad has a brand-spanker 3.9 twin-plen Vitesse engine on a stand in his garage gathering dust. I've been trying to "liberate" it for years.....

If this particular V8 is the low compression variety, then surely re-building it with some aftermarket goodies is the way forward. Nice and easy with the engine out of the car!

Even if you don't, any V8 will make a light car like that chew up rear tyres quickly! :twisted:

Well im sure im the first to admit I don't know much about engines but a Compression ratio of 9.35.1 isnt exactly low compression

Its low enough to just about run a turbo and a small amount of boost! :lol:

Im thinking cams holley carb and a nice shot of nitrous

You sure it will fit?

Not really but the nova has taught me one thing if it doesnt fit cut bits off till it does It fitted quite easily in the boot of a cav so its not exactly the bigest of engines