In article om,
Andre Jute wrote:
The particular aluminium engines that came from Buick to Rover were
marine engines, if that gives a clue to their carburettors and tune.
This basic engine block was sold in the US by both Buick and Oldsmobile,
but equipped with radically different head designs. On other engines
the Oldsmobile heads had bigger valves and could flow more air than the
Buick heads which due to their somewhat odd design couldn't accommodate
valves as large as the Oldsmobile heads, I assume the same rule held on
this engine. Also the Oldsmobile version of the engine was sold in two
different states of tune, one with a 2V carburetor and the other with a
4V carburetor and a different cam. I can't remember if Buick offered a
version in a higher state of tune like the Oldsmobile.
If you're right and they picked up so many horses on being fitted with
SUs, they couldn't have put out more than about 110-120hp in US trim.
We had one out of a Rover Coupe on the dyno in the middle 60s and it
was good for less than a four and a quarter Bentley engine, which was
pretty choked and good only for a smidgin under 130bhp. (I seem to
remember people often spoke of 135 horses for that engine in the Mk
Vi.) We were looking at the Rover V8 because back then it was the only
engine we knew with any power that two guys could pick up between
them, a wonderful thing. It wasn't much chop though; a very unreliable
engine if you breathed on it even lightly. Still, a decade later it
made the SD1 into one of the greatest cars BL ever built; such a pit
they didn't see fit to carry forward the second-best thing about the
P8, the De Dion rear axle, a beautiful thing of 300B-like purely
linear motion..
Just as a mattter of historical evidence, Ford apparently between the
wars made their flathead V8 in England, possibly in a tax-friendly
smaller size as well.
I don't know if it has any relation to the engine you are speaking of,
but Ford also had a smaller flathead V8 that was sold for a few years in
the US, also "between the wars" IIRC. A friend and I shoehorned one of
these into an MG-TC.
Regards,
John Byrns
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