K series V8

Yes I'm bored at work on night shift with bugger all to do, waiting for the production worker to brake something! So I'm engaging that highly dangerous pursuit.......thinking!
The trouble is that the production workers here are pretty good so they don't bugger much up, and the plant is also pretty good so isn't prone to failure.

Some of you have probably figured out that I have a propensity to stuff V8 into cars that either weren't ever intended to have them or if they were I like to jam in larger capacity V8s than nature intended.
Such as binning the 4 cyl in the Triumph TR7 for an enlarged version of the Leyland 4.4 litre P76 V8 ( looking at @ 6.0 litres)  Swapping out the 5.8 litre V8 in the F250 for a 7.5 litre, and force feeding poor innocent Land Rover series 2s and 3s various V8s.

Now An Idea that keeps rattling about my head concerns our K series family of engines which was intended to be made in inline 3cyl, inline 4cyl V6 and V8 versions, alas the v8 never got past the prototype stage, probably due to a lack of funding.
I keep on wondering how one might go about making one, cutting a V6 block and welding a pair of cylinders is quite doable,  as our engines have bore liners the cut and shut method shouldn't be a problem with skills and a proper jig to keep everything aligned. I guess you could use a pair of 4 cylinder heads, cams, etc. might be a bit of faffing about required but probably nothing beyond the realm of possibility.
That brings us to the tricky bit the crankshaft, haven't figured this bit out at all yet. I really need to get my hands on a V6 to have a good look at it and compare it to the inline 4.

Now I doubt I'll ever get beyond the mental exercise, but thinking about this sort of stuff keeps my brain from going rusty.

Of course once you've figured out that little lot, what do you do with the result..........well of course it would be brutal, and highly immoral to take a F or TF and insert the device up it's backside (probably without it's consent as I can't imagine that it would be a willing participant in being so rudely violated in such a manor and I sure it would show it's displeasure by putting up a fair bit of resistance) in which in itself would provide a swag of engineering challenges
I know there will be those that that will poo-poo such notions and bang on about bloody turbos or shoving some sort of horrid jap-crap in but where's the fun in that.
Now the point in this thread is for us all to share in the fun of figuring out how it would be possible to achieve such an exercise. 

What are the obstacles to be overcome, and how best to overcome them?
Can you imagine the glorious sound it would make?
What about the Qship factor, the enjoyment of seeing the looks of the faces of those who look down upon our cars because they think that the thing they drive is better and should be faster than such a modestly priced sports car.

To sum up the concept:
Built not bought, always has a cool factor, any dickhead with money can buy something but not everyone can build it.

Discuss........
 

Might be a “tad” heavy at the rear end.
What about fitting a Subaru Impeza engine in it instead. With 4 wheel drive that would be something.

Allen Millyard is your man for a job like this. He is mainly a motorcycle man, taking a fairly standard bike & hacking two engines up to make one big one. He has videos on YouTube & every one is a joy especially if you like cup cakes whilst you work. Highly recommend.
Thought two:
your boot space has just been sacrificed & with it an amount of structural rigidity, a prerequisite for a small car with a big engine.
Even with a narrow angled V engine the boot has to go, the V6 experiment ran much too hot, an 8 wouldn’t keep its head gasket for long without fresh air around it. The front radiator wouldn’t keep much cool, so rear mounted radiators with fans running constantly to shift the heat. Swap the original radiator for an oil cooler. A bag of sand under the front plus aero to keep the front down. I’m assuming that if some mad hat has a go, their going to make its capacity grand enough to make the sphincter squeak when you set off; let’s make it big enough for the sphincter to be completely undecided whether to snap tight shut or to dilate.
When one considers that there are two front subframes under the car & both were for front wheel drive, why not stuff a second engine under the bonnet.
There you go 50/50 weight distribution, mind you you won’t be able to see over the bonnet.
M

Delbourt post=208687 userid=12268Might be a “tad” heavy at the rear end.
What about fitting a Subaru Impeza engine in it instead. With 4 wheel drive that would be something.

No I doubt it would be all that heavy, as we are talking about an alloy block not some heavy cast iron lump. indeed the Subie set up would  probably weigh more overall, now if all wheel drive is your aim how about sticking a second K series inline 4 and trans-axle up the front using a suitable subframe for one of the FWD cars from MG-Rover. in years past the same treatment was given to Minis called Twinis. More recently Mercedes even got into the act with a twin engined A class concept.
in an F/TF the height of the  front engine would pose a problem, and in any set up like this, finding a way of synchronising the two power plants would be necessary, in this day and age electronic control would be the answer. Syncroing the engines was a problem in the Twini days, the cars were a bit unruly.
 

Airportable post=208688 userid=5200Allen Millyard is your man for a job like this. He is mainly a motorcycle man, taking a fairly standard bike & hacking two engines up to make one big one. He has videos on YouTube & every one is a joy especially if you like cup cakes whilst you work. Highly recommend.
Thought two:
your boot space has just been sacrificed & with it an amount of structural rigidity, a prerequisite for a small car with a big engine.
Even with a narrow angled V engine the boot has to go, the V6 experiment ran much too hot, an 8 wouldn’t keep its head gasket for long without fresh air around it. The front radiator wouldn’t keep much cool, so rear mounted radiators with fans running constantly to shift the heat. Swap the original radiator for an oil cooler. A bag of sand under the front plus aero to keep the front down. I’m assuming that if some mad hat has a go, their going to make its capacity grand enough to make the sphincter squeak when you set off; let’s make it big enough for the sphincter to be completely undecided whether to snap tight shut or to dilate.
When one considers that there are two front subframes under the car & both were for front wheel drive, why not stuff a second engine under the bonnet.
There you go 50/50 weight distribution, mind you you won’t be able to see over the bonnet.
M

There are some outfits in the US that get up to this sort of caper, one cuts and shuts a couple of iron Ford Clevelend V8s to make an @ 8.7 litre V12 and another welds 2 iron Chev V8s together end to end to make a V16 displacing @11.4 litres!........Talk about heavy metal!... in every sense of the expession!
Iron is a bastard to weld so alloy will be a walk in the park by comparison and because you can do the welding without the liners fitted, it should be relatively stronger as you have better access to the inside of the block.

The Cooling systems of our cars don't really make the best of the airflow through the radiator, indeed it's a bit piss poor. On the F the upper grille opening allows air from the lower grille opening that should go through the radiator to escape out though the top due to it being a low pressure zone the simple addition of a baffle between the lower and upper grille openings would help as would a multi core radiator properly ducted and tilted at an angle to allow for a radiator with a much larger surface area and an extractor vent/vents cut into the bonnet, which would not only improve airflow but would reduce front end lift.
That tilted radiator with it's larger surface area would allow larger electric fans. Off course the spare tyre would have to get the arse! Further cooling improvements could be gained by using one of Davies-Craig's brilliant thermostatically controlled electric water pumps and fans. The coolant Should be the water-less stuff from Liquid Intelligence, for yet more thermal efficiency.

I've already solved the poor air circulation problem in the engine bay, my car sports a pair of extra fans to suck hot air up and push it out through the upper engine bay vent. And an additional intake fan could be fitted to the left hand side air duct to shovel more air in,  and those ducts could have scoops fitted to grab more air, So I don't know that the rear boot has to be a casualty, at least not all of it. no doubt ther is a strong possibility that the fire wall between the engine bay and the boot may need a bit of a massage to fit the required bits and pieces.

I'm sure I could find somewhere to stuff an oil cooler.

The gearbox probably wont be all that delighted to be receiving the extra torque, so that may pose a problem, haven't given that  one enough thought yet!

The fuel tank may have to emigrate to the now largely vacated front spare area., which not only provide some more engine space aft, but also compensate with balance by transferring some weight forward. I would be fabricated out of alloy. to use up any space left from the expanded cooling system.

Now chopping bits of body work about has to weaken the structure, so some reinforcing braces will be required to not only restore rigidity, but ideally improve on it.
To cut the weight of these reinforcing braces should be alloy and bolt in which would solve not only the problem of dissimilar metals, but would also make access to major components easier.

You can probably tell, I've spent a bit of time kicking this concept about in my head. Night shift gives you time to think.

 

I have given this some thought and have a few dreams floating around, now depending how adventurous your dreams are then I offer some bizarre ideas. The first thoughts are to cut the rear two cylinders off a KV6 and the front two cylinders off another KV6 and weld the two "V4's" together to create a V8. The obvious to me crankshaft is the 82mm stroke Rover V8, these are relatively short so the crank journals might just work, some enterprising souls in the USA are machining Ford cranks to fit into into Rover V8's!  A likely source of cylinder heads are the Ford SHO V8 engine, these were a 3.4 litre V8  and have a very adaptable inlet manifold. The bore is very similar to the KV6 so they might just work  If they didn't have a cast iron block they might have been an interesting engine to go into a TF, being a 60 degree they are about two inches narrower than the KV6. Like you have done the side air intakes need a fan each side and scoops as well, if MG Rover had survived the next iteration of the TF was going to get scoops, aerodynamic testing showed that the existing design was next to useless and the MGF was even worse. The standard radiator would easily cope, the aerodynamic testing actuall shoed that air comes out of the upper vents at speed on a TF, the problem is that the air has nowhere to easily escape after passing through the radiator. Adding a vented bonnet not only allowed the hot air to escape but also reduced front end lift to zero. https://www.aronline.co.uk/concepts-and-prototypes/concepts-mg-tf200-hpd/
The current Jaguar V6 follows an interesting philosophy in that is a V8 casting without the two rear cylinders, it should be relatively easy to convert a Jaguar V8 into V6 
Another interesting twin engine-ed car; http://www.dlg.speedfreaks.org/archive/cars/fittipaldi/3200/3200.php
All these idea are just from taking two Paracetamol and two Ibuprofen, imagine what I could come up with after taking something that hallucinates. 

For me the most hallucinogenic V engine ever made was / is the BRM 1.5 litre V16 engine of the mid ‘50’s. It was designed just after the war & it would rev up to 12,000 rpm & make 600bhp.
The change in formula to 2.5ltr (?) brought its development to a holt.
A firm in Lincolnshire will build you a new one it you can rustle up the money.
The sound they make is sublime, again YouTube will help you appreciate what these V16 powered cars would do.
M

Airportable wrote:

For me the most hallucinogenic V engine ever made was / is the BRM 1.5 litre V16 engine of the mid ‘50’s. It was designed just after the war & it would rev up to 12,000 rpm & make 600bhp.
The change in formula to 2.5ltr (?) brought its development to a holt.
A firm in Lincolnshire will build you a new one it you can rustle up the money.
The sound they make is sublime, again YouTube will help you appreciate what these V16 powered cars would do.
M
 

It was lost long ago but I had a 45 EP (remember them) that was a recording of a BRM 1.5 V16 going through it's paces..........what a glorious noise!

wrote:

I have given this some thought and have a few dreams floating around, now depending how adventurous your dreams are then I offer some bizarre ideas. The first thoughts are to cut the rear two cylinders off a KV6 and the front two cylinders off another KV6 and weld the two "V4's" together to create a V8. The obvious to me crankshaft is the 82mm stroke Rover V8, these are relatively short so the crank journals might just work, some enterprising souls in the USA are machining Ford cranks to fit into into Rover V8's!  A likely source of cylinder heads are the Ford SHO V8 engine, these were a 3.4 litre V8  and have a very adaptable inlet manifold. The bore is very similar to the KV6 so they might just work  If they didn't have a cast iron block they might have been an interesting engine to go into a TF, being a 60 degree they are about two inches narrower than the KV6. Like you have done the side air intakes need a fan each side and scoops as well, if MG Rover had survived the next iteration of the TF was going to get scoops, aerodynamic testing showed that the existing design was next to useless and the MGF was even worse. The standard radiator would easily cope, the aerodynamic testing actuall shoed that air comes out of the upper vents at speed on a TF, the problem is that the air has nowhere to easily escape after passing through the radiator. Adding a vented bonnet not only allowed the hot air to escape but also reduced front end lift to zero. https://www.aronline.co.uk/concepts-and-prototypes/concepts-mg-tf200-hpd/
The current Jaguar V6 follows an interesting philosophy in that is a V8 casting without the two rear cylinders, it should be relatively easy to convert a Jaguar V8 into V6 

Another interesting twin engine-ed car; http://www.dlg.speedfreaks.org/archive/cars/fittipaldi/3200/3200.php
All these idea are just from taking two Paracetamol and two Ibuprofen, imagine what I could come up with after taking something that hallucinates. 
 

So I'm not the only mad scientist around here.....it's good to have the company of like minded souls!

Thanks for those ideas, I'm going to digest that lot, it will give something to do at work tonight.

The Buick/Holden iron 3.8 V6 was developed from the old iron Buick V8 which cams in various capacities from @ 5.0 to 5.6 litre itself a derivative of the Buick/Oldsmobile 3.5 alloy V8 which was of course the origin of the Rover V8 and the Repco Brabham 3.0 V8 that won the F1 world championship in 1966 and 1967, there were other versions of the repco engine used in the Tasman Series 2.5 litre, and sportscar and CanAm racing 4.2 litre.
The Rover V8 was also the basis of the Leyland P76 4.4 litre V8 which had a higher deck height  for more stroke and Repco also developed a 5.0 litre version using the P76 block for F5000.
As an aside Repco were doing 2 different F5000 engine at the same time as they also did the very successful  Repco-Holden F5000 engine developed from the iron Holden V8.

We are the sane ones, every one else is mad

Actually "Mad Science Racing" would be a good name for a range of performance parts and services, as well as a racing team of course!
Should the numbered ping pong balls finally get their bloody act together and do the right thing by falling out in the correct order so that I may win the lotto, I will build this and other weird and wonderful engines and cars under this name!

45ep? Do we remember those, oh yes. Crumbs I still play 78’s on my wonderful horn gram.
Kathleen Ferrier with Bruno Walter recorded & played acoustically, nothing like it.
We digress.
It’s not long since we had a session on Rover V8’s & derivatives, that was a good few posts. I must look back on that, anyone remember about when that was?
M