Scimitry

scimitar4.JPG


Oh my! That's probably not as tidy as it should be.
 
Awesome car, especially with the V8. My dad has a **** brown se6 with the V6, and makes a gorgeous rumble. Let's just say it's one if those never ending projects, as after the respray he found loads of minute craks that are actually in the fibreglass. It does have some good condition wolfraces though :D

Now he has an A1 condition white stag as his play toy.
 
WOHOOO!!! It works!!! Well it starts...then it dies! But it will start again. Then it dies again.

We are blaming the fuel supply at the moment. That old fuel pump we resurrected might be a bit too broken or there might be a restriction in the pipe or a broken needle valve or something else. I'll be checking it out if its not raining tomorrow. I need to try and work out why the keys not running the starter too.

Does anyone know if you can get the covers off seatbelts without them exploding everywhere? Ours need a wee bit of attention. If they aren't serviceable we need to get looking out for a pair.

We shall see about the power I guess. The guy we bought it off said 250bhp, from reading about with the mods we know about 170-80bhp seams plausible. But if that's the case being in a dodgy state of tune (which it is) could take that to anything really...150 for instance ;). Unfortunately we've not got a full list of mods on the engine. It could be bored out for all I know or have nothing at all done to it and he's a big hairy liar.

We aren't all that bothered a standard v8 would be fine for us really, but 250 would be nice ;) All will become clear when we manage to get it running for more than about 30 seconds! If we can find a rr we will get it tested I think. Just to satisfy our curiosity. Unless of course its clearly rubish, then I'll just pretend its really fast :D
 
could be fuel, as you say. If the pump isn't up to the job I suppose it could lazily fill the float bowl, then not be able to supply the demand when the engine is running. I suppose skanky fuel filters and blockages would have the same affect.
 
Turned out to be a blocked needle valve. SHE RUNS!!!!! Slightly dodgily as the timings still set oddly but ITS ALIVE!!!!

Had a good afternoons work on it on sunday freed up the back drums, fixed the handbrake, cleaned out the needle valves (full of grunge) and few other bits and pieces and drove it round the car park

From not managing to get above 10mph she seems good. She goes forwards and backwards, no worrying clunks as it goes into gear, she stops and she goes round corners. Dunno about 2nd or 3rd but its looking good for this gearbox! We were a bit worried about that as we'd no idea what condition the transmission was in, good it seams!

We do still have quite a list of things before she is mot ready though.
  • dodgy seatbelts
  • throttle sticking to the point of being useless
  • couple of leaks in the right hand side exhaust (possibly the manifold but I hope not) and a couple of mountings
  • leaking cooling system around the heater bits
  • one new headlight
  • new fuel pump (my mg one is clearly another source of my fuel leak, its oozing fuel out of the side)
  • fix the stereo :eek:
  • a few bits of tuning on the engine (plugs, timing, praps valve clearances, idle adjustment is all to pot too, and there's no choke cable)
  • various split hoses
BUT all the lights work (bar the busted bulb) the electric windows work, all the gauges (bar the tacho which we've messed with the wiring for) work, the heater fan works, the kenlow fan works, the wipers and washers work, even the clock works! In short most of the car WORKS!
 
Glad you got it going! Don't think I'd enjoy driving next to that dock with a seatbelt that won't undo and a sticking throttle though! ;)
 
Its OK I wasn't doing the throttle. My mate was lying on the front wing reaching in and doing that for me....so the bonnet was up. Good job the brakes work!
 
Bit of progress. I rewired the mess of an ignition circuit and now not only can we start it with a key but we can switch it off again! We've got a tacho AND all the lights work! We even have a horn! The luxury! Managed to stop a fiddle water leak out of the heater pipes which are nicely inaccessible.

Took the carbs apart again to clean out the needle valves and fitted a filter because they kept gumming up. The throttle linkage isn't particularly effective but it just about works. We had a go with it on the road to the mot. Good lord it was grumpy! It had no go and by my reckoning I got it down to 2 cylinders. On the upside it both stops and changes gear quite nicely, I think we've got all three. Managed 50mph although it wasn't pleased about it.

Took it to the mot centre to find out how big the fail sheet was and were pleasantly surprised. The chassis is good and the suspension (which is a bit flakey) passed bar one bush. Unfortunately it needs a new steering rack but we picked one of those up off ebay for £40 delivered. The discs are a bit corroded but the swines at reliant made sure you had to dismantle the hubs and take out the bearings to replace them. So I'm tempted just to keep buying pads seeing as they are £20 a set and disks are £40 EACH plus bearings probably and a lot of swearing and machine those disks into submision!

Unfortunately I'm going to a conference next week so I've got no time to do anything.

Interestingly when we did the compression test we found its got around 110 dry all round, so either its a very uniformly broken high compression engine or a low compression (as the engine number would suggest). Which is odd if its got the vitesse heads as I'd expect that to put the compression up. So all bets are off as to what's inside this engine and how much power there is. Its still not running well enough to get a feel, we've probably got about 40 at the moment :p
 
DingleBerry said:
Which is odd if its got the vitesse heads as I'd expect that to put the compression up.
Click to expand...

Tess heads wont increase the compression, on the smaller (3.5/3.9) Rovers its only the pistons that would decide it. The 4.6 heads are different though.
It could be a Range Rover bottom end, with tess heads and composite gaskets = low compression, or stuck rings? (if its been sitting a while) Did you try a wet reading as well?
 
No I didn't do the reading and he didn't know about doing wet tests. I might do one on one of the cylinders to see what happens. Its quite consistent throughout all 8 so I'd be surprised if it was stuck rings. I'd be expecting a lot of smoke then too which we simply aren't getting. Its just running rough, but the timing is set by ear and the carbs aren't balanced so roughness is to be expected. We aren't 100% sure we've got the right dizzy either (it came with 2).

That's interesting about the heads, I just assumed that it would change the compression with the head design too so we'd end up with something half way. Its a 25g00000, which puts its origins in a sherpa, which tallies with the police van heritage the guy we bought it off told us it had. I'm presuming the low compression engines had lower power outputs which makes that 250bhp look even more distant :( still even if its got 150 it will look and sound the part and go well enough.


For those that care:
25G00000 Sherpa 310MB 8.13:1cr 1988
 
DingleBerry said:
For those that care:
25G00000 Sherpa 310MB 8.13:1cr 1988
Click to expand...

310Meg? Wow, thats some decent storage, for an engine :D

Iain's right, it's the pistons that govern compression, well that and the gasket. The pre 4.2/4.6 (up to around '94 or so, I think) heads were 36cc, while the later heads were 28cc. The gasket should be the thinner tin version as well. If you take the heads off, dont replace the gasket with a composite one. They're supposed to be better, but reduce the compression even more as they're much thicker than the standard tin ones.

What's the block look like? You *may* be able to get it cross drilled, depending on the type, which would strengthen the bottom end up and eliminate the fretting issue found in all non cross bolted blocks. You can only do this with the right block though. You could then go for a pair of bellows to force all that lovely air in :D

Oh, and buy a copy of this ;)
 
Never heard of cross bolting. I take it that's to stop the engine forcing itself in two. I can try and get some photos of the engine because I've not really had a look one close up before so I wouldn't notice any difference. Its a very square block, I guess because its aluminium. Other than that I couldn't say.

I'll bear that in mid about the gaskets, we certainly don't want any less compression!

I do like the idea of forcing lovely air though...there's probably just enough room for twin turbos, a supercharger would need some messing with bonnet cutting and some horrific belt monster.
 
DingleBerry said:
Never heard of cross bolting. I take it that's to stop the engine forcing itself in two. I can try and get some photos of the engine because I've not really had a look one close up before so I wouldn't notice any difference. Its a very square block, I guess because its aluminium. Other than that I couldn't say.

I'll bear that in mid about the gaskets, we certainly don't want any less compression!

I do like the idea of forcing lovely air though...there's probably just enough room for twin turbos, a supercharger would need some messing with bonnet cutting and some horrific belt monster.
Click to expand...


No, what cross bolting does is to hold the crank end caps in place by the original set up of two bolts directly into the block (horizontally), plus another couple of bolts going in vertically on either side of the block. This stops the caps moving around under pressure and causing all sorts of horrible things to happen in your bottom end :eek:

The later blocks (4.2 and larger, I think) were all cross bolted, but there were some earlier blocks made that had the places to hold the cross bolts, but the cross bolting was never actually drilled and implemented.

Have a quick look at this

As for a blower, you may be able to fit a centrifugal type in front of the engine, if you can find one that spins the right way... not sure though
 
the 28cc heads were fitted from the "serpentine" drive belt engines onwards, to compensate for the loss of CR when fitting the composite gasket. Most of the early Serp. engines had the full height main caps and lugs for crossbolting but were not cross bolted, a slighlty cheaper and easier mod as opposed to crossbolting is to fit ARP main studs, this also stops the caps from "fretting" but doesn't quite provide the strength of the cross bolting fitted to all the later 4.6 engines. Some of the very late military 3.5 units also had the crossbolt lugs, these were very prone to slipped liners.

Your pics don't appear to be working but I think you'll probably have a multi drive belt early 3.5 block. This will not be compatible with cross bolting but would lend itself to ARP main studs.

Personally I would purchase a later 4.0 or 4.6 block (serpentine engines with larger journal crank and cross bolted) and rebuild an engine around one of these to swap out later, probably with tophatted liners. You can, as suggested, change the pistons to raise the CR or fit some kind of forced induction to your current engine. Turbos might be a tight squeeze under that bonnet, especially with the heat build up in a small place. From memory the Scimitar we had used to love overheating.


Check out this place if you haven't already, www.v-8.org.uk/forum/
 
Oh dear it appears to have come orf!
scimitar5.jpg


She's legless....after a fasion!
scimitar6.jpg


As per usual I'm making breathtakingly slow progress but progress all the same. We've rebushed that bit now, just got to get the disc sorted out and it can go back on. We've being thwarted by the damnable steering rack. We've got one bolt to got and its out and the new one can go in. Unfortunately its damn near impossible to get out. Grumble grumble! We are missing a water seal in the lower trunion that we need to find/replace/cry over.

Found a pile of rust where the seatbelt mounting is supposed to be as well so we are going to have that fixed. Fun fun fun.

If you look very closely at that second photo you might be able to make out the small flaw in the exhaust system. Its quite subtle...hardly noticable...............grr
 
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