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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 6:15 pm
by Denis247
The front suspension may need to be looked at in view of the extra weight of the Ford. I'm thinking bottoming and oversteer.

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 8:00 am
by haircutmike
I believe it is a bit heavier.

I already have supstantially uprated suspension with adjustable spring seats, so that's covered!

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 9:33 am
by kiwicar
Hi
I wouldn't worry too much about extra weight, the 302 , and especially the later 5.0L engines are light weight thin wall nodular iron blocks, compared to a later rover engine they are not very much heavier, maybe 50 or 60 lb tops with ally heads and inlet manifold. Weights for rover blocks quoted are almost always for the original 3.5 litre P6 block, they were very light, by you got to SD1 eara 3.5s they had gained about 20lb in webbing and thicker walls, by the 3.9 series came in another 10 or 15lb of metal was added to the walls, get to the 4.6/4.0 litre engines then the crank alone is about another 10lb heavier than the small journal crank and yet more on the rest of the rotating assembly (a RR flywheel is a heavy beast). Add to all this the fact the P6 had virtually no ancileries and the 289 and 302 engines would have been weighted fully dressed with power steering pumps and junk and you can see you are not comparing like with like.
By the way the 302, 289 and 5.0L ford blocks are about 1.5" narrower than the rover head to head, the 351W is about .5" narrower than the rover, the cleveland series are boat anchors!
That engine pointed to above would make a good base engine, if you don't go mad on power, the 5.0L block can be weak (but that is another debate) generally reconed to be good for about 550bhp, but the heads are better than most factory ford ones, probably with a bit of porting they could suport your 400 bhp with a good roller cam, probably do it using the factory style roller tappet guide system and lots of C/R, it would save you the cost of the ally heads, but would mean an extra 40lb weight.
If you rea looking at ally heads some companies are making what are are being caller "boss V3" heads, these are Ford Clevelend style heads, but with V4 style exhaust ports and V2 style inlet ports (hence the V3 referance) the Boss bit is that they have the extra holes drilled so you can use them on Windsor blocks (like the old US Boss 302 engine) they have taken very little to develope and as a result they can be pretty cheep, alot of them originate from China via Australia, and although they don't get a particully good press from the US car magazines, I suspect alot of that is to do with a "4 legs good 2 legs bad" attitude the US car press have, ironically alot of US branded stuff (eagle cranks and rods for example) are made in china ard rebranded into US cardboard boxes, shipped with "US made" "american finest" all over them apart from the little bit of printing that states country of origin! :evil:
some of the US companies unpack the stuff from china, do a finnish pollish of the crank journals and then are allowed to print "made in america" all over the boxes :? . I leave you to make what you will of Chinese stuff, my crank and rods rocker gear and inlet manifold on my Chevy are all Chinese and It all looks pretty good to me, the RHS heads I have are chinese castings machined in New Zeeland purchased from Comp cams in the US with "us made" on the boxes, the valve guides were put in in the states and the valve seats finish cut there! I am not expecting any problems with the stuff as it is all atleast as good as any of the genuinly american made stuff.
Best regards
Mike

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 10:44 am
by haircutmike
More good info, boy have I some reading and digesting to do!

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 11:20 am
by SimpleSimon
Peter as Alex said above but i would have the MS ECU drive the coils directly rather than using EDIS 8 now (if MS is what you would use) direct fire of the coils had the bugs ironed out some time ago so need for the extra complexity of EDIS :) an after market ECU is no concern really on this type of project either :D