The V8 Owners Forum -

I am sure I could get one to run with spitting petrol into the intake and manually touching a wire onto the battery for ignition....well not that easily but close.

The trouble seems to be that they run when set up badly! Slap some SU's on them, stick a knackered old dizzy in and she fires! It's only now that I have a new dizzy (actually a fancy 123 ignition one!) and refurnished SU's that I can see how well the V8 can be made to perform!

She was running before but only at about 50% potential!

Biggest improvement by a long long way was getting the ignition working correctly.

Too true. With a worn out cam, leaking head gaskets, and shot ignition, they still run like a sewing machine....

Chris.

They produce pretty good dyno figures when running on 7 cylinders too.

What worried me was how much money you could spend on performance parts to get improvements when you just had to get the basics right!
I have a pretty standard 3.5 with just a cam and now the ignition. The bum dyno could not believe the difference with the ignition! The old ignition seemed to run OK.
Mine would not allow the engine to idle below around 700rpm without missing. I think shaft wobble was causing it, now she will idle at 300rpm, not pleasant but without missing!

Will Reeve wrote:What worried me was how much money you could spend on performance parts to get improvements when you just had to get the basics right!

I think there's a lot in what you say there. I'm sure people have rebuilt motors with lots of trick parts, and for sure the result has been a massive improvement. But so would a completely stock build!

Chris.