Book: Classic Rovers 1945 - 1986

R

richarduk

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Just brought this of eBay came today. Very good loads of p6 stuff in it. Picture of the 5 cyclinder engine which states it was dropped as the TC produced the same amount of power. Also says rover did a slanted twin cam 2200 engine with fuel injection that produced 170 BHP! Nice pic of the EFI p6 prototype engine bay too. Looked like a nicer setup than the SD1 efi setup. Also has a picture of one of the 6 cyclinder prototype cars, wow quite an extension on the front to get it to fit. :)
 
richarduk said:
Do you think it would be ok to scan in and post the odd picture from the book on here?
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I can't see why not Richard. The book is out of print.

You really need a copy of the James Taylor 'Rover P6' book as well. Although rather peppered with errors, it's an essential read, but pricey to get hold of.
 
That slant 4 twin cam sounds interesting. I can't say that I have heard about it before. Any further info would certainly be nice (e.g. does the book give any details on type of fuel injection used)?
 
The twin cam was Rover's engine for the P10 replacement for P6. At that stage it was still a wholly Rover project and was running in parallel to Triumph's replacement for the 2000/2500 saloon. Then BL got involved and merged the two projects together with the P8 Uber saloon to create SD1; Rover styling and V8, Triumph sixes and BMC penny pinching and quality. The twin cam was designed to be built on the same production tooling as the existing P6 four, consequently bore spacings were the same. Capacity went out to 2200. When this engine was cancelled in favour of the Triumph engines it donated it's bore size to the P6 to produce the 2200 we now know. That suggests that the engine must have been pretty close to production for the revised boring tools already to be in place.

Injection was not a novelty for Rover. '70 model year Rover fours - and of course the V8 - should have come out with injection. Again cancelled by dear old auntie BL. The 3500 was to be known as the 3500EI. KiwiRover has a copy of the 1969 maintenance manual for the injected four and factory photographs of four cylinder cars running various injection set-ups exist from late '66 on. The system finally chosen was a very close antecedent of the Lucas injection subsequently used on the SD1 and on Maestro/Montego O series and 216 Vitesse S series engines. At the time the manufacturer was known as Bryco, of Leamington, but was very shortly after swallowed into the Lucas empire.

I have a secret ambition to one day reverse engineer a set of O series injection back onto a 2200TC

Chris
 
[quote="NickDunning"You really need a copy of the James Taylor 'Rover P6' book as well. [/quote]

Got it! :) Thats how I found out my P6 was one of the last 2000's. Only a couple of numbers off from the very last one.
 
Here you go. :)

//Real odd ball engine.
5Cyclinder.jpg


//Nice EFi setup.
EFIv8.jpg


//How long is your nose?
6pot.jpg
 
Now you know where I get at least some of my information from! You do need to be careful when reading Taylor. Sometimes you only get half the facts and sometimes the interpretation is a bit off. For instance, photo'd above he shows a proposed badge for the 3500EI. What escapes is that there are also badges around scripted as "3500S lucas fuel injection". You really do need to know the latter in order to interpret the former. Likewise that there was a production ready 2000 injection at the same time. Only then can you start to see what Rover were really planning.

My interpretation of the above? Rover were setting out to have another serious crack at the US market. They needed injection to do that. Thus "3500S lucas fuel injection" is the badge intended for the S2 version of the NADA 3500S. Likely as not there would have been an S2 fuel injected Federal TC as well. Having committed to production of injection equipment for the US, it then makes sense to have a worthwhile production volume of the injection equipment by having UK market versions also. Hence 3500EI and (presumeably) 2000EI. What in fact happened was that BL pulled the plug on the US market and took the opportunity to cancel the UK injection cars also. You won't find that in Taylor.

Similarely there is a write up in Taylor about Talago P6/16 - the car about to go to auction. What is said seems to be true, but it isn't the complete story.

Chris
 
I did notice that in the book there was a lot about the IOE engine and all it's develpments but very little back story from where the P6 4 pot came from. Seems to have just materalised out of thin air. The injection system could go some way to explain why the TC head was made to take a seperate manifold instead of just being like the SC head but with two mounting points for carbs, which I would have though would have been more cost effective.

Also he sugests that the 5 pot and 6 pot engines were cut and shut engines, I find that hard to belive.
 
The TC was initially built as a race engine essentially. Prototypes were used in the factory rally cars so the head and intake was designed for optimum performance, not cost. It is safe to assume that simply bolting a second carb onto an SC motor and retaining the SC intake and exhaust design would not have made a significant difference to the performance. Besides, in '64 Rover were not just about making a profit! They were still interested in doing things right.
The 5 and 6 cylinder versions of the P6 motor were most definitely cut and shut. You can see the weld marks on the block, head, rocker cover and sump. Only the crank and cam shafts would have been specially made.
 
The block really wouldn't be too much of a problem. The techniques exist today to stitch it back together reasonably easily. And don't forget Rover would have done it before machining on a bare casting so the accuracy of the join has some leeway. The difficult one is the head! Stitching an aluminium cast together is much much more difficult. Again you'd ahve the advantage of doing it prior to machining, but even so, a considerable achievement.

Not that I'm volunteering you understand!

At one stage one of the Five cylinder engines was in the possesion of the Owners Club. I wonder what happened to it?

Chris
 
chrisyork said:
The twin cam was designed to be built on the same production tooling as the existing P6 four, consequently bore spacings were the same. Capacity went out to 2200. When this engine was cancelled in favour of the Triumph engines it donated it's bore size to the P6 to produce the 2200 we now know.
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Just wondered which Triumph engines it was cancelled in favour of and did the Triumph engine/s go into production (e.g. I am thinking of the Triumph slant 4 as used in Dololmite Sprint)?

BL was surely the worst thing that happened to Rover... Cannot help but wonder what kind of cars Rover might have on the road today if they had just been left alone to develop new cars without BL interference.

I always thought that at least they pretty much left the P6 alone. However, your info on engine development makes me wonder if a revised P6 could have stayed in production past '77?
 
JVY said:
Cannot help but wonder what kind of cars Rover might have on the road today
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Possibly something like the new shape 75? Was parked next to one the other day, same colour as mine. You really could see the family resemblance, really nice to see that. Who ever designed it I'm sure must have looked at the P5 / P6, there are quite a few echoes of both in there.
 
The Triumph engines that replaced the P10 2.2 Twin Cam in the SD1 were the 2300 and 2600 sixes. It should be remembered that SD1 was significantly bigger than P10, not least as it seems to have been based on the floor pan for the P8 Uber saloon, whose tooling had already been delivered. These Triumph engines were reworkings of the old Triumph 2000 and 2500 sixes using the head technology developed on the slant 4. Aside from the well known problems that plagued them in service - which could no doubt have been easily fixed if anyone had had the will to do so - they were potentially very good engines. The 2600 as put into production had had to be deliberately strangled with chokes in the inlet manifolds to keep its power output sufficiently below that of the V8. When I worked at Vauxhalls these engines were under development and we got to hear all about them via the firms making the castings for them. There was evidently a 24 valve version using Dolomite Sprint type single cam valve gear. That one would presumeably have made Rover's V8 look very silly. But then Rover had already done the 4.4ltr for P8 by that stage, so presumeably the V8 could have been kept one step ahead. That would have made quite a line up of Super Saloons wouldn't it! I suspect BL's vision for SD1 was more as a replacement for the Austin Westminster!

Chris
 
richarduk said:
Possibly something like the new shape 75? Was parked next to one the other day, same colour as mine. You really could see the family resemblance, really nice to see that. Who ever designed it I'm sure must have looked at the P5 / P6, there are quite a few echoes of both in there.
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When the 75 was on the drawing board the P5 belonging to the chief designer was parked in the middle of the studio for inspiration.
 
richarduk said:
[quote="NickDunning"You really need a copy of the James Taylor 'Rover P6' book as well.
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Got it! :) Thats how I found out my P6 was one of the last 2000's. Only a couple of numbers off from the very last one.[/quote]

They weren't built in number order though Richard - you'd need to sit down with the records to work out actually how far from the end it is (for example, the very last car (VVC700S) is about three pages back from the highest numbered car in the production logs)

The last 2000 was built, if my memory serves me right, on about 3rd October 1973.

Cheers
Nick
 
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