1995 Ginetta G27 4.5 V8

Not much to report on really - Did a bit of work on the V8 Dutton and the G27 which resulted in five hours on the fitting of the block hugger exhaust manifolds to the Dutton, the net result was one fitted and one returning with me for further works, and an hour or so rubbing surface rust from the front section of the G27 chassis which made a marked improvement to the aesthetic and reminded me that I still had to design the upper coil over mounting bracket.

And see the post above reminds me that I have not decided how to complete the top of the stubby drive.

Trundled down to Coventry to spend the day talking curse word and sorting out the suspension on the Green G27 - nice warm day and it was good therapy to just create.

This is what met me when I arrived. Almost prepped for the work



Holes drilled for the ARB mount - just needed the sleeves making up and welding in



A quick check of the current Caster angle that is decided by the angle of the chassis rails

Set to Zero for reference





And compare with the kick up of the front chassis rail





A paltry maximum of 3.2 degrees - once the chassis rake is taken into consideration it is less than 2.5 degrees of Caster and we want somewhere nearer to 5. A quick bit of trig meant that we needed to move the lower front bracket forward 17mm to allow us to have an extra 4 degrees of Caster to play with meaning we can adjust the caster between 3.2 and 7.2 degrees 5.2 being smack bang in the middle and a half decent start point for adjustment.

My mate cut and made the sleeves and the brackets and I threw 30% of them away and sent him back to workshop to try again to make them mostly the same! Then I welded them in whilst making efforts to correct for all the stock Ginetta misalignment.



More anti gravity welding ! - He gets the job of grinding those flat and drilling them out.





Brackets all welded in and providing far better support to the lower wishbone than before.







He can have a play with different Caster settings now with washers to pack between the wishbone bushes and when he is happy with the Caster settings I will make up custom alloy spacers - It's roughly 1 degree for every 4mm of fore adjustment - all he needs now is a box load of 3/8" penny washers.

Job done he's happy apart from bemoaning the fact that have made little progress forward on my G27 - fair cop I guess.

This isn't good - the last time I have actually recorded having worked on the G27 is back in January! No wonder my own thread has dropped off my participated list. So if April was time to button it up and get a flywheel ordered that plan failed miserably, probably because I spent they money on another Gemini! and my project time allocation went into G15 chassis works.

I don't think that my decision making was off though - 2.8 V6 Gemini or a Flywheel - even with the benefit of hindsight the outcome ranks as sound. Especially as the Gemini was considerably cheaper than a clutch and flywheel for the G27.

Progress needs to be made on this project and the reason that the engine is still not torqued up as it should be is that I have not finished the windage tray and to get that moving along I have ordered up a few bits of steel to act as stiffening ribs - welding to commence shortly.

must get some alloy sheet ordered up as I need it for almost all of the projects.

I didn’t think that a Rover would spin to seven and a half?

He sold it, not long after he got it all running correctly for a Porsche 365. I think it went to France?

How do you end up with a 4.5 engine - is that a TVR version or something ? 3.5, 3.9, 4.0(late 3.9 of you like) 4.2 and 4.6 all ring bells from the factory.
James
PS sounds like a nice engine - if expensive !

The most well known use of the 4441 was the 4.5L RV8 TVR Tuscan challenge racers - This engine is based on a similar specification.

Rover would sell new blank cranks to the specialists like TVR Power, JEE, JED, Wildcat etc. who would have them ground to suit whatever was the fancy and the tuners just tried many many options as they developed the engines from 3.0L to I think 6.0L was the biggest stretch. But going much beyond the 4.5L mark you really need to dump the Rover heads completely and fit something like the Wildcat or the TA performance heads. Up to that point the stock heads can be made to flow enough to make the power. The guy that I know is just a massive fan of the 4.5.

I was not chasing huge numbers with this build - In fact the build was not quite my idea the car was plenty quick enough with the 4.0L and only mildly ported heads but I was talked into it, I will openly admit that I did not take much convincing. The goal with this build was to nudge 300BHP and 275lbft in a car weighing around 600kg - It was enough of a handful at 230/255 675kg - What made the car so quick was that it had 190lbft of torque at 1500RPM and an absolutely flat 250lbft from 2500 - 5000.

Sorry - went on a bit there - Expensive - No argument there - Building this engine without knowing the people I know and them owing me a few favours would have been very expensive.

And 3-4 weeks later some shiny bits of metal arrive.









Figures wise this complete clutch and flywheel assembly weighs in at 9Kgs.
The weight of a standard 3.5 2WD flyweel on it's own is 14Kgs

I am not sure that the crank will realise it's there!

Rear tyres may act as the slip...
Looks like a nice bit of kit.
James