1963 Humber Sceptre V8

Bookmarked with anticipation

Seem to recall that the sceptre had an impressive dashboard instrument display.

Rovers are a very tight fit in an MGB; just look at what is required to get the exhausts down under the car. The chassis rails sweep up, and in, in a similar manner to the Superminx.

MGBs do benefit from a low, front mounted steering rack, unlike the Rootes cars which use a box. And they have the centre tie rod over the top of the bell housing, which makes the pitman and idler arms use a lot of space. The Tiger ditches that in favour of rack mounted near the radiator with the track rods pointing backwards, but that  leads to very poor geometry. Access to the rear spark plugs is very poor too, even though the SB Ford is usefully smaller than a Rover V8

Is a V8 really essential? Rovers aren't particularly powerful unless you spend a lot of money. A modern NA 2.0l four cylinder makes more power than most stock Rovers and are cheaper and easy to fit.

MGB Front Track 49 inches ...

Sceptre Front Track 52 inches ...

bum

When I first decided to fit the RV8 to my Sceptre it soon became apparent that it would not fit without modifications to the shell for a number of reasons.
The engine itself barely fits between the front chassis rails as they curve inwards quite considerably. Manifolds would be difficult, I reckon you'd have to have them running forward TVR fashion. The Sceptre's steering box, drag and drop links are all in the way. To sit the engine in front of the existing bulkhead means that there is not enough room to hang the ancilliaries off the front of the engine and for the radiator. If you are using the LT77 gearbox, or the later R380 I suspect, the transmission tunnel isn't big enough for the bellhousing, let alone the starter motor. Also the fron crossmember does not run straight across the car but is curved, handy for the V* sump but not so for the oil filter, though you could of course fit a remote filter.

All of this means that you have to cut the shell which immediately places you in BIVA territory. This was why I decided to go the whole hog and build the car to BIVA spec with a complete new chassis and floor as in the pics I posted earlier. Taking that decision, gives me a pretty free hand to change as many other things as I want as retaining 'points' no longer matters. However it does present other challenges, such as glass for example, but none of this has so far proved unsolvable.

Good luck with your build.

That's why we fitted this




to a friend's MGB. It's a 3.0l V6 and manual gearbox out of Omega, running stock management and a Vectra sump. W made exhaust manifolds as none of the stock ones fit due to the chassis rails sweeping in and over the front subframe as I mentioned previously. With the back of the engine in the stock location, the front pulley is several inches further back, and the gear lever comes out though the stock hole. Rated at 208hp, it makes more power than claimed for all but the very biggest Rovers. Engine weight is only a few Kg more than the stock B-series, so that's true of the Rootes 4 cylinder too.

I bought the engine etc several years ago for another project, and sold it to Ian for £300

Really you need to decide what you want the car to be and determine a spec from there, if it's just about increasing performance then the easiest option is to stick to the current format and fit a modern turbo 4 cyl engine, plenty out there that make 300hp easily enough, should be able to fit that with minimal modifications to the shell, on the other hand if you want the V8 soundtrack rather than outright performance then go for it, if you can get the basic rv8 engine and box to fit front end drives exhausts sumps etc can all be made to fit one way or another. If you want both then the U.S v8 is probably the way to go finding the parts can be a struggle over here and it will probably end up costing more but the end result would be fantastic.

The other thing to think about is whether you are prepared to go down the BIVA route, this allows you pretty much a free hand on suspension steering engine gear box and cutting the body shell but does cost and means many other things like glass, radii on switches steering wheel instruments etc have to meet modern standards. If you decide BIVA is not for you, you can only do minor mods to the body (nothing which affects the structure) and must keep to the original suspension layout. (there's a points system and the .gov website which explains it all)

yep an AJ 30 looks good, but it really long for a v6 unless you use a different inlet

Ford 302 W 18.75" L 27.5" H 20.7" Rover 3.5 W 30" L 33.2" H 28"