Talk:Rover V8 engine

This article is redundant with the article about the V8 engine...

What is that supposed to mean?? Does this mean it can simply be merged?? If so, why not put it on Duplicate articles?? Georgia guy 00:46, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, compare...

Seems to be the case right now, but it's more the case that detail needs to be moved out of V8 and into this article. —Morven 01:01, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

No way! The Rover V8 was the greatest peice of engineering in British history! It HAS to have its own article! Dominar_Rygel_XVI (talk) 10:51, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Um...because they bought it from GM? I hope you were being sarcastic - if not, I'd consider the Jaguar XK inline-six or the Rolls-Royce (now Bentley) V8 much higher on the list of British automotive engineering triumphs. Duncan1800 (talk) 00:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Project Iceberg

I seem to recall reading that the engines used for the late-eighties Paris-Dakar Range Rover were based around the stronger components initially made for the diesel. There was a contemporary article in CAR magazine featuring ex-F1 driver Patrick Tambay charging around a quarry in a bright-yellow example. I'll have to visit The Archives...Mr Larrington (talk) 14:10, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Another rallying connection is that the EA vans used as service vehicles by the BL rally operation in the 70s were fitted with the 3.5L V8. Mr Larrington (talk) 13:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Buick or Oldsmobile

Shifted the following question out of the article page...  Stepho  (talk) 08:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Interruption: I am confused. As I understood it in my youth the engine derived for Leyland and for Range Rover was NOT Buick but was OLDSMOBILE...which had less coolant water problems than Buick (an it has some, I can assure you) as it has an extra head stud each side....a pretty serious difference . Otherwise the motors were much the same. Tony Clancy 121.50.203.129 16:05, 30 April 2010

Isn't the "Just the same, but with one more head stud" engine the one that turned into the Repco-Brabham F1 engine? Andy Dingley (talk) 09:05, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Oldsmobile 215 and Repco-Brabham V8 has FOUR extra head studs on each head, one extra on top of each cylinder (inside of the V angle) for the total of 8 extra studs per engine. Rover V8 does not have these as it is based on Buick 215, and the Repco RB620 head will have four empty mounting holes if placed on Rover/Buick block. The public and the press were not aware of this important difference. Yiba (talk) 04:04, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Buick and Oldsmobile versions of the 215cid aluminum V8 were built from the exact same castings. Drilling and tapping of cylinder head bolt holes was a secondary operation. Any competent automotive machine shop can can easily add the eight threaded holes to convert a Buick 215 engine block to Oldsmobile specification. Considering the extensive machine work Repco did to prepare other aspects of the Repco-Brabham racing engines, drilling/tapping eight holes is trivial. Since there's probably no way to prove Repco didn't build from Buick blocks and since the difference truly is unimportant, this article shouldn't differentiate. Furthermore, explanations of differences between Oldsmobile and Buick production engines don't belong in the Racing section of an article about Rover engines. 71.33.139.75 (talk) 03:15, 16 September 2013 (UTC)Curtis Jacobson

This may be what you are talking about:

http://assets.hemmings.com/story_image/42665-500-0.jpg?rev=1

and you are correct that at one time the castings were made to be common between the two, and the above block can be drilled/tapped. However, that was not the case when Repco used the Oldsmobile block. This is how the Buick block looked originally:

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o316/donkelly23/2011%20Rebuild/DSCF6436.jpg

or:

http://www.abload.de/img/p1100594s77s.jpg

Do you see the difference? Yiba (talk) 04:07, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Acquisition by Ford

Article says "The Rover V8 remained with Land Rover until being sold to Ford by BMW", i.e. the engine was acquired by Ford. But since Land Rover was also acquired by Ford, it appears that the two were still under the same ownership. So what exactly is the author trying to tell us?

Also says "However, Land Rover wanted production of the engine to continue, and they arranged for production to restart …". If production was to restart, the reader needs to know why it ceased. Spel-Punc-Gram (talk) 05:01, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorted.Greglocock (talk) 11:01, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Predecessor

I really am quite sceptical of the statement that the predecessor to the RV8 was the BMC C-series. I can lay my hands quite easily on supporting information, but there are several key reasons why this is inaccurate. Primarily, the Rover Company had no ties with BMC at the time of the engine's acquisition or productionisation (1964 and 66 resp.), not becoming involved with the Leyland Corp until '67, and British Leyland (whereupon Leyland was joined to BMC) in '68. Furthermore, the only connexion between the RV8 and C-series is in the MG sports cars, but MGC was not directly replaced by MG BGT V8. MGC was aimed at the ex-Austin-Healey 3000 buyer to maintain a prescence in the 3-litre sports car bracket. MG BGT V8 was marketed as an upmarket GT coupe to challenge contemporary European V8 coupes, and retained the suspension setup and frontal treatment of the original MGB.

In terms of the candidate for the title of predecessor, there are two options. The first is the Rover P7 straight-six. Whilst this engine was never productionised, it had been extensively developed for production and the RV8 directly brought about the immediate winding up of the project. The P7 engine had been in development from around 1960-64, though never satisfactorily refined. It was in essence a 'stretched' version of the SOHC 1978cc 4-cylinder engine developed for the Rover 2000 (P6), giving a swept volume of 2967cc. Part of the scope of Project P6 from very early on (1957/58) was to replace the ageing IOE 4- and 6-cylinder engine family of the early Wilks era Rovers with a much more modern engine family of modular design that could be built on a single set of tooling with maximum parts crossover. Thus, the 1978cc 4-cylinder engine of the Rover 2000 has all of its ancillary components gathered in an auxiliary drive housing driven by an intermediate chain wheel at the front of the engine, making the engine 'extendable' with nothing more involved than the addition of two cylinders to the block- and head-casting moulds, and the use of longer crank and cam shafts. It would appear that the initiation of this dual engine family brought an end to the experimental V6 engine designs that were trialled for P5 before its launch, and probably suggests that the underwhelming F-head 3-litre that P5 was launched with was always viewed only as stop-gap. The P6 was launched as Rover 2000, with plans to launch P7 (a long-nose 2000 with the 3-litre engine) as Rover 3000 circa 1965 (so-called to distinguish it from the P5 'Rover 3-litre', and simultaneously providing the origin of the P6 name '2000').

In view of the fact that P7 was never launched, the V8 therefore directly replaced the P5 6-cylinder engine as the Rover offering for the 3-litre bracket. And there are strong grounds to argue direct succession: if the P7 engine was always intended to be fitted to P5, then the same business case created the P5B, merely substituting the RV8 engine design for the P7.

Dissatisfaction with the power-to-weight ratio of the P7 engine (possibly due to the length of time required to refine the aborted EFi system then in development), and the ready availability of the Buick V8 were the grounds for this substitution, and the modular engine family design was not proceeded with (although a modular scheme was designed around the V8 to give a 4-cyl slant-four derivative in the early 1970s). Thus the highly advanced (for the time) 2000 engine remained unique to P6.

Therefore, the RV8 is unequivocally linked primarily to the independent Rover Company's desire to remain competitive in the 3-litre luxury saloon class in the mid-1960s, and secondarily to answer the performance shortcomings of its P5 saloon. In my view, the 2995cc P5 straight-six engine is therefore the best candidate for the label 'predecessor', although I accept that the breadth of the engine's application over the years generates a long list of older engines that were 'replaced' by the RV8 in various model line ups. Please do challenge me if you feel differently. I will seek out the sources necessary to support this position. Mja58 (talk) 16:11, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Mja58 that BMC C-Series is inappropriate as the predecessor of Rover V8. I would also respect his judgement on whether P5 or P7 engine should be listed as the predecessor. However, this choice poses an interesting question; "Is 'Predecessor/Successor' of an engine defined in terms of heritage/lineage on 1. Design, 2. Manufacture/Production, or, 3. Market Positioning?"

I tend to value the Design heritage, but at the same time, I am aware that most engine articles have taken the Market Positioning approach, which is inherited from Car Model articles.

This would ultimately lead to "Who is the target of Wiki articles? / How do we define an Average Wiki User?", but my opinion is that the subject/field of an article defines the target reader, so that the engine articles should cater to a more technically inclined group of readers than car model articles do. I would like to see the "Infobox automobile engine" Template discarded.

Separately, Mja58, could you add P7 section in the P6 article, building on:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_P6&prev=/search%3Fq%3DRover%2BP7%26safe%3Doff%26rlz%3D1C1GGGE_jaJP422JP422

please? How about "Rover P7 engine" and "Morris Six engine"? I don't know much about these and the info you provided above is quite enlightening. Yiba (talk) 05:39, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Yiba. I agree this choice does indeed pose an interesting question. I also agree with your assessment that an article's subject matter often defines the reader, and feel your method of categorising 'lineage' is quite effective and succinct.

With that in mind, I would suggest the following for discussion:

Design. The RV8 design was a linear development of the GM design, and in that respect is the 'design successor' to the GM unit. Often the extent to which the engine was 'Roverised' is overlooked, but the development and refinement work was reasonably thorough in the three years prior to launch.

Manufacture/Production. Arguably the GM unit is predecessor in this sense as well, owing to the use of the same production machinery (which was imported from the US). However, in a product planning and production sense, it directly brought about an end to the pre-war IOE engine family, the only remnant of which by the time of the RV8's acquisition was the 3-litre P5 unit.

Market Positioning. Unequivocally the original purpose of the engine was to secure Rover's competitive presence in the 3-litre and above classes. Originally this role was intended to be fulfilled by the P7 3000, but as this was never productionised, it isn't a suitable candidate for a market predecessor. In many ways, the P7 3000 project was substituted by the RV8 project, and in that sense reasonably fulfilled many of the same purposes. But from a market perspective, P6B appeared ex nihilo, there being no production 3-litre+ P6 before the launch of P6B.

I feel it is important in any discussion on predecession to regard only the original development, application and positioning of the engine by the Rover Company circa 1967-8. Beyond this, the breadth of the engine's application somewhat distorts any clarity surrounding its provenance and origins in the British Motor Industry. The same argument may be applied to the BMC A-series, for example, which over the course of eight years or so gradually replaced many old pre-war engines in a multitude of models, such that it becomes difficult to determine the original scope of its purpose as a 'successor' to the many legacy designs. Unlike the A-series, however, the RV8 was bought and developed exclusively for Rover use in a pre-BL landscape. Future models were dependent on it (not least Range Rover, which had been hitherto marginalised and never seriously developed through lack of suitable engine - a deciding factor in market positioning), but P5 was the only current presence in the 3-litre market at the time in question. It therefore seems reasonable to classify the P5 engine as the Market Predecessor, and (if desired) GM as the 'Design Origins'.

I will gladly add what information I can about P7 to that article. Thanks Mja58 (talk) 12:38, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Updated Predecessor as per discussion.Mja58 (talk) 11:49, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Looking further into amendments to the infobox, can I suggest the following for dicussion:

Production 1967-2006

This is an article about the engine in heavily revised Rover form, so earlier production is not relevant or accurate. This is covered by the Buick 215 article.

Predecessor

I have requested on the Talk page for the automobile engine infobox template that a new category of 'Designer' be added. This will be of relevance and value for many of the 20th Century engine designs, and in this case would permit the GM connexion to be referenced more accurately. I would propose:

"Designer - General Motors (1959/60), Rover (1965-67)".

This could then facilitate the deletion of the "Also Called Buick 215" field, which is inaccurate. By that measure, the Triumph 1500 engine would be "also called" Standard 8, when the development in the interim years was sufficient for the engines to share almost nothing in terms of tooling or componentry. An RV8 is definitely not a Buick 215 - even the casting method was altered. This also adds to my above argument that Production should count from 1967 onwards, with the general purpose being to differentiate the Rover-ised engine from its design origins in line with what I believe is the scope of the article.

How do we feel about that sort of change (provided Designer can be added to the infobox)?Mja58 (talk) 12:31, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

---

I would say the proposed change is an improvement over the current way. However, a Designer is a person and not a company, so

"Under development by - General Motors (1959/60), Rover (1965-67)"

is more appropriate. For example,

"Designer - Gioacchino Colombo"

on "Ferrari 125 engine" is correct, but GM and Rover are not designers. We don't call someone, who designs the changes on minor aspects of an engine, a designer. He/she is a development engineer.

If we are going to retain the infobox on engines, then basic characteristics like

"Total Displacement"

"Number of Cylinders"

"Cylinder Configuration"

"Number of Camshafts"

"Cylinder Bore"

"Stroke"

"Valve Configuration"

"Number of Valves per Cylinder"

should be on it, don't you think? If it is difficult to do so, then I am against keeping the infobox. Yiba (talk) 05:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

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Beware that the engine infobox is used in two ways - one is to represent the entire family (for shared features) at the top of the article and the other way is for each individual engine (for different bore, stroke, etc).  Stepho  talk  08:07, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

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Thanks. That is a very good point. I could not find an engine article that uses the infoboxes in both ways, but you are right may be we should be discussing "Infobox on engine family" and "Infobox on an engine" separately. May be "Infobox for engine family" should be created. Yiba (talk) 02:57, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

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Hmm, took me longer than I thought to find an example but here it is: Toyota AR engine. Coincidently, the AR has two predecessors listed, the S engine family that it generally replaced in vehicles and the AZ engine family that it took its technology from. There used to be two separate templates (one for family, one for each engine within the family) but they were practically identical, so we joined them together a few years back).  Stepho  talk  04:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

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Thanks a lot. I learned for the first time Toyota AR has iron sleeves cast in the aluminium block. Very interesting. And, more importantly, I didn't know the engine family Infobox used to exist separately.

Now that I see the Infobox on Rover V8 is for the family, and (I hope) there is the probability of someone adding Infoboxes on each displacement, I don't feel as bad about having the Infobox on this family that does not describe any technical feature. The "family" should normally include Buick 215, but I wouldn't argue for it, as that would make a mess out of the whole thing.

But I remain firm on the opinion that a "Designer" should be a person, or a specific group of people, which are becoming near-impossible to define on modern engines. A Mazda engineer told me that Jaguar AJ-V8 was mostly designed in Dearborn by Ford engineers, but its combustion chamber and port designs were done in Hiroshima using Mazda's super-computer by Mazda engineers. (He says the design lineage goes back to Mazda 929/MPV V6. He also says Aston Martin V12 used the same combustion chamber design at least originally.)

I would love to know who belonged to Austin Design Office from what year to what year, and what designs came out of the office in what years. David Bache article would be a good place to start, but I know so little about the subject that I don't know where to go from there.

Credit for achievements should go to the people who deserve, not who paid their salary, which should be clear when we think about Alec Issigonis.

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yiba (talk • contribs) 13:44, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

displacements near of 6.3 L (383.4 cu in)

< possibly even displacements near of 6.3 L (383.4 cu in), though the latter has not been tested in practice as of yet.>

Never mind practice; how is this achieved even in theory without the pistons welding themselves together or the crankshaft and camshaft attempting to be in the same place at the same time?

(in other words: )

86.142.118.81 (talk) 14:11, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

displacement

Baldy Bill has just changed the displacement from 3532cc to 3528cc. His sources are usually reliable. However, there are also equally reliable sources out there that give 3532cc. Using the given metric figures for bore (88.9 mm) and stroke (71.0 mm), we get (88.9/2)*(88.9/2)*3.14159*71.0*8/1000=3525.667 cc. But using the imperial figures converted to metric (25.4 mm = 1") we get 3.50"=88.9mm and 2.8"=71.12mm. Which gives (88.9/2)*(88.9/2)*3.14159*71.12*8/1000=3531.626 cc. Rounding the 2.8" to 71.1mm gives (88.9/2)*(88.9/2)*3.14159*71.0*8/1000=3530.633 cc. I'm not sure where the 3528 cc figure comes from but assuming 88.9 mm bore and 3528 cc we require a stroke of 71.04 mm, which seems wrong. So, which figures do we use?  Stepho  talk  00:01, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

• Hi Stepho, thanks for the helpful input and calculations. I thought it wouldn't be a contentious edit as no sources were referenced inline for the 3532cc figure, however of course we aim to have the most accurate possible information so I am open to correction by reliable sources. If equally weighted sources are available then I would suggest the way forward would be to list both possible capacities, source(s) inline after the stated capacities and wording along the lines of "variouly quoted as...". The reason I noticed the figure is simply that back in my pre-teen days when the Rover SD1 was a new car both a Rover Vitesse and a Range Rover Vogue were high on the list for the imaginary dream car garage, so I had pored over the Rover brochures and the magazines of the day many times and the 3528 figure is burned in my mind. Just because it is burned in does not mean it is correct, hence the quest to read through several sources and pick two to reference in the article. I did have a brief hunt around on search engines to see if any archivists had scanned in Rover's then-published figures, to no avail so far. What I did find were several sites mirroring the Wikipedia text, as so often happens! I suppose the vagueness can arise from it being 0.5ml per cylinder in question - barely a vaccination's worth - so a metric-to-imperial conversion factor and decimal rounding, squared, could easily account for that much and Rover's own sales staff may have been working from erroneous figures. Baldy Bill (sharpen the razor|see my reflection) 18:45, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

You’re not the only one; 3528 cc has been firmly wedged in my head-branez since about 1970. Mr Larrington (talk) 19:23, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

I looked for some period brochures and found some at https://www.roverownersclub.com.au/rover-history-in-australia/rover-sales-brochures/

They consistently say bore 3.5" (88.9mm) x stroke 2.8" (71.12mm) for 215cuin (3528cc), which at least agrees with your memory.

Yet the numbers still don't work out. The bore and stroke conversions are exact using 1" = 25.4mm . Using imperial figures and formula stroke*stroke*pi*bore*cylinders, we get (3.5/2)*(3.5/2)*3.14159*2.8*8 = 215.513074 cuin, which converts to 3531.6xxx cc. If I use the metric figures then I get the same answer. But the UK used 1"=25.399977mm until 1930. Perhaps somebody at Rover did all the calcs in imperial, then looked up an old conversion table, rounded it to 25.39, got 3527.4 and rounded that 3528. I feel like I should be mentioning Jupiter ascending in Pisces and adding your granny's age but I can't find any other rational explanation.

So, my best guess is that Rover did indeed advertise it as 3528cc but that this is actually a bad metric conversion and that some aftermarket suppliers gave the correct figure.

We went through a similar process with the Ford 302 V8. Ford US advertised it as a 5.0 L engine when its capacity was actually 4940cc. So, technically it's a 4.9 L V8. When we started changing articles to list it as a 4.9 L we got a lot of kick back but eventually we settled on actual capacity overriding advertised capacity.  Stepho  talk  02:45, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Another IP has been making the change 3528 -> 3532 lately. I agree with the math, but I am as mystified as anyone else in how they calculated this. I keep seeing this engine referred to as 215.3 cuin as well, which converts to 3528cc. Which doesn't really help. Also, why did Buick call it a 215 if it's 215.51; it should have been called a 216. Anyhow, there are lots of period and current references for 3528, so I think that us or other websites doing their own math kinda sorta becomes WP:OR.  Mr.choppers | ✎  20:19, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Stepho-wrs: Really stretching here, but if you presume that someone at BL converted 2.8 to a fraction, then 2+51⁄64 in (2.797 in; 71.04 mm) gives a displacement of 215.27 cu in (3,527.6 cc). This is my best guess, but it remains a theory unless we find some early Rover publication which refers to the stroke as a fraction. In any case, this discrepancy jives with all my notions regarding the British car industry - one engineer uses mm, one uses decimal inches, while a third uses fractions, and thus the engine leaks oil at all times.  Mr.choppers | ✎  20:36, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, this keeps gnawing at my OCD nature. I checked a number of Rover brochures from the 1970s-1990s. The 3528 cc figure is rock solid consistently reported by the company in all its literature. Same for the bore and stroke figures. If only they agreed :( Without measuring it myself (not allowed under WP guidelines and I don't have an engine anyway), I have no way to choose which set of figures is correct. Perhaps we should add a sentence saying that the reported capacity and the reported bore x stroke don't quite match and leave it at that.  Stepho  talk  02:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

An encyclopedia is not a collection of the most popular beliefs. The act of editing Wikipedia articles is a result of research by the editor with the originality resting with that person. --a form of original research. So WP:OR does not prohibit original research per se. In order to promote accuracy, WP:OR enforces verifiability to fight against our own inaccurate beliefs, and that policy is not there to discourage the effort to sniff the truth out of a pile of junk ad copies and news articles written with various degree of popularism   --this quest for the truth, I believe and admire, is what  Stepho  is doing.

I consider the truth should prevail over inaccurate popular belief in Wikipedia articles (with or without editor consensus) no matter how many "reliable sources" can be quoted against (granted, the fact these sources exist should be included in the article). If the discussion is on the change of article title from "Rover 215 engine" to "Rover 216 engine", it's a totally different story. Please realize WP:CALC states doing our own math does NOT make it an original research as defined by Wikipedia. Yiba (talk | contribs) 09:26, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Yiba and Stepho-wrs: For sure - what's complicated is when published materials and mathematics disagree. For now I agree with Stepho in mentioning that bore x stroke calculates to 3532, but leaving it 3528 throughout because that is what reliable sources state. After all, a .08 mm difference in bore should fall within BL's no doubt ample tolerances back then so who knows if 3528 isn't actually correct after all. Meanwhile, Rover's "4.2" and TVR's 4.3 have identical engine dimensions (94.0 x 77.0) but their claimed displacements are 4275 and 4280cc respectively. Headaches aplenty. Best,  Mr.choppers | ✎  17:27, 23 May 2023 (UTC)