It's been awhile since I posted here. I'm now living in Thailand and doing the technical articles for the Rover P6 Club magazine by remote control internet link. Meanwhile, back in England. Lucky continues to progress quietly. He's been in the care of Colin Gould at Farringdon for some bodywork, then with Nick Dunning and is currently nearing the end of a tenure with Michael Allen. He's been on the Club trip to Ireland and now has a stainless steel rear bumper and my louvred bonnet.
Plans for the future are on hold until I have a lot more money when I turn 65..... But there's a lot of planning going on.... He will ultimately be coming out to join me in Thailand, but there's a lot of work to do before then.
This will mainly be to the engine and transmission. I think I now have a clear idea of the detailed spec for the ZF HP22/24 hybrid auto with quite a lot of tweeks over and above Warrens installation. The engine too is fairly well mapped out. It will be going LPG as its less than a third of the price of petrol here at around 12 UK pence per litre. It'd be rude not to really, wouldn't it! For a variety of reasons connected with beaurocracy here, I want to keep my original block. So he'll be getting a 4.2 litre "Iceberg" crank to take him up to around 3.8ltr. This is as square (same bore as stroke) as it's possible to get an RV8 without using bespoke components. From my perspective, that's a win, as I plan to target engine efficiency before power. (although power would be nice too...) So there will be a very free breathing top end care of 10 stud heads and Gems injection manifold to go with the beautiful exhaust he already has. The free breathing then takes care of top end power, allowing me to use a relatively soft cam for efficiency. Compression is currently planned at 11:1 so that the LPG can be full time including starting. That way I can place the LPG tank where the petrol tank currently is and keep weight away from the weak boot structure. Other efficiency tweaks will include using an electric water pump - which are available to bolt straight onto the footprint of the current engine driven one - in concert with the very clever Davies Craig controller which integrates control of both the rad fan and water pump. There'll have to be extra transmission oil cooling and an engine oil cooler along with a high capacity oil pump.
On the running gear front, I'm very dissatisfied with the quality of the SD1 Vitesse wheels currently fitted. Although they do satisfy my original remit of allowing a decent choice of tyres. So I plan to replace them with 16" Porsche "Fuchs" alloys which are dramatically lighter and available in the correct offset. But not the correct pcd.... So I will be having new hubs manufactered as an exact copy of the current ones but in aircraft spec aluminium alloy. That way I can specify whatever pcd I like and lose a bit of unsprung weight. I'm very tempted to get the dedion elbows, upper and lower de dion links and the tube done in the same material... We shall see how much cash I actually have when I get there!
Thailand is a tad hot, so I'm glad I have Herringbone cloth on the seats. But I definitely need air. And I dislike the NADA system as being overly complex. So I have a cunning plan... Inspired by our HIlux Tiger pickup which has an extremely strong fan separate from the system.. I shall nick one of those and place it above and to the right of the steering box - luckily Lucky is manual steering. This will draw from the existing heater intake and blow back into the space vacated by the Rover fan; that space to be fitted with the A/C evaporator radiator. The rest of the heater box can then function as standard. A rotary A/C pump will mount nice and low approximately where the power steering pump usually is and I shall be exploring whether we can mount the alternator low on the drivers side, both to get heavy weights down low in the car for better handling.
Any comments - particularly on the LPG, very welcome!
In the meantime, Lucky is heading to a farm in Matlock for a couple of years, where I expect we'll see him out and about towing vintage caravans. That should use up the remaining life of the BW!
Chris York
Plans for the future are on hold until I have a lot more money when I turn 65..... But there's a lot of planning going on.... He will ultimately be coming out to join me in Thailand, but there's a lot of work to do before then.
This will mainly be to the engine and transmission. I think I now have a clear idea of the detailed spec for the ZF HP22/24 hybrid auto with quite a lot of tweeks over and above Warrens installation. The engine too is fairly well mapped out. It will be going LPG as its less than a third of the price of petrol here at around 12 UK pence per litre. It'd be rude not to really, wouldn't it! For a variety of reasons connected with beaurocracy here, I want to keep my original block. So he'll be getting a 4.2 litre "Iceberg" crank to take him up to around 3.8ltr. This is as square (same bore as stroke) as it's possible to get an RV8 without using bespoke components. From my perspective, that's a win, as I plan to target engine efficiency before power. (although power would be nice too...) So there will be a very free breathing top end care of 10 stud heads and Gems injection manifold to go with the beautiful exhaust he already has. The free breathing then takes care of top end power, allowing me to use a relatively soft cam for efficiency. Compression is currently planned at 11:1 so that the LPG can be full time including starting. That way I can place the LPG tank where the petrol tank currently is and keep weight away from the weak boot structure. Other efficiency tweaks will include using an electric water pump - which are available to bolt straight onto the footprint of the current engine driven one - in concert with the very clever Davies Craig controller which integrates control of both the rad fan and water pump. There'll have to be extra transmission oil cooling and an engine oil cooler along with a high capacity oil pump.
On the running gear front, I'm very dissatisfied with the quality of the SD1 Vitesse wheels currently fitted. Although they do satisfy my original remit of allowing a decent choice of tyres. So I plan to replace them with 16" Porsche "Fuchs" alloys which are dramatically lighter and available in the correct offset. But not the correct pcd.... So I will be having new hubs manufactered as an exact copy of the current ones but in aircraft spec aluminium alloy. That way I can specify whatever pcd I like and lose a bit of unsprung weight. I'm very tempted to get the dedion elbows, upper and lower de dion links and the tube done in the same material... We shall see how much cash I actually have when I get there!
Thailand is a tad hot, so I'm glad I have Herringbone cloth on the seats. But I definitely need air. And I dislike the NADA system as being overly complex. So I have a cunning plan... Inspired by our HIlux Tiger pickup which has an extremely strong fan separate from the system.. I shall nick one of those and place it above and to the right of the steering box - luckily Lucky is manual steering. This will draw from the existing heater intake and blow back into the space vacated by the Rover fan; that space to be fitted with the A/C evaporator radiator. The rest of the heater box can then function as standard. A rotary A/C pump will mount nice and low approximately where the power steering pump usually is and I shall be exploring whether we can mount the alternator low on the drivers side, both to get heavy weights down low in the car for better handling.
Any comments - particularly on the LPG, very welcome!
In the meantime, Lucky is heading to a farm in Matlock for a couple of years, where I expect we'll see him out and about towing vintage caravans. That should use up the remaining life of the BW!
Chris York
