Stiver3

Hi,
To clear a massive debate with my mate, i personally love this car, apart from the stickers..its a laguna with a TVR Twin Turb V8!, but my mate doesnt think that it all ads up! my mate wants to know how the 'funk' it was converted from front to rear/4wd drive, how it copes and proper proof of the project....i personally reckon it would be about 4.5-5secs-60 with this power and genuinely believe the story...Help me!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....4535446749&rd=1

NotoriousREV

Well it says it has an Andy Robinson rollcage. Andy Robinson build chassis' for proper dragsters so I'd be willing to bet he did a little more on this project than just building the cage for it.

For £10,000 it's a bit of a bargain, but I'd respray it immediately

pete1977

this cars got potential to be an awesome sleeper.

andrewdelvard

What an amazing car. The lengths some people go to. But the paint job...Ugh.

CrisPDuk

Out of interest, is your mate the sort who thinks that a chavved up Corsa is the height of engineering excellence? Of course it's genuine, you can tell that by the pictures, as NREV says Andy Robinson builds dragsters and high end race cars for a living. It looks to me as if it has been built in line with current WRC practice, i.e: you build a ******* strong chassis/rollcage unit, then hang all the mechanicals and the body panels from that.

I quite like the paint job actually It's not as if it's all show and no go is it

TreyZ32

An older pic:


Spec (unsure how current) and a few more older pics here:
http://tuning0.tripod.com/cars/laguna1/

(I think it looked better before the graphics!)

richie rich

is that 3 dv,s on her?

R1916v

That was in max power yonks ago, gotta be 6/7 years ago.

Article said he took it to a track day and one of the first things someone said was "**** me who brought the touring car"

It was all orange back then but a right monster.

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

Love the winning bidders feedback rating though What a ******

Stiver3

proved!, i knew he'd see sense!

Shark Man

Hmmm. Not much of the TVR bits left on it though...probaby the crankshaft and nothing else...the rest will be Rover and aftermarket parts

Not quite sure of the point of spending so much on a Rover V8 engine to get that kind of power, because it'll need regular rebuilding and unless he sourced the parts very very cheaply would have cost a fortune to build. Otherwise you could have got a nice all ally modified GM GenIII crate engine shipped straight to your door ready to run for less money.

Still - 10/10 for effort

stu_5

The engine spec doesnt add up at all I'm afraid.

Trying to get more than 400hp out of a rover v8 and your looking at several grands worth of competion spec cylinder head, with a life expectancy <10,000 miles, just for the flow porting mods it will need.

Know of hardly anyone that'll do/contemplate a turbo conversion on the engine as well it's just not worth it for the cost/gain/reliability trade off.

2 standard KN carbs running twin turbos as well....? 2 KN carbs very heavily limits an unmodded 3.5l v8 (Rover tuned it in the 80's to around 150hp max on a Range Rover I think, following on from the SD1 spec engine tuning level) god knows what the air/fuel mix must be on that.

Must stay in balance for all of 5 minutes as well.

I'd be suprised if it ran more than 300hp with the carbs- and rather poorly at that I'd imagine.

TVR never built a carb fed V8 engine did they too- it was all efi?

dangerous100

what are you lot looking at? i cant see any carbs,i can see a rover plenum chamber up near the bulkhead.the engine must be set well back.
theres been a twin turbo rover v8 in a mark2 granny at totb for the last two years running that sort of power.does very low 12's i think

CrisPDuk

What's all that carbs b0ll0cks, it's got anSD1 Vitesse single plenum inlet, and the spec states that it's packing Emerald 3D for both its juice and the sparks


BTW some of the earlier TVR wedges were indeed built with webers, especially the 390's

stu_5

hmmm.

http://tuning0.tripod.com/cars/laguna1/

See what I saw?- 400hp claimed on KN's there...

EBAY adds different, guess its been changed.

Still wouldnt expect it to live for long.

Shark Man

I would look at the pics in the e-bay ad Stu...I'd think that it's had ALOT more engine work since the spec list in that other link was posted

Still I agree about running that much power through a Rover block reliably...especially if it's running a an old TVR 400 crankshaft (which I would guess it is by what makes him say it's a TVR engine) It may not even have a cross-bolted bottom end either ....the 2-bolt bearing caps move about running just 300bhp let alone 500!

Still...it only takes less than a weekends worth of work to completely strip and rebuild a RV8 (assuming no machining is needed). So a bearing shell swap every 20K wouldn't be the end of the world

robbie09

Stiver3 empty your Pm box

phelpsa

There are a few reasons. A. being aluminium the rover engine is *alot* lighter, it ways the same as a ford pinto engine. Also, there are loads more spares and tuning parts around in britain for the RV8.

Adam

Shark Man

Who would want a pinto though - cast iron block from the dark ages and not even a good engine to start with I never understood why poeple used these engine in westfield etc. The RV8 WAS light at one time...but things have moved on alot since the 60's

A nice alloy block GM GenIII LS1 to LS7 would do the job far better and it would be brand new - all built and ready to run with all the efi and headers etc included straight out of a crate with 400bhp/lbft for £3500 plus export and tax. Although you could build yourself a 500bhp version by ordering the parts and building yourself which would cost about the same as a fully built stock engine. Shipped parts from the states actually pound for pound work out far at better value than UK sourced parts for the RV8 (rip off Britain as it is so fondly known as - an equivelent Fully built 350bhp Stage3 crate RV8 would cost £6000+vat).

And fully dressed is actually the SAME weight as a RV8. If anything, the GM would be lighter once modifed as you can quite easily get 500bhp without the need for turbos.

Patt@firstime

Im sure the winnig bidder hasnt coughed up the £ yet