My dad had a Triumph 1300. He still misses it. I remember the real lump of timber on each door to rest your elbow on and of course the Smiths clocks.
A colleague used to work at a BL dealer in the 70s. He could write a book on the cars with problems he shifted. On more than one chrome trim was only fitted to one side! He prayed the buyers never did a full inspection.
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Do not remind me of my Dolomite 1850 (not Sprint, i was a financially struggling young dad), the usual problem with the cyl head, but the bolts were so corroded inside the head that the head was wrecked by the time i got it off, never seen anything like it, another engine from a breaker was the only solution, luckily an easy job for DiY was the only option for working blokes in those days.
Nice car apart from the silly engine though, what lunatic thought two similarly designed units in V8 form (twice the trouble) would be a good engine for the Stag, when the 3.5 as fitted to Rover P5 and P6 was readily available i shall never understand.
I liked certain Rovers of the day and had some excellent cars, the best two were a P6 V8 auto, and a facelift 827 with the rare manual box, the latter in the top three cars i have ever owned, totally reliable whist very fast and comfortable.
Unfortunately i also owned some Rover lemons, the two worse cars i've ever owned was a 2200 Landcrab and an SD1 2300...the mere mention of either brings me out in blotches.
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QUOTE:..""Nice car apart from the silly engine though, what lunatic thought two similarly designed units in V8 form (twice the trouble) would be a good engine for the Stag, when the 3.5 as fitted to Rover P5 and P6 was readily available i shall never understand.""
Although the Triumph slant-4, which was also used in the Saab 99, appeared in production before the Stag V8, I think I'm right in saying the engine was designed from the outset as 'half a V8', with the later intention to produce a complete V8. So the Stag V8 engine was a fully engineered design (with an optional 'w' that can be used to make it 'awfully engineered design) !!!
Edited by Sofa Spud on 23/03/2012 at 17:54
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appeared in production before the Stag V8, I think I'm right in saying the engine was designed from the outset as 'half a V8',
I think this is is rather generous post rationalisation. You can't just 'stick 4 cylinder blocks together' to get a V8.
For a start, a two valve V8 should really be an oversquare pushrod design whereas an inline 4 can be undersquare SOHC.
Apart from pistons and rods , there are very few parts that will interchange. The Triumph V8 was like the Jaguar V12; a vanity project that turned into a predictable nightmare. Triumph 'needed' their own V8 because of division rivalry within BL.
GM fell into the same trap: each division felt the need to produce their own engines. In the late sixties/early 70s there were no fewer than four different large V8s within GM: Buick 455, Oldsmobile 455, Pontiac 455 and a Chevrolet 454 inch engine!
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I used to work in a Triumph dealership in the 70's & Dolly's stags & TR6's were all the rage.
Great car but horrendously unreliable & appalling build quality !
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My dad said exactly that about his TR5. It spent more time broken than working, but when it was working, it was great. 2.5 Straight 6-150 hp with the Lucas mechanical injection, rendering obselescence to any small displacement V8.
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QUOTE:...""I think this is is rather generous post rationalisation. You can't just 'stick 4 cylinder blocks together' to get a V8.""
I know that. But you can have engines based on a common cylinder design, sharing many components. It's common practice in automotive and industrial engine design - e.g some of the VW TDI engines, or the old English Electric diesel engines for railway applications - made in 4, 6, V8, V12 and V16 forms. Or the Rolls-Royce B series petrol engine, made as a 4, a 6 and a straight 8.
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Cutting or adding cylinders to an inline engine is easy. You can use the same rods, pistons, cylinder liners (if present) bearing shells, valves, tappets, rockers etc etc.
But a naturally aspirated V8 is a funny beast. In a narrow chassis, the width of the engine is a big problem and this tends to dictate a short stroke.
Cross plane V8s need counterweights on the crank journals to internally balance them.
You always end up with two adjacent cylinders firing 90 degrees apart which means that you might use a very different combination of inlet and exhaust valve sizes and cam duration than you would with a 4 cylinder. You also need different inlet/exhaust manifolds from a 4 pot. In short, botching a V8 from 4 cylinder parts is going to be a disaster (unless it's a flat plane).
Diesel engines generally do not have breathing problems and you can use the same basic components for engines of different cylinder numbers. Hence the detroit diesel 53,71 and 92 series. Available in 3,4,6,8, and 12 cylinder varients.
There was never any need for a sub 3.5 litre V8. Triumph should never have tried to build one.
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There was never any need for a sub 3.5 litre V8. Triumph should never have tried to build one.
One of the sad losses of the 60s car industry was the 2.5 litre Daimler V8, a lovely little engine. Light, torquey and punchy for its size. Edward Turner knew a thing or two about engine design.
Speaking of V8s, it still tickles me that Jaguar engineers were so worried about BL management insisting the Rover V8 be installed in the XJ40 that they deliberately engineered the engine bay so it wouldn't fit ...
Not to mention the Metro 6R4 engine, which was essentially a Rover V8 with two cylinders cut off the timing end, and was then engineered for the XJ220 :)
Edited by craig-pd130 on 27/03/2012 at 21:47
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Speaking of V8s, it still tickles me that Jaguar engineers were so worried about BL management insisting the Rover V8 be installed in the XJ40 that they deliberately engineered the engine bay so it wouldn't fit ...
A decision which came back to bite them in the bum. The Buick 215 wasn't a bad starting point which, had BL/Jaguar worked with each other and not against each other, could have been developed into a very good engine.
At 420lb, the daimler 2.5 is a lot heavier than the contemporary Buick 215 at~ 320lb and with 40% more displacement. 8 cylinder fuel consumption, but without big inch grunt. Don't get it!
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At 420lb, the daimler 2.5 is a lot heavier than the contemporary Buick 215 at~ 320lb and with 40% more displacement. 8 cylinder fuel consumption, but without big inch grunt. Don't get it!
It was heavier, but was also introduced several years earlier than the Buick / Rover V8 and could have been developed much more than it was.
There was also the 250's big brother, the Turner-designed short-stroke 4.5 litre V8 (with 220 net BHP -- quite a lot for the time!) which was woefully under-used, being fitted only to the Majestic. It has similar packaging dimensions to the 2.5 litre; Jaguar supposedly tested it in a Mark X body but never put it into production.
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Not to mention the Metro 6R4 engine, which was essentially a Rover V8 with two cylinders cut off the timing end, and was then engineered for the XJ220 :)
Er, no. I was in conversation with a bloke at work the other day, turned out he'd previously worked for the rally prep company who worked for Rovers to build both the TR8 and 6R4 cars.
He said that they'd told Rovers up front that the TR8 was never going to work as the wheelbase was all wrong. The project went ahead anyway and Rovers were pleased with the results obtained, given the limitations of the platform, so they got the job to do the "clean sheet" (i.e. only limitation was it had to be vaugely Metro shaped) 6R4 project.
The orginal plan for the 6R4 was to use the tried and trusted Rover V8. There was no way it would fit and still have acceptable weight distribution. The V6 actually used was built for the purpose. He was adamant that it was not a Rover V8 with two cylinders sawn off, as the block was an entirely different design. He did tell me who made it, but unfortunately I have forgotten.
Aha!: Wikipedia says the engine came from David Wood and was based on the Cosworth DFV.
He was also thoroughly convinced that had the rules not been changed to eliminate the Group B cars, they'd have won everything with the 6R4 once the reliability bugs were ironed out.......
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You're missing one, the stillborn BMC "B" series V8 (stick two "B" series engines together). The MGB was designed around this engine, which is why the engine bay is V8 shaped and also why the battery's at the other end, despite the front being largely occupied by fresh air.
The Rover / Buick lump dropped right in and had the advantage of being within spit of the four-pot "B" series weight-wise. Unfortunately this turned up just in time for the '70s oil crisis to make it a white elephant.
Prior to that and lacking the originally planned engine, the quest to produce a higher performance vehicle turned to the venerable "C" series six pot. The engineering gymnastics required to stuff a thumping great pigiron six into a V8 shaped hole are quite impressive.
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1970 the year I started my appenticeship,first car I worked on was a Triumph,only ones that hardly had any mechanical faults was the herald that year anyway,the Dolly was rapid untill it broke down,or blew head gaskets
If my memory serves me right the dolly sprint was one of the first volume cars to have 4 valves per cylinder, but used to blow head gaskets because of a design fault on the head which I think was alloy and if it was was a very early attempt at using this design.
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I seem to remember that when the Dolomite Sprint appeared there was speculation in the motoring press about the possibility of a Triumph V8 wiith Sprint heads. It's probably just as well it never appeared!!
Edited by Sofa Spud on 24/03/2012 at 19:05
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I don't remember the visible build quality of 1970's Triumphs being bad, they looked well put together. It was the subsequent reliability and poor rustproofing that let them down.
Perhaps there was a difference between the quality of Coventry and Speke built cars - I don't know.
Edited by Sofa Spud on 24/03/2012 at 19:08
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No, I don't remember them being bad at all. They had a better reputation than Morris, Vauxhall, and Ford. A bit of wood and them Smiths clocks were probably a marketing thing, spend £20 extra and charge £200 more, though. Triumphs didn't go as rusty, as quick.
It was only with the German invasion that everything was to change, forever.
I remember coming back from Liverpool in my Triumph 2000, watching the petrol going down, and thinking, "I can't afford to run this b***** thing". It only had four gears.
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No, I don't remember them being bad at all.
Nor do I......I remeber my second-hand Sprint with much affection. It was a bit like a youthful love affair - fantastic when it worked, misery when it didn't! Main fault was the propensity for the water pump to surreptitiously leak through a hard-to-see slot in the block.
Overtaking was great in third gear from. say 40mph...slide the switch seamlessly into overdrive at 65 ish and within a few seconds you were travelling, er,.......quite quickly!
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If my memory serves me right the dolly sprint was one of the first volume cars to have 4 valves per cylinder, but used to blow head gaskets because of a design fault on the head which I think was alloy and if it was was a very early attempt at using this design.
IIRC the Sprint head won a Design Council award. A neat illustration of the difference between engineering and design.
It was an alloy head, but alloy heads had been around for some time, so it's not like they were working in the dark as regards the material. Dad's got an Alta alloy head for his 1933 Austin 7 Type 65....
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If my memory serves me right the dolly sprint was one of the first volume cars to have 4 valves per cylinder, but used to blow head gaskets because of a design fault on the head which I think was alloy and if it was was a very early attempt at using this design.
The head was an excellent design - all sixteen valves operated by just one OHC and an ingenious system of rockers.
It blew head gaskets because of a sneaky leaky water problem [see my other post on this thread] which resulted in the dreaded overheating warping effect.
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