1995 Ginetta G27 4.5 V8

[Darkspeed]

Managed an hour on the G27 looking at the manufacture of a stubby dizzy/oil pump drive.

As the engine will be running on management there is no requirement for the distributor, but as the dizzy also drives the oil pump there still needs to be a drive shaft. baracus came up with the goods in the way of an excellent late model distributor which had a good gear and no wear in the shaft and bearings. A few minutes with the screw drivers and a punch and it was bare.







Not wanting to destroy a perfectly good distributor doing this job I had previosuly cut open an old points dizzy to see how why what and where before embarking on this project.

Under the plate that you can see above in the bottom of the distributor - staked in place - there is an Oilite bush surrounded by voids and in those voids are felt bungs (already removed in the picture) to keep the oil bush lubricated.

This is all visible when you cut the top off



Next job is to machine the top off the good dizzy and then turn an alloy cap fit over the end. That, or make a disc with hole in for oil filling (grease nipple) notch the top of the oilite to each void so that after I weld the cap in place I can fill the reservoirs.

[Darkspeed]

Take one hacksaw and repeatedly push it through the top half of a perfectly good distributor until it falls out of the other side.





Admire your handiwork and go and have a cup of tea - upon your return drop the parts left onto a knackered old late and make it look smarter.



Give the closing washer a sharp tap now that you have machined the majority of the alloy around it away. And there you have it - the felt pads sat on the oilite bush



They upgraded the later distributors to improve the oiling of the lower bush - a slot was machined in to the casting and a lube hole drilled .



Slightly different construction but same result



Next step is to get a bit of alloy to cap it off with

[Darkspeed]

Not much to report on really - Did a bit of work on the V8 Dutton and the G27 which resulted in five hours on the fitting of the block hugger exhaust manifolds to the Dutton, the net result was one fitted and one returning with me for further works, and an hour or so rubbing surface rust from the front section of the G27 chassis which made a marked improvement to the aesthetic and reminded me that I still had to design the upper coil over mounting bracket.

And see the post above reminds me that I have not decided how to complete the top of the stubby drive.

[Darkspeed]

Better remind myself that I still have this one to complete - Its my longest own car now - over ten years I have had this, most of that time spent in bits mind you, and it is probably the only car that I currently own that I cannot see me easily parting with.

Reason for waking this thread up is not that I will be or have done any work on it recently but because I will be doing some work on another G27 that I owned and that I don't think has turned up in the thread previously. It may well be in the Strato's thread as that wandered all over the place and I kind of wish I had just kept with the one mish mash thread with all the projects in one place.

Ginetta G27

When I first bought it home



And pretty much how it is now.



It's a later Series 4 G27 - so does not have all the separate body panels that mine has and its also a live axle car - but the biggest difference is that it has been on the road and used since the day I sold it. its a good specification car - Dunnel 165 specification 2.0L Zetec with Dunnel 3D ignition running twin weber 45's. Over the years it has had a few upgrades so now runs an Omex with throttle bodies and a Gripper LSD being the main mechanical ones but it has also had lots of little jobs done - Full weather gear as it did not have any originally - a bit of a re-trim etc. etc.







It's a really nice car.

My involvement will be fitting a front ARB as the owner thinks it rolls a bit and having a look to see if we can provide some Caster adjustment as I have done on the G21. I have a couple of extra days holiday booked over Easter which will start on Thursday with welding in Coventry.

[Darkspeed]

Trundled down to Coventry to spend the day talking curse word and sorting out the suspension on the Green G27 - nice warm day and it was good therapy to just create.

This is what met me when I arrived. Almost prepped for the work



Holes drilled for the ARB mount - just needed the sleeves making up and welding in



A quick check of the current Caster angle that is decided by the angle of the chassis rails

Set to Zero for reference





And compare with the kick up of the front chassis rail





A paltry maximum of 3.2 degrees - once the chassis rake is taken into consideration it is less than 2.5 degrees of Caster and we want somewhere nearer to 5. A quick bit of trig meant that we needed to move the lower front bracket forward 17mm to allow us to have an extra 4 degrees of Caster to play with meaning we can adjust the caster between 3.2 and 7.2 degrees 5.2 being smack bang in the middle and a half decent start point for adjustment.

My mate cut and made the sleeves and the brackets and I threw 30% of them away and sent him back to workshop to try again to make them mostly the same! Then I welded them in whilst making efforts to correct for all the stock Ginetta misalignment.



More anti gravity welding ! - He gets the job of grinding those flat and drilling them out.





Brackets all welded in and providing far better support to the lower wishbone than before.







He can have a play with different Caster settings now with washers to pack between the wishbone bushes and when he is happy with the Caster settings I will make up custom alloy spacers - It's roughly 1 degree for every 4mm of fore adjustment - all he needs now is a box load of 3/8" penny washers.

Job done he's happy apart from bemoaning the fact that have made little progress forward on my G27 - fair cop I guess.

[Darkspeed]

This made me smile today - Just because



Time to button it up and get the flywheel ordered up for it.

[Darkspeed]

This isn't good - the last time I have actually recorded having worked on the G27 is back in January! No wonder my own thread has dropped off my participated list. So if April was time to button it up and get a flywheel ordered that plan failed miserably, probably because I spent they money on another Gemini! and my project time allocation went into G15 chassis works.

I don't think that my decision making was off though - 2.8 V6 Gemini or a Flywheel - even with the benefit of hindsight the outcome ranks as sound. Especially as the Gemini was considerably cheaper than a clutch and flywheel for the G27.

Progress needs to be made on this project and the reason that the engine is still not torqued up as it should be is that I have not finished the windage tray and to get that moving along I have ordered up a few bits of steel to act as stiffening ribs - welding to commence shortly.

must get some alloy sheet ordered up as I need it for almost all of the projects.

[Darkspeed]

Work has started on completing the V8 assembly by - you guessed it - taking it apart.





So that I could flip the lump over and have a look at completing the work required on the windage tray.





And that was about as far as I got - too flipping hot - so I went in and sat in front of a fan on the laptop sending out emails about flywheels and clutches.

Needs to run reasonably close to the flywheel which also means it needs to be pretty stiff as the crank spinning around at 7500 rpm that close to it means that if its not stiff enough it will vibrate - crack and .......

[teaboy]

I didn’t think that a Rover would spin to seven and a half?

[stealthstylz]

A guy I knew built a Rover V8 G20 about 15 or so years ago - don't suppose you know of it? His name was Simon, keep meaning to see if he still lives in the village when I go to my mum's but never get time.

[molebert]

He sold it, not long after he got it all running correctly for a Porsche 365. I think it went to France?

[Darkspeed]

Aug 26, 2019 22:00:50 GMT teaboy said:

I didn’t think that a Rover would spin to seven and a half?

They do if you change and modify everything and in this engine I think only the spigot bush is unmodified! - I wanted to trade off a little of the torque for some extra RPM being as the car is really only an engine cradle that steers. The 4.5L (4.44) engines not to be confused with the 4.6 L are a bit of a sweet spot when it comes to RV8's they rev like a 3.5 and produce torque like a 5.0L.

They can rev - just don't try it on a stock motor - they don't like much over 6000 for very long.

[jamesd1972]

How do you end up with a 4.5 engine - is that a TVR version or something ? 3.5, 3.9, 4.0(late 3.9 of you like) 4.2 and 4.6 all ring bells from the factory.
James
PS sounds like a nice engine - if expensive !

[stealthstylz]

Aug 27, 2019 6:37:25 GMT molebert said:

He sold it, not long after he got it all running correctly for a Porsche 365. I think it went to France?

I'll have to call in see if he's still around. I went out in it a couple of times, went like curse word of a stick from memory.

[Darkspeed]

Aug 27, 2019 7:37:14 GMT jamesd1972 said:

How do you end up with a 4.5 engine - is that a TVR version or something ? 3.5, 3.9, 4.0(late 3.9 of you like) 4.2 and 4.6 all ring bells from the factory.
James
PS sounds like a nice engine - if expensive !

The most well known use of the 4441 was the 4.5L RV8 TVR Tuscan challenge racers - This engine is based on a similar specification.

Rover would sell new blank cranks to the specialists like TVR Power, JEE, JED, Wildcat etc. who would have them ground to suit whatever was the fancy and the tuners just tried many many options as they developed the engines from 3.0L to I think 6.0L was the biggest stretch. But going much beyond the 4.5L mark you really need to dump the Rover heads completely and fit something like the Wildcat or the TA performance heads. Up to that point the stock heads can be made to flow enough to make the power. The guy that I know is just a massive fan of the 4.5.

I was not chasing huge numbers with this build - In fact the build was not quite my idea the car was plenty quick enough with the 4.0L and only mildly ported heads but I was talked into it, I will openly admit that I did not take much convincing. The goal with this build was to nudge 300BHP and 275lbft in a car weighing around 600kg - It was enough of a handful at 230/255 675kg - What made the car so quick was that it had 190lbft of torque at 1500RPM and an absolutely flat 250lbft from 2500 - 5000.

Sorry - went on a bit there - Expensive - No argument there - Building this engine without knowing the people I know and them owing me a few favours would have been very expensive.

[Darkspeed]

Dug deep this morning and finally got around to ordering the custom flywheel and clutch from TTV - 3-4 weeks delivery. The combined weight of the new flywheel and road race clutch will be about the same as the standard rover heavy duty 9.5" clutch cover! Its a 215mm (8.5")cerametalic plate type that will be good for 363blft of torque but should have reasonable road behaviour.

[Darkspeed]

And 3-4 weeks later some shiny bits of metal arrive.









Figures wise this complete clutch and flywheel assembly weighs in at 9Kgs.
The weight of a standard 3.5 2WD flyweel on it's own is 14Kgs

I am not sure that the crank will realise it's there!

[peteh1969]

I hope you have good reactions as that clutch will be brutal on or off.

Great weight saving though.

[jamesd1972]

Rear tyres may act as the slip...
Looks like a nice bit of kit.
James

[Darkspeed]

Sept 26, 2019 9:10:40 GMT peteh1969 said:

I hope you have good reactions as that clutch will be brutal on or off.
Great weight saving though.

Worth keeping in mind that this is not a daily commuter, it's a racing car that will have the capability to be driven on the road so it will no doubt have some uncompromising harsh aspects. However, I don't personally see them as being any sort of problem.

Sept 26, 2019 9:17:23 GMT jamesd1972 said:

Rear tyres may act as the slip...
Looks like a nice bit of kit.
James

You may well be right - I suspect that the road legal semi slicks it will be running on will have a fair task of getting all the torque to the tarmac.