Aluminum Block V8 Questions

[roverman]

Jim B.,"way more potential" ? Praytell, how is that ? The 2 bolt mains, the increased deck height, the 4 bolt bores vs. 5-6 ea ? The rope main seal, rust in coolant passages or crack repair ? Buy a high performance intake manifold ? Please enlighten us. Thanks, roverman.

[BlownMGB-V8]

Art, haven't you followed my 340 build at all? The 300 is the 340 with a shorter deck. and can go just as big in displacement simply by swapping crank and pistons, and still have a very good rod ratio. Yes, it is a little taller than the BOPR, about 9/16 of an inch, which is around 14mm for the rest of the world. Not a big difference, and performance intakes for it are available if somewhat uncommon, as well as spacer plates that allow the use of any BOPR intake. Neoprene seals are a direct fit and available from TA and other sources. The head bolts are much more securely held, being bedded in iron and the block is more rigid, allowing higher power levels without resorting to extra measures beyond the standard main caps. These same basic blocks in 350 size have seen 700 hp on an untouched stock block. As for head bolts, the 5 bolt heads have long been recognized as being no better due to the uneven clamping (current practice is to leave the 5th row finger tight) and the 6 bolt heads (Olds 215 only) sadly enough suffer from thread pull-out in the block and will loosen over time even with double helicoils when put under a heavy load. (BTDT) The later Rover blocks all run 4 bolts just like the 300 but they are bedded into aluminum and therefore are inherently weaker. Proper cleaning of the block and use of a proper coolant eliminates any problem with rust and the only instance of cracking I have ever heard of would have been the result of a rebore without sonic checking the cylinder walls in a badly core shifted block, nowhere near the number of problems with shifted liners and such that the Rover motors have experienced.

So, you get the size of the biggest baddest ever max built Rover without doing anything. For about a thousand bucks you get 340-350 cu/in (5.6-5.7L) and forged pistons. Then if you want the hottest heads on the planet you spring for a set of TA heads. Not cheap but we're waiting on you to tell us just how not cheap it turns out to be. Willpower has an intake you can buy off the shelf and TRS has spacers if memory serves allowing you to use the Rover EFI, and the RV8 headers bolt right up.

Or was this just a come-on to get me to repeat all of that?

JB