The Student Room Group

Further V8 progress... (pic heavey)

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Side exhausts??
Reply 141
Damn, you beat me too it. Only problem would be; would break sound regs?
Reply 142
Jon01
Whats it like on a standard MGB V8? Sorry for all the questions im just intrigued:biggrin:


Standard BGT V8 is a bigger bore version of the 4 cylinder system. There is a Y piece which takes the two exhausts into one system.

My car is anything but standard though... Its a fair bit more powerful than a factory produced car for starters.
Factory cars run a compression ratio of around 8.5:1 I am running CR 9.25:1
Reply 143
Side pipes... one day. Perfectly legal. Its just more work to pipe up. What I would do is weld an elbow on the end of the cherry bombs and run a pipe out to the sills. Its fine as it is for now though.
Reply 144
Followed a white B (one of the later ones with big rubber bumpers, for the yanks) home tonight. No V8 badging, so I'm guessing 4 pot. Just thought you'd like to know. :biggrin:
Reply 145
Standard ones are cute arnt they? :smile:

Don't think mine is cute anymore... Its beast-like :biggrin:
I love my new exhaust. Doesnt sound chavy at all.... sounds like its about to eat a small child or something lol!
Reply 146
Think I'd rather have a V8....

Now where can I track down a TDV8, Donor chassis and some money.... :p: :biggrin:
JC.
Standard ones are cute arnt they? :smile:

Don't think mine is cute anymore... Its beast-like :biggrin:
I love my new exhaust. Doesnt sound chavy at all.... sounds like its about to eat a small child or something lol!

Wanted: A light blue MGB Roadster with rubber bumpers and black interior

sooooo cute.
Reply 148
Wanted: Defender in Decent nick, Running TDV8 engine, for little cash.
Reply 149
Done a few little bits today. :smile:

First thing I did was empty the car of all the tools / parts / dirty rags that had accumulated in the passenger footwell and put the carpets and passenger seat back in and bolted it down.

Next I put the pinch bolt for the steering shaft back in. This took forever theres no space between the right hand bank and the bulkhead! Its a sod of a job. I just hope i dont have to drop the steering shaft for a long time is all!

Next job was to change the throttle cable. A job I was dreading. I thought it would be much harder than it turned out to be. The old one way starting to fray and was holding the throttle open. This occasionally resulted in the engine being held at 3000+ revs. Not good. You can see the little bracket i fabricated in this pic. Im quite pleased with it. Its one of my tidier efforts!
Not only was it holding the engine on at silly revs, it also would not idle evenly. Sometimes it would tick over at 500rpm other times 1200. It was pissing me off so it had to be changed. Still, the engine ticks over at about 450rpm now. I like a V8 to tick over at about 750-800 for that off-beat V8 strum. :biggrin: .... ok i know i'm a very very sad individual, but the V8 idle was the whole reason for this project tbh!!!



Having changed the throttle cable, i did some other jobs, I changed my hazard switch for one that matched the others. I originally had one out of a mini which did the job but obviously didnt look quite right.



To be honest ive run out of things to do on the car now. I'm still waiting on my gearbox crossmember. That wont even get welded till this weekend so im kinda stuck for things to do. :frown: Hence the mudflaps yesterday!

Jobs list:

Gearbox X member
Speedo drive (i'll do that when i put the gearbox member on ... no point jacking up the car twice!)
Make a centre consol (cant be done till the gearbox x member is in as the gearlever position will change slightly.)
Bonnet safety catch... suppose i could get on with that tommorow?
Reset the idle (just a case of turning two screws on the carbs till I like what i hear)
LH exhaust blowing ever so slightly
Clean... er... im a Rubber bumper MGB owner... i dont clean... :smile:


Aaaanyway.... heres a couple of vids from today. Doesnt it sound an awful lot better compared to the vid on page 4 of this thread!!! :biggrin:

http://video.tinypic.com/player.php?v=4uwb8ds

And heres what it's like inside! Burble burble :p: :biggrin:

http://video.tinypic.com/player.php?v=6h3a9n9
Sounds good JC. Well done to you mate!
Reply 151
Sounding good.. Keep going!
I wanna go for a ride in your car around anglesey
Reply 153
looking, and sounding great!
Reply 154
Apparently my Gearbox X member went in the post this afternoon... so if its here by saturday, sunday could see the car going for a shakedown run... we'll see eh?

Well, having nothing to do today I decided i'd improve something that had been bugging me for months... The steeringwheel centre badge.

Just look at how dull it is. It's not even a mountney steering wheel. It's a motolita wheel attached to a mountney boss.... I was too tight fisted to pay £50 for a motolita boss when i could redrill holes in the mountney!!!





First job was to take the trim ring off the steering wheel and throw the nasty black plastic thing in the middle into the bin!



I purchased an MGA roadster badge a while back that I quite liked the look of. I decided that i'd quite like to mount it on my steering wheel.
As you can see, the trim ring is a bit bigger than the badge... guess i'll have to make something then.....



I used the original trim ring as a pattern for dimensions from which to make the bespoke badge boss. All I had to do was transfer some markings onto a small block of aluminium, mill out the recess for the badge, mill and champher the edges and finally drill and counter sink the mounting screw holes.
All that remained was to use a drop of "arladite" to secure the plastic badge to the aluminium.

Here's the finished product next to the original trim ring...



and a close up...



Its just a pity I cant put the thing on untill I can drive the car on the road. I dropped the steering shaft so now the steering wheel will not be set at dead centre and the little boss cover i made would cover the 1 inch nut that holds the wheel to the steerings shaft! I think its a marked improvment over the original though?

.... actually thinking about it I must be getting really bored to spend all day farting around making that! lol.
Reply 155
looking good! All the little things make it so much better!:biggrin:
Reply 156
Keep going JC. Off to Scotland Saturday morning, so i wont be on again, but keep the thread going and I'll have a read when i come back. I've got alot of car cleaning to do tomorrow... Joy...
Reply 157
Looking good Jon...this really is the final straight now!
Reply 158
My gearbox X member arived today...
Just had to drill some holes and bolt it up. I could have made it up myself, but when a certified welder offers to fabricate a structural part for you its rather silly to turn the offer down!





Basically, the X member is held to the body by 2 bolts in each of the chassis rails and another two bolts in the middle hold the gearbox by two little rubber bushes to the crossmember itself.

Here it is attached to the car... you can see the fixing in the middle attached to the 'box.



Whilst i was fitting the X member i had a small incident... one of the axle stands I was using suddenly collapsed and the right hand side of the car came crashing to the ground with me underneath... fortunately the stand under the passenger side remaind in place. Two new axle stands later and after i'd vented my rage on the old stands with a sledge hammer I was able to get the car back up in the air and finish the job.
I also managed to get the speedo cable connected.
The last job underneath was to drop the exhausts another inch or so... they were fouling the crossmember. I now have only 3 inches ground clearance!!! :frown:




I then took it for a little drive, a few hundred hards, along the service road.... Seems ok... definately needs the points changing and could proberbly do with the static timing being reset. Its not got as much grunt as I was expecting due to the rough running. Alot of it is down to being pretty poorly tuned... my gastester is currently on loan to someone so i cant do too much at the moment.

Still... at least i've driven it now. :smile:
Actually... whilst out on the test run... i drove past two kids on bikes who stood there opened mouthed.... i turned round and drove past again and they both shouted "BASTARD!!!" at the top of their lungs. lol. :biggrin:
Thats EXACTLY the reaction I want this car to evoke. :smile:
Reply 159
Hehe, why didn't the kids like you...are the exhausts really loud or something!?

Nice work mate, get it tuned and down the strip!

Its raining in the US, not exactly what you envisage US weather to be!