When people say a Buick V8, what do they mean?

[FunkyNige]

I'm confused, I hear people banging on about the Buick V8 being put into lots of different cars (old British Leyland, Range Rover), but how similar is (was?) the latest engine compared to the original?
Is it the layout of all the parts, is it the same in materials used?
Hope, that makes sense.

[JonRB]

Rumour has it that the only common component between the original Buick V8 and the final incarnation of the TVR Power Rover V8 is the sump plug!

[Boosted LS1]

The buick 215 ci was the forerunner of the rover v8. 215ci is about 3500cc. Rover bought it after the americans dumped it. Buick had huge losses with the casting processes and didn't like aluminium engines. The US public neglected them also. Rover did a lot of development with this engine and it now has their stamp on it. Oldsmobile also had their own variant of the 215. The tvr engine isn't really that different. It's mainly rover with performance parts added, mainly head mods. Downstairs a lot of it is stock rover. If only rover had spent some time on the heads. Buick developed the Grand National v6 heads with great success. Rover did bugger all and never pushed the envelope. That's been done by private Ears, or was he a corporal?

You could still fit buick parts into a tvr if you wanted to but there wouldn't be much point.

[JonRB]

I was under the impression that when Rover bought the engine design from Buick the engine had a redline of something pathetic like 4000rpm or less. Rover had to extensively modify the engine to meet British requirements and felt justified at the end in calling it the Rover V8 and referring it to it as a British engine.

Of course, that could all be propaganda and I could be talking bollocks (wouldn't be the first time!), but that is what I heard.

[Boosted LS1]

There was a fair bit of development with this engine by the americans. One version (jetfire I think) even came equipped with a turbo and methanol injection to keep the detonation at bay. It was a very small engine in a huge market place and costly to produce so they dropped it. This was our gain as it was just what we needed. To us it was light weight and quite large in capacity. The buick surely would have revved to 5500 or so. Rover probably bought the tooling as well and then set about overcoming it's problems. Then it was looked at for f1, f3000, f5000 by privateers. Later , rallying and the TR8 requirements pushed the envelope a bit more but BL were in crisis by then. There were also the sd1 touring cars. The GP44 cars got some really good results at IMSA and had more flexibility with modifications. I think they beat everything else that ran. The daft thing is there was power to be had and capacity to but nobody who owned the brand attended to the heads. So decent heads are very expensive and custom. There have even been ohc versions as well in private hands. The engine never realised it's true potential at a modest price due to the penny pinching of it's owners, Rover/BL, ford, bmw.

[forrestgump]

No, the reason Buick dropped the Aluminium engine is because the US had a policy at the time and accused the Aluminium engine has an "unfair advantage" because of its lightness (or shall I say: less dense than iron) and considered as a threat to the US steel/iron industry. Buick had to dropped it and the Rover's Managing Director at the time, William Martin-Hurst, saw the chance and brought the engine home.

Here is a site you should go:
http://austinrover.mg-rover.org/engineroverv8f.htm

[Boosted LS1]

Interesting site especially to a TR8 owner like me I read elsewhere that buick were suffering huge production losses because they couldn't set the liners properly in the casting process meaning a lot of blocks were being rejected. At the same time they were making good progress with iron 'thin walled' castings so iron engines were getting lighter in weight and they knew how to cast them. To them it made sense to stick with iron. There may have been some lobbying by the steel industry but I'd be very surprised if the buick 215 was about to be a threat to the mighty iron block based industry. Maybe they percieved it would be. Even now they are making zillions of thin walled iron blocks, oh and some good alloy ones at last.

[dogsharks]

Here are the basics on the Buick aluminum V*.

It was a design light years ahead of it's time, and a good one. That's one reason why you can still buy all kinds of speed equipment for these motors in the US, many years after production ceased. Buick/Pontiac/Oldsmobile all shared the motor design, and all tooling was sold to Rover years ago.

click on this link, and then proceed through the entire multi page article.

regards, Dogsharks, Nashville, TN

www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Track/2508/215_v8.html

[wedg1e]

...and the Rover block was up until a few months ago being cast at VAW Motorcast (now Hydro Aluminium) in Leeds. One contributor to PH worked there and said that although production was being run down, no definite date had been set for cessation.
However, that was several months ago...

Ian

[Wacky Racer]

wedg1e said:

...and the Rover block was up until a few months ago being cast at VAW Motorcast (now Hydro Aluminium) in Leeds. One contributor to PH worked there and said that although production was being run down, no definite date had been set for cessation. However, that was several months ago... Ian

Morgan sports cars, based at Malvern Link, fitted this 3.5 ex-Buick lorry engine in their new plus 8, (which was ground breaking for them) in 1968,( 0-60 in 6.7 secs, which was amazing for the time)......A brilliant move on the part of Peter Morgan, who sadly died last month....