How Much BHP?

[Esprit]

Now.... I know that the lovely 5L lump of cast alloy under the bonnet of a Griff is good for about 260-265 bhp..... a little shy from the 320bhp claimed by TVR. I'm looking at transplanting a 5L Rover engine into my TR as a crazy project and am wondering what to do.... my goal is a nice 300bhp.... would like 328 bhp because that'd give me the magic 300bhp/tonne I've been dreaming of.
Here are my two options:
I'm either going to buy a standard Griffith 500 engine, run it with no cats (I'm in New Zealand, catalytic converters aren't required) and of course run it with a complete 3rd party engine management system to cope with this (which also means I can ditch the restrictive air-flow meter etc because I'll be running it with a MAP sensor instead. Might try and improve the flow through the throttle body/plenum chamber region a little too.
My other option is to buy a 4.0/4.6L Engine out of a wrecked range rover (which can be had for less than 1/3 the price of a TVR lump) and rebuild it with a 5L bottom end, some worked heads and basically do the same to the ECU/Injection system as I would have to the TVR engine (they're the same darn system).

What do you think would be the best option? I've got about enough cash to buy the TVR engine as it stands and I'm still saving furiously.... was just wondering if anyone had any information to add?

Cheers

[2 sheds]

Most cost effective option is always to buy an engine and fit as is, i.e TVR 5.0L, but if yoor inclined to modify / rebuild anyway i would start with a stock 4.6 fit stage 3 heads and decent cam & upgrade the induction & timing gear, this would be about £2000 for parts, and give you 300 bhp.
I wouldn't touch the bottom end .
Tim

[Esprit]

2 sheds said:

Most cost effective option is always to buy an engine and fit as is, i.e TVR 5.0L, but if yoor inclined to modify / rebuild anyway i would start with a stock 4.6 fit stage 3 heads and decent cam & upgrade the induction & timing gear, this would be about £2000 for parts, and give you 300 bhp. I wouldn't touch the bottom end . Tim

Yeah... that thought had crossed my mind.... I had even thought that a stocker 4.6 with new cam, flowed heads and a trick induction setup might go nice with a couple of hairdryers thrown into the mid With the standard 4.6 compression the turbos would work nicely. I was just a little dubious as to whether the bottom end would stand up to it.... The bonus with the griff engine is that it's pretty much a brand new engine, still in the box whereas any rangie engine would be very much used.
I'm thinking that if I get the 5L TVR engine and just build a pretty decent exhaust system around it and try and flow the induction a lot better (I believe this is the worst part of the engine) then it should be ok. The 5L engines have the big-valve heads on them so should have a lot more potential for improvement thant the 4.6 surely to mention nothing of the roller rockers, higher capacity and compression and cam that the TVR boasts. I'm led to believe that there's nothing inherrently wrong with the TVR engine in structure and head flow so I should be able to use the engine as-is... might just fiddle with the peripherals a bit. Of course I could just tickle the TVR engine up with a couple of turbos as well... I mean if I've already got a MoTeC computer that's more than capable of handling turbos and need to fabricate an exhaust maybe it wouldn't be that much more expensive.... hehe anyway, all food for thought.... I don't want to go crazy, I'm not searching for mega horsepower.... just wanna get the trevor back to her factory-quoted output.... surely TVR must have had a 5L engine that actually DID that to make those claims?

[siwes]

Hi
I have a 500 serp HC griff 1997 I think they are all HC after 95 I might be wrong. I had driven a few TVR's befor choosing this one and I thought it was "lively" to say the least, on a rolling road tune I had an IP of 342HP the car had had no mods done to it , it came from the factory like that, but checking back with the seriel Numbers it turns out that TVR and TVRpower experiment somewhat with their engines, I was told that the engine had a Kent 482 cam fitted as new , ported heads again from new and polished plemnum chamber . To say the performance of the car is awesome is an understatement, its evil! I have put a new clutch in it which really is no surprise and a small price to pay for the stupid grin and the shouting at the top of my voice as I hit 6200 rpm in third when Ive dared to nail the thing from a set of lights. I should at my age know better, Im not like this in my other cars.
So for a standard Griff you can expect what they state in the handbook 340 HP it is more than enough why on god earth anyone would want more in such a little car I can,t imagine.
When they first brought out the BIG griffs there was a lot of talk stating the car was too powerful and the truth is if you get one of the good ones they are. I certainly don't take the beast out if the relative humidity is above 37% !! the point of all this message is enjoy what you have under the bonnet its plenty.

[GreenV8S]

Siwes you lucky, lucky b*stard! That sounds like an exceptional engine, you could easily pay many thousands of pounds to get to those power levels!