Made some progress over the weekend. Stripped the head and took it over to Dave (DVA Andrews). First thing he noticed was that the inlet and exhaust valves were fitted the wrong way round!! This head uses standard sized inlets and turned VVC/VHPD exhaust valves, so it's possible to make this mistake. But a close examination of the seats and the seating surface of the valves showed that they had been fitted the wrong way round and run like that, even though they were originally lapped to be run as Dave would expect.
I don't have much history of the engine, other than it was one of six built by Rover for the MGF land speed record attempt. It has Janspeed tape over it to seal the ports, etc. My friend who actually bought it did ask the sellers what they knew about it and they knew about as much as I've typed above! I discovered the turbo is marked up as one from Turbo Technics and they told me (from its serial number) it was ordered by Janspeed, but the turbo has never been run.
So perhaps Janspeed played with the engine a bit after Rover had finished with it, or perhaps it was assembled incorrectly from the outset....
The cams are very tame and Dave recommended keeping the duration the same (264 - same as a 633 Piper profile) but upping the lift as I am replacing the springs and can fit some Pipers that won't box over 10mm of lift.
Dave spotted a few areas where the head could benefit from some porting and he is going to do that, get the current cam profile measured by Piper and use that as a basis for the new profile, but one with more lift than the 9.3mm the current cams have.
The liners aren't in the best condition and need a hone, and Dave explained that given that he measured the bore at 75.9mm and the pistons and rings are likely to be specced for a 76mm bore, he suspects that the rings are a little tight and need gapping correctly. He recommend replacing the rings and re-honing the liners. Being nice thick 1.4k liners they have virtually no ovality (which the 1.8K really suffers from) which is good news.
As the stroke is 79mm the crank needs offset regrinding to move the centre of the big end journals such that the stroke is reduced. A 10 thou offset regrind is all that's required (given the bore is 75.9mm) to get my capacity below the 1428cc required by competition rules.
Removing the oil ladder was a little tricky, especially the two bolts that pass through the dowels as they have a thicker part where they sit withing the dowels. See the pic of two of the bolts to see the differences between the two types used. There's also a pic of the ali oil ladder.
I had some very good help today from Nick Beere of ArkRacing. Nick is ex-Rover and worked on the landspeed record engine project and runs one of the six engines himself in his Vision hillclimb car.
He gave me some very good background on the engine. He explianed that the liners are striped due to the type of top ring that had to be used as the correct type to best suit the nikasil coated liners wasn't available in time. He said that the liners and rings can be left alone.
He confirmed that the crank is Farndon and that is now with them for an offset regrind to get my capacity down to that required for sprint/hillclimb class rules <1428cc).
I hope to get all the engine parts back by Mid-December so it can be assembled.
Karl and Dave at Emerald have offered me all the support I'll need for getting the ECU upgraded (as mine is the ve
