Just some shop talk today. I go through some of the visual differences between the Rover 3.9/4.0 and the Oldsmobile 215. Poked at some of the builds around the shop and tried out some new tricks with my editing program.
I put an 215 Rover in an Opel Commodore coupe' 1972. When i have passed the Swedish car inspection i switched the 2 SU carburettors for an Weber 40/40 from 3 litre Ford engine. It worked very well, better mileage and better performance. Later i put in an Caddy 500.. different story.
No surprises there is a close similarity between Rover and the Buick 215. GM sold the 215 to Rover in 64 and the tooling for it in 65. It would be disappointing if they had not made some improvements over the years. The upside is that GM's LS smallblock engines will drop in to many Rover, MG and Triumph products.
Good day all! Some of the differences you are pointing out are due to the fact, that you are comparing a late Rover 8 block (+1995) to a Buick 215. The Rover you have is most likely of P38 4,6l. If you would compare an old Rover V8 block from the 70/80s there would be much less differences. Both are brilliant engines! Cheers!
The Buick and the Olds were fundamentally different in how they were cast.. which is one of the reasons the engine was cancelled. The Buick and Olds had the engine casting poured around the iron sleeves.. this caused a lot of quality problems (non-concentricity) whereas the Rovers were cast and THEN the sleeves were pressed in. This made them much more reliable.
Engine shop I worked in for many years was the shop our local Rover dealerships used. From what I saw, they are headgasket blowing engines and the fix is to install top hat sleeves into them.
"much more reliable"....Well in theory they should be but Rover did not push the liners all the way down to the step and the bottom of the block, also due to the casting moulds being used when they were out many blocks were very thin between each liner, (core shift), the blocks would crack which would then release its grip on the liners, the liners would then drop several thou down into the block, the coolant would then fill up that cylinder. In the end Rover started grading the blocks, if the aluminium between the cylinders was thin, it was a 'blue' block, it would only be used as a 3.5 litre engine, then there was yellow and red blocks (just blobs of paint). The red blocks would be used to make the 4.6 litre engines. I'm sure I read somewhere that Ford had a hand in getting the aluminium block cancelled in the US, they put pressure on the government to place a heavy tax on aluminium, this killed the engine stone dead.
I love machining sometimes I can run three machines at at one time I used to have a lot of fun machining very busy day trying to keep things going get things going and get things finished. Got to pay the bills.😊
Buick/Olds are permanent core cast which leaves a smooth finish while the Rover blocks are sand cast. The General was casting ribbed liners in place while the aluminium was poured in. This allowed for a high number of QC failure because of core shift pushing the liners off center. Instead of shifting to just cast the blocks and machine for tophat liners, they were approached by Rover who bought the rights and tooling, switched to the tophat liners and strengthened the blocks. At first Rover retained the 5 bolt head retention. The row of 5th bolts along the outside of the heads tends to pull that side down eventually causing head gasket coolant leaks. Rover dropped the 5th bolts and does not seem to have that problem. Olds intended to install a turbocharger from the start, so the rocker arm retention bolts go through the head into the lifter valley area. This tended to keep the heads retention flatter and those engines do not exhibit the head gasket leakage. As the power and displacement of the Rover engines increased the main cap walking causing fretting of the block under the main caps became more evident, which lead to the cross bolting of later engines, 4.0l and up. The Buick combustion chamber is of open chamber design while the Olds is quench design, which aids detonation resistance. Valve cover mounting on the Rover engines follows the Buick in being mounted on a horizontal level surface while the Olds heads are mounted level with the deck surface. Between the Buick and Rover most components are interchangeable other than the 3.5l to 3.9l and 4.0l and larger crankshafts and rods. The 4.0l went to larger bearing diameters for crank strength.
Enjoyed the write up but I have yet to see the Rovers like these come with top hat sleeves. I have made a lot of money installing the top hat sleeves into them, just did another few weeks ago.
@@whiplashmachineThey may have had straight sleeves with a small ledge at the bottom of the bore. They did have a problem with some that a sleeve slipped and caused like a piston slap noise.
@@daledavies2334 they definitaly move around in there. I have top hat sleeved dozens of them. For a long time it was the 3.9's and 4.0's that kept showing up but lately I been only getting 4.6's.
a noob question, what process are you using to remove the old linners before putting the top hat linners in, e.g., boring them out, using a puller or using heat?
On the Buick/Olds blocks the liners must be bored out due to the original liners having external ribs for retention in the cast in place process. Welding around the inner diameter of the Rover liners will shrink them when the welds cool and they drop out. Some of the factory liners would work loose and cause a piston ap type noise. A new oversize external diameter liner with the tophat with the liner chilled in dry ice and the block warmed allows the liners to drop in while being tight when the temperatures normalise.
at ~4m you compare the outer head bolt boss on the Olds with the "boss machined on an angle".. whereas that is not at all the same location. The Rover engine has cast-in bosses for the extra (outer) head bolts but they are not drilled and tapped because of the head configuration. You could "theoretically" drill and tap the rover for that head bolt.. I don't know of a good reason to, but it's possible.
There is a good reason not to use the outer bolts, they basically place an uneven load on the head gasket which causes it to fail and blow into the valley area, the earlier Rover engines used the outer bolts (14 bolt heads). When Rover worked out why the gaskets were failing they dropped the outer bolts and went to a composite head gasket.
Are you using your HBM to bore the blocks for sleeves? I just bought a friend of mine engine machine shop that has 2 kwick way fn boring machines in it.
Yes, I do this on my HBM. I have a ton of photos and vids on my Instagram page with the machine in action and showing off it's diversity in the engine remanufacturing side of machining. I spent many many years running HBM's in industry. Usually really big ones though. Last place I worked at I ran the Union horizontal and it had 28' X travel, 10' Y travel and the column "Z axis" moved 4'.
@@nextgen1939 yes, that is feet. A couple lame vids in my channel videos with some of the machinery. They are marked two years ago. I posted a lot of what I do there on my Instagram throughout 2019. Spent 8 years there and worked on some really neat stuff. Was a very hard decision to give up such a high paying position just to eek it out in my garage doing my engine thing. Still no regrets though🍻
I had another one in here about two months ago for me to install 8 top hat sleeves in the block. I do a few a year as I am one of the few shops around here that will do the sleeving operation. I moght try and make a video of the next one that comes through.
You are using one particular Rover engine to compare. There were a number of changes over the years. To say THE Rover uses or has ... will steer may watchers wrongly. Only the late Rovers (mostly 4.0/4.6) had the thrust plate, 4 bolt main bearing caps, crank driven oil pump, and no provision for distributor. The older Rover V8s did not have thzt block mount for the slave cylinder.
It would be long & boring. I have been runninghte Buick 215 (11:1 comp/200HP version) in my MGB for the past 22 years. I also have two 3.9 Rover V8 engines. The Rover 4.0/4.6 is a good bit different.
@@whiplashmachine if only they made a MID wet sleeve for the Rover bock... Could be a solution for cracks in water jackets. I'll be up in Nevada then AZ mid December I'll have to drop off a p38 4.6 block.
@@patricklynch9574 oh no! That is terrible. Look, I don't really get into online diagnosing, but that really does sound dissapointing. I do onow tuat the 3.9 through 4.6 does have a headgasket issues. Hopefully it's something less extreme though.
I've been curious about these rover v8s, I picked up a 3.9, but debating on if it's worth messing with, I like the fact that it's an aluminum v8, and weighs the same as my 4cy, and with almost twice the power,,
I've known about the 215s, but never been around them either, ,, do you happen to know if rover v8s are good engines? I'd like to tear mine down for inspection,
@@MichaelJohnson-dg3xu I am not a guru of any sort on these. I have machined and rebuilt many but never spent any time with one to get a feel for them. They seem ok and head gaskets are about the only complaint that I hear about them. For the Rover blocks, we resleeve them with a flanged sleeve and tnis seems to fix that issue. By sleeving them with a flanged sleeve, the fire ring of the head gasket gets crushed between the head and the sleeve. I instead of between the head and the aluminum deck of the block. This seems to elimintat them issues.
@@whiplashmachine thanks for responding back, I've seen top hat sleeves on ebay, so aware of those, if I decide to go through this engine, I thought about re sleeving, I like the idea of the light Weight small v8, that's not a real power House, because I have small axles, and the 3.9 is almost double the power of my 4cyl... .. Where's your shop located? And what's a rough cost of redoing sleeves?
...those Rover v8s~4.0 litres-4.6 litres with tvr 5.0 litre v8 crank and buick wildcat type heads from the UK will really wake those aluminum small block buick(Rover revised my bad) v8s up!!
