Racing
As the aluminium block made this engine one of the lightest stock V8s built, it was an obvious choice for use in racing. Mickey Thompson entered a car powered by this engine in the 1962 Indianapolis 500. From 1946 to 1962 there had not been a single stock-block car entered in this famous race. In 1962 the Buick 215 was the only non-Offenhauser powered entry in the field of 33 cars. Rookie driver Dan Gurney qualified eighth and raced well for 92 laps before retiring with transmission problems.
The Australian firm Repco converted this engine for Formula One by reducing its stroke to some 61 mm (2.4 in) to give 3 L (180 cu in) and fitting a single overhead camshaft per bank rather than the shared pushrod arrangement. Conrods from the Daimler 2,548 cc V8 were used. Repco-powered Brabhams won the F1 championship twice, in 1966 and 1967. For the 1968 season, the Repco engine was fitted with new four-valve, dual overhead camshaft heads. This made the engine roughly as powerful as the Cosworth DFV, but proved to be too much for the stock block, which broke on many occasions. Repco also experimented with 4.2 L (260 cu in) derivatives of the Rover V8, to some success despite problems with massive vibration.
The Rover version of this engine was extensively developed and used for rally racing, especially in Triumph TR8 sports cars.
Read more about this topic: Rover V8 Engine
Famous quotes containing the word racing:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)