Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) Morgan Plus LS7

There is an article in April's Road & Track on Bill Fink's ( Isis Imports )installation of an LS7 engine into a Morgan Plus 8. As many of you will know, they have been fitting LS2's into Plus 8's for some time, but this really is the Daddy of all conversions into a Trad.

One has to ask ... Why...?

Why not?

I must get around to posting Tony Dron's excellent article in the last but one Octance on "7 hammers". It is a variant on the old "had two new brushes and four handles but its the same broom story" but relating to classic motorsport cars etc.

My own view is that whilst cars like this might be interesting from an engineering point of view they ain't the real thing. Race spec the LS7 may be but these Chevvie engines (and I stand to be corrected here) are based on a 50 year old design and still use pushrods and two valves per cylinder. Compared to the modern BMW used in the Aero I don't see the point of publicising these as 'the new thing' when their (in European terms) ancient technology.

The same thought applies to the "new" Jensen too, which I understand has had a similar poor reception from the original Jensen owners.

(Apologies for over ranting but having problems with solicitors this morning)

The LS7 would need to make something in the region of 840bhp Naturally Aspirated to be in the same technology league as BMW, Toyota or Honda who IMO currently make the most advanced production engines in the world.

Getting at least 100 - 130bhp per litre within emission restrictions.

But it is always nice to see a high power motor in a lightweight chassis.. after all.. these American lumps (including variants) are the most common engines in the world.

Shame that the most common is not the most efficient or cleanest.

Why not? because it's ludicrously overpowered.

However, has anyone fitted a BMW V8 into a trad? Could it be done?

The BMW V8 is too wide.... it's double overhead cam cylinder heads don't go within the original chassis.. it would be too much to change...

The old factory racer "big blue" had the BMW engine under a trad skin (there are pics in the Mog Gallery) and you can see it's much wider across the bonnet.

If you had a trad and you wanted serious performance with an easy engine swap..

The TVR AJP8 engine from the TVR Cerbera is 4.5 form is now easily available for a couple of k and bolts directly to a Type 9 box. It's only a 72 degree V8 which makes it very narow. It's also a very small unit and was designed for F3000 karts hence it's light weight.

It's a flat plane crank engine so fires left and right bank cylinders at the same time. It's got a lot of punch and revs to 7500 rpm at which point a off the shelf fettled example would be putting out 430 true BHP.

Would be ideal for the ModSports catagory of either Speed Championships or PowerTorque challenge...

All parts still available through specialist TVR AJP suppliers and units come up from douglasvalleybreakers quite often due to spirited driving.

hhhmmmm...... 400+bhp in a unit lighter than a ford X-flow.

example of race engine available on e-bay..

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/TVR-AJP8-Tuscan-ra...tem330226224992

Oh no... so much for your 'stock' Sprint class... I can already see your mind wandering into mod-territory!

Good thing you have Missprint to keep your feet on the ground or your sprinter would look like this in no time: -

One of the prototypes for the Series I Aero with a BMW engine with a Trad body. Sort of..

The auction on the replacement engine block I'm after will be closing this evening.. although it's nothing that extreme.... just a move up to class 3 next season (assuming I can find all the other bits to complete the engine).

Oh... you know me so well.