Topic

Volcano
I will give it some serious thought, however I have a MGB to get on the road first. I don't remember if I have mentioned it on this forum but I bought the TF for my wife to drive, I have had the subframes galvanised and totally rebuilt the suspension, every and I mean every bush and balljoint has been replaced and the Bilstein kit as well. Initially she hated it but after getting the alignment sorted (the second attempt by ATS after I gave them the correct data) she now loves the car. Over the last week we have driven over 420 miles over some wonderful twisting and undulating roads over Exmoor, the Blackdowns, Quantocks and Brendon Hills with my wife driving the majority of the distance and really pushing the car to its limit where conditions allowed it to be done safely.
Now she wants to do a couple of track days each year so I will have to give this some serious thought to improving performance on a shoestring of a budget, having ridden in a couple of roadgoing TF's with well over 220bhp and one with 350 bhp I think 250bhp would make a really good road/track day car. The seeds of a plan are planted

MGB281, Your drive sounds wonderful. The track days sound great, that really would be amazing to do. Ohhh, 350 bhp or even 250 would be something, given my F is 120 bhp.

In recent years we have become hoodwinked by BHP figures & it was the Veyron 1000hp that fixed power = ultimate driving experience in the heads of the Top Gear zombies.
Doubling the power equates to getting to 60 in a few seconds but as we all know it doesn’t halve the time, nor does it go twice as fast.
We need more power because of air resistance, friction within the system & all the junk we have come to expect. But we as “basic” car owners have to move our own seats & warm them ourselves. “Space saver” spare wheels have little to do with saving space but but everything to do with saving weight in an attempt to offset that gained by all the motors in the seats which for the most part are set in the first week of ownership & then forgotten about.
Caterham produce a car in the image of the Lotus 7 with 84hp, 3 cylinder, skinny tyres & a top speed of just over a ton. It has been described as being the greatest fun on four wheels available new, now, this side of a king’s ransom.
James Hunt, one of the UK’s F1 world champions cut his “driving teeth” in an Austin A35 van (34bhp) & used one right up until his death, saying that he had learned his trade driving it.
It wouldn’t take long looking through the Goodwood festivals to come across an 1275cc A40 cutting it with an enormous V8 Ford Falcon or Mk10 Jag.
I had an A40 years ago & it was great fun & at end of the day an Austin Healey Sprite is an A40 in a fancy but rather revealing frock.
Power & weight are inextricably linked, too much of one can be as counter productive as too little of the other & to gain maximum advantage of either requires a balance AND those special skills which seem to be sadly absent from any number of self styled “driving gods”.
M

Airportable, you are hitting the nail on the head regarding the weight/power compromise more power normally means more weight which is then detrimental to handling. Although an A35 van was short on power they were very lightweight with no soundproofing, less upholstery and glass than the saloon.
The Honda engined TF was a great car to ride in but the Honda K series engine and gearbox weighs 184 kgs versus the 145kgs of the Rover K series, add on another 25kgs (a guess) for the supercharger, charge cooler pipe work and pulleys and suddenly you have added 65kgs of weight to the rear with nothing to counterbalance it in the front.

I think most of us realise that weight distribution is important & your figures illustrate that. A manufacturer should aim for a 50/50 weight distribution & when you start fiddling, that balance can be lost. You might get your car down the straight, but will you get it around the corners. For me I consider the Goodwood festivals great illustrations of motor sport across the every category, from family cars right through to the finest sports car. Even if you dump a great lump in a small car & you know what the game’s about you’ll find the balance has been adjusted accordingly. And as our friend says add more weight and the power to weight ratio is upset, heavier cars don’t change direction as well as a lighter one; it’s all about angular acceleration. I mentioned the A40 & the Ford Falcon, I’d have the A40 in a flash.
Off the track there’s little advantage in a 160 over a 120 if you enjoy your car just enjoy it & stop faffing.
I stopped trying to go faster ages ago, mainly because I couldn’t subjectively assess any improvement, I just enjoyed ride. Any changes are just purely cosmetic & because I love fannying about & it never talks back or complain.
M

Some time ago I looked at the specifications of that all time great mid engined sorts car, the Ferrari Dino 246 and today the Ferrari 328 and compared them to the MGTF and its quite illuminating, so here are what I would call the important figures;

Wheelbase.
246 2280mm
308 2340mm
MGTF 2380mm

Track width
246 1346mm
308 1460mm
MGTF 1410mm

Weight
246 1080 kgs
308 1265 kgs
MGTF 1105 kgs

Weight distribution
246 46/54
308 44/56
MGTF 45/55

Engine power
246 195bhp
308 255 bhp
MGTF 135 bhp

You can see that these three cars are exceptionally close in specs with the exception of power, why oh why did MG Rover not fit a low pressure turbo KV6 engine in these cars with perhaps 220/240 bhp

Well MG Rover did experiment with fitting the KV6, and may well have persevered with this to production if they had the money,
The there was the proposed KV8 that they were working on, also a victim of lack of funding.
So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the idea of a KV8 MGF was considered.
Imagine a MGF with a light VVC V8 of @ 3.5 to 4 litres

MGB281 wrote:

You can see that these three cars are exceptionally close in specs with the exception of power, why oh why did MG Rover not fit a low pressure turbo KV6 engine in these cars with perhaps 220/240 bhp

According to most pundits, Rover were not allowed to fund more powerful engines in the MGF because their owners (BMW) did not want a better-handling car to compete with their Z3, which (as you probably know) was offered with bigger engines 2.0, 2.2, 2.8, and 3.0; right up to the rather frightening M Sport 3.2 with (supposedly) 321bhp! Once Phoenix 4 took over, lack of money and "Project Drive" limited investment to (IMO) vanity projects like the MG SV. I suspect my opinion will be controversial, but without the ability to cross-examine all the product development, marketing & Senior Managers involved in the late 1990s and Noughties, we will never know "Why no KV6 or Turbo 1.8K in an MGF or TF?"

You are both spot on in your assessments but the most telling part is the BMW interference. Had MG been given free reign to develop the car & if money had been available for development by the wreckage of the company after BMW had taken what they wanted & buggered off & as Ellisojo quite rightly says what might have been “We will never know”
M

With all the heat that a turbo generates, placing one in the tight confines of the engine bay of a MGF would cause more problems than it solved.
Definitely the KV6 would be the better more reliable option that the 1.8 K series with a hairdryer attached which would probably enjoy the game of Pop goes the head gasket on a regular ongoing basis.
Supercharging the K series would be another matter….. a much better option in my book.

The lack of development money is correct, BMW introduced the Z3 with the dreadful semi trailing arm suspension from the 3 series (though to be fair its used to upgrade the even worse setup on the Triumph Stag) and they never got it right. Yes you are correct in that the last thing BMW wanted was a fast and good handling car from MG to compete against it, but that doesn't really explain why the Phoenix Four never did the obvious. Retro Sports Cars showed that it was relatively easy to fit the KV6, it would be very simple if the factory had altered the firewall and fuel tank, remember they altered the firewall and radiator position on every MGB in the seventies for the V8. Sadly the KV6 was made with a ninety degree angle (there was a dream of a V8) if it had been a normal sixty degree it would have fitted without the bulkhead mods.
There are very few compact V8's , the Buick 215 at 144 kgs being the lightest, followed by the Rover V8 at 161kgs and believe it or not the Ford 302 at 182 kgs. The most interesting one is the SHO 3.4 which weighs 182kgs, being a sixty degree V8 it is extremely narrow (designed for FWD) and will couple directly to the Mondeo V6 but it only produces a little more than the Mondeo engine.

The company who are trying to reinvigorate Connaught have a very narrow angle V10, narrow enough to require only one head for both banks & although the V10 is the most renown of a little known engine it is to some extent modular. The company can apparently conjure up several configurations.
Persuade one of those into the back of an f & that might well jingle a few bells. There’s an MX-5 with one in, I’m not sure if like to take that over the moors on a dark night.
M