The worlds worst engine award.

[richardthestag]

I'm struggling to think of an engine that is really, really poor. Even some of the dodgy ones can be fixed and many have a unique character. Not sure about the Triumph Snag though.

 

Don't you believe it , sure they suffered in the 70's but all those issues are resolved in a way that BL management could never figure.

 

There are a number of high powered Triumph V8's installed in the Stag, one raced reliably with about 280bhp iirc there is another that is doing the tintop classic circuit at the mo raced by Tony Hart's son of HRS. One chap has popped a supercharger on his and there are many many mildly modded Truimph V8's running reliably

 

One of the main design faults was that the water pump was too high in the block, therefore loosing a small amount of water will render the water pump useless. Solution keep it topped up with water, fit an expansion tank above the top of the rad i.e. on n/s strut so it tops up the rad using free gravity rather than unreliable expansion etc. If you are still nervous a kit has been developed to fit an electric water pump.

 

Other faults include weakish bottom end (designed for 2.5 litres), forgotting to mention that anti freeze is essential and that the oil pump should be replaced every 25k miles (but it is on the outside of the block so not really a difficult job).

 

The length of the chains was not a design fault. Other engines run with longer "single" chains. Again service manual wasn't clear to main stealers what to do with them.

 

Other than that and sensible maintenance using quality parts they are nice engines.

 

My first stag engine was rebuilt at 98k heads, bores etc all serviceable but it had run a big end probably because DPO ran it with unfiltered oil and the sump had lumps of paint that had been stripped off the body. Rebuilt it and it has been going reasonably well since -save for a couple of ignition issues. Anyway I can run it up to the wrong side of 6k rpm and that makes the little hairs stand up on the back of your neck and your wallet shrink at an alarming rate.

 

Best sounding v8 eva I say

[Jozza]

Don't you believe it , sure they suffered in the 70's but all those issues are resolved in a way that BL management could never figure.

 

Agreed. Our 1977 Stag did 100,000+ miles on its original engine before it was rebuilt during restoration and since then it has done another 30,000+. In that time it has had one head gasket go (which was caught before the trouble could spread) but has otherwise been free of the classic 'Snags'. Plus when they're on-song they're a fantastic engine. They sound great and pull well from virtually tickover plus if you drive them with a degree of sense (but where's the fun in that?) you can get half-decent MPG out of them.

 

I'd also like to nominate for the 'good if it works' catergory the Land Rover Diesel Turbo engine (the pre-Tdi 2.5 turbodiesel). The theory is a good one- take the famously long-lived 2.25 diesel, stroke it out to 2.5 litres for added torque and fit a timing belt to remove the 2.25's habit of destroying itself through stretched timing chains and worn injector pump drive gears. The result is an engine that will run until the universe implodes provided you chuck some fresh oil in it every 6,000 miles. Then beef up the pistons and cylinder head, add a turbo and enjoy a heady 85 BHP and the first oil-burning Land Rover capable of getting past 70 MPH.

 

Oh dear. When in good condition they're really not that bad. Faster than a 2.5 NAD and better MPG than a 2.5 petrol. Can actually cruise (albeit noisily) at 70 MPH. It has the flatest torque curve I've ever come across- it will pull my Ninety from standstill in 3rd gear. There's a little 'burp' of power when the turbo spins up at about 1500 RPM and then it just keeps pulling in the same 'usefully adequate' sort of way right up to the rev limiter if needed.

 

But- if a single, smallest, most insignificant thing goes wrong with them then they die a horrible death, usually by extreme piston failure or diesel-runaway. Slight coolant leak? Engine overheats, pistons melt. Radiator slightly blocked? Engine overheats, pistons melt. Get the fuel timing a degree out? Engine overheats, pistons melts, cylinder head cracks. Valve clearances too loose? Engine overheats, pistons melt, cylinder head cracks. Valve clearances too tight? Valves burn out, cylinder head cracks. Injector spray pattern slightly wrong? Pistons crack, engine won't run properly. Air filter gets a little clogged? Engine smokes excessively, pistons crack, engine overheats. Forget to the change the fuel filter? Engine overheats, pistons melt. Exceed the oil change limit by any amount? Pistons crack, turbo fails. Turbo oil seals begin to weep a little? Engine overheats and then runs away on its own oil to a fiery death. Engine reaches 100,000 miles and begins to 'breath'? Air filter fills with oil, pistons crack, engine overheats, block cracks, engine runs away on its own oil to a fiery death.

 

You get the idea. Running one with over 50,000 miles on the clock is living on a knife-edge. It will run happily for years until something, somewhere goes ever so slightly wrong and then its curtains. If you are 100% fastidious with maintenance and keeping an eye on things for signs of failure you can work them hard for years.

 

Still got mine.

[scruff]

Yeah mine was OK, the fella I sold it to had some problems but as far as I know it still has the original TD whistling away under the bonnet. 134,000 on the clock when I got rid of it seven years ago so not bad going.

 

Here is my mate's TD powered Lightweight after it lost power on the M1... that's smoke puffing from the radiator cap...

 

 

 

Up until then it was running sweet and pulling well with no smoke and no misfire, think an injector had been dribbling for a while. As you can see it had suffered a broken timing belt already but went back together OK with new pushrods and rocker gear.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I'm struggling to think of an engine that is really, really poor. Even some of the dodgy ones can be fixed and many have a unique character. Not sure about the Triumph Snag though.

 

Don't you believe it , sure they suffered in the 70's but all those issues are resolved in a way that BL management could never figure.

 

There are a number of high powered Triumph V8's installed in the Stag, one raced reliably with about 280bhp iirc there is another that is doing the tintop classic circuit at the mo raced by Tony Hart's son of HRS. One chap has popped a supercharger on his and there are many many mildly modded Truimph V8's running reliably

 

One of the main design faults was that the water pump was too high in the block, therefore loosing a small amount of water will render the water pump useless. Solution keep it topped up with water, fit an expansion tank above the top of the rad i.e. on n/s strut so it tops up the rad using free gravity rather than unreliable expansion etc. If you are still nervous a kit has been developed to fit an electric water pump.

 

Other faults include weakish bottom end (designed for 2.5 litres), forgotting to mention that anti freeze is essential and that the oil pump should be replaced every 25k miles (but it is on the outside of the block so not really a difficult job).

 

The length of the chains was not a design fault. Other engines run with longer "single" chains. Again service manual wasn't clear to main stealers what to do with them.

 

Other than that and sensible maintenance using quality parts they are nice engines.

 

My first stag engine was rebuilt at 98k heads, bores etc all serviceable but it had run a big end probably because DPO ran it with unfiltered oil and the sump had lumps of paint that had been stripped off the body. Rebuilt it and it has been going reasonably well since -save for a couple of ignition issues. Anyway I can run it up to the wrong side of 6k rpm and that makes the little hairs stand up on the back of your neck and your wallet shrink at an alarming rate.

 

Best sounding v8 eva I say

 

No, I don't believe it. The Stag engine is like a reformed serial killer, i.e not to be trusted.

 

The Stag engines had a lot more wrong with them than that. Triumph should have known better when the Yanks had been turning out bulletproof V8's for the previous 40 odd years. It was quite ridiculous to expect a single row chain of that length to work for long. Even Merc V8's with duplex chains, can get noisy after 70k. The cylinder head design was a joke - I mean, who on earth though you could get an equal clamping force on an alloy head with one row going in straight and another at an angle. Unreal!

The distributor also had problems - a cheap and nasty AC Delco copy of the Lucas Rolls Royce distributor, they would wear prematurely and the advance bob weights stuck on full advance - result = massive over advance in the mid range and a blow up. That's why the Lumenition kit was so popular in the seventies and eighties

I'm sure you can make a Stag engine sort of reliable but it depends on your definition of reliable. Any engine that needs a new oil pump and timing chain 25-30k is not reliable in my book. A good engine is one that will do a minimum of 150'000 miles without attention other than 6000 mile oil changes.

 

A Rover V8, for instance.

[Rocket88]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^agree with the Very Reverend. Any engine, however inherently shite, can be made to work if enough mods are made to it, but as the Revness states, the whole design was basically flawed from the start.You'd have thought someone would have stepped away from the drawing board, and said "now hang on a minute, lads........" the fact that it made it into production speaks volumes about the the quality of management in the British motor industry at the time. If some herbert at Mercedes had come up with that design, he'd have been sent to the motor design equivalent of the Russian front fairly speedily............

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Triumph, it has to be said, were not very good as designing reliable engines. They had some good ideas but putting them into practice was the hurdle. The little Herald engine wasn't bad, but the 1500 version was a stretch too far. The Dolomite engine was okay - not very powerful and fairly harsh with the same sort of cooling/head gasket problems as the Stag but the 2 litre TR7 version wasn't bad and they were sort of ironed out at the end. Saab completely redesigned it and made a proper engine from it. The Rover 2300/2600 was a Triumph design. It was pretty good when running but whilst impressively grunty at low rpm, was as rough as a bears arse over 5000 rpm and had a poor power output - 136 bhp from a twin carb 2600 was impressive compared to 138 bhp from a 3 litre Ford V6. But in '77, a 528 was rated at 170 bhp on a single four barrel Solex. The four bearing crank didn't help the lack of high rpm refinement. The main reliability problem was the one way oil retention valve screwed into the block face. It was a valve with a ball bearing (iirc) and the idea was that when running, the oil pump would push oil up through the valve to the head and cam. When the engine was shut down, the bearing would drop back into it's seat and retain the oil in the head. But of course, if the valve failed (as they did), the head and cam were starved of oil - siezed cam, broken belt.

I did a brief spell as an apprentice at a BL dealer. Buggered Rover sixes were common - Gold seal engines for high speed engine failures, repairs for low speed ones and the odd head gasket. Needless to say, that sodding valve was always unscrewed and thrown in the bin or the centre punched out. The engine was fine without it and removed the main cause of engine issues.

Having said that, I liked the 2600 Rover motor. It was very grunty, good on fuel (lots of BL designs were) and had a nice sound - a slightly agricultural straight six sound with a touch of belt whine.

[richardthestag]

No, I don't believe it. The Stag engine is like a reformed serial killer, i.e not to be trusted.

 

The Stag engines had a lot more wrong with them than that. Triumph should have known better when the Yanks had been turning out bulletproof V8's for the previous 40 odd years. It was quite ridiculous to expect a single row chain of that length to work for long. Even Merc V8's with duplex chains, can get noisy after 70k. The cylinder head design was a joke - I mean, who on earth though you could get an equal clamping force on an alloy head with one row going in straight and another at an angle. Unreal!

The distributor also had problems - a cheap and nasty AC Delco copy of the Lucas Rolls Royce distributor, they would wear prematurely and the advance bob weights stuck on full advance - result = massive over advance in the mid range and a blow up. That's why the Lumenition kit was so popular in the seventies and eighties

I'm sure you can make a Stag engine sort of reliable but it depends on your definition of reliable. Any engine that needs a new oil pump and timing chain 25-30k is not reliable in my book. A good engine is one that will do a minimum of 150'000 miles without attention other than 6000 mile oil changes.

 

A Rover V8, for instance.

 

Heading off topic sorry

 

Stag chains do last and some owners have seen way over 100k out of them. Problems can occur when the engine overheats, the heads warp, get skimmed but the cams are not re line-bored so the cams run tight, the chains stretch and cos the rad is still blocked the engine overheats again and chains snap. We are also plagued with cheap crap parts from the far east. My last set of chains lasted 9k miles and were fecked. BUT the quality replacement set have been in for 25k with no sign of wear yet. Doesn't make me nervous of driving it like I stole it

 

I honestly do NOT want to think about a cheap copy of any lucarse part my stag has a lucarse dizzy though

 

Rover V8 And i have a soft spot for the RV8

 

you mean the lump than will need new cam at near 100k because 1/2 the lobes will be missing. It'll also need new hydraulic tensioners at the same time. Oh and probably new oil pump gears. Liners that slip, porous blocks that cause cooling systems to pressurise, factory fit tin head gaskits that can't cope with a minor overheat without popping - even a Stag v8 can cope with a minor overheat - it is prolonged abuse that fecks em, and if you ever dare drain the oil and not refill it within 5 mins that you will need to strip the oil pump and pack with vaseline else pay for a bottom end rebuild. Mine gets through spark plugs, caps and rotors at an alarming rate and also has a cooling system leak that I cannot find - k-seal has worked around it. And the exhaust manifold - downpipe nuts need tightening every couple of thousand miles else they mysteriously vanish. Not even going near factory fitted 4.0 and 4.6's in p38 RR that rarely got past 100k without major overhaul..

 

Hardly "a minimum of 150'000 miles without attention other than 6000 mile oil changes" Oh and Rover v8 has 3000 mile oil change interval

 

I have been running RV8's in Range rovers for the last 8 years or so racking up nearly 100,000 miles in that time. One was a nail and if there is any justice in this world it will now be a boat anchor!! The other so far is a peach but creeping upto 100k.

 

The main difference is that the RV8 is much more tollerant of abuse - I siezed the nail but once cooled down it did start but sounded like a can of marbles. I doubt that the stag would do the same.

 

I love both RV8 and TV8 and there is plenty of room for both in my life

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

But the Stag had a terrible reputation when they were new - it must have come from somewhere. The Rover 3500 V8 didn't. That's the original, not the awful RR P38 shite.

[richardthestag]

Totally agree with you Rev

 

And a lot of it was down to hastly dev program by Triumphs new owners and shite service instructions for mechanics who were not used to such exotica as chain driven ohc. Weak main bearings and as you say unusual head bolt arrangement

 

Anyway enough of all this triumph v8 shite and get back on topic.