25 replies to this topic

[FucF1]

On a different website it states that the Peugeot Group B rally car tested on the Estoril circuit and put in a time that would have qualified it 6th for that years GP!
Also that they were capable of 0-60 in 2.5 secs, on *gravel*

Is that feasible?
Thanks.

We will never see there likes again

[Powersteer]

Ford RS 200E that never got to raced Groupe B. Some tuners did it up and managed a 0-62 time of 1.96 sec and 750 BHP from 2.1 liters..on slicks! BTW off the record...a funny car holds the record for quickest 0-62 time of 0.81 sec

[mahelgel]

hmm.. the rally cars where probably fast of the line, and fast on the slowest turns, but I cant see how it manages the top speed, and the speed though faster corners.. but if it could be on 6th place on the grid.. then my only word would be WOW...

[Janzen]

Is it a 4WD because otherwise I have a hard time believing the figures.

[DangerMouse]

I vaguely remember that test - there was a reason for the Group Bs to be so quick compared to the F1 cars (raining?) but I can't remember what it was.

Homework: Who designed and built the Metro 6R4 - hint they are an F1 team. (the greatest Group B car!)

[MacFan]

Williams GPE designed and built the 6R4. I presume you're joking about it being the greatest group B car - it was up against the Delta S4, 205T16 and RS200, all of which had turbochargers and around double the power of the Metro. There was an article in CAR magazine years ago about the 6R4 - some dealer had bought up the last few from BL, and was flogging them off for under 10 grand. Perfect for the drive to Tesco's...

[DangerMouse]

Yup correct Patrick Head designed and Williams built the 6R4 and yes it was massively down on power - but was often the fastest car (especially on gravel) even down the straights - the other Group B cars had too much power and span their wheels the 6R4 just dug in and went - the old lotus tradition of lightweight and decent handling outwaying power.

The 6R4 was a force to be reckoned with against the other Group Bs dispite it only being at the beginning of it's development lifecycle as the Bs were banned.
As a pure engineering exercise I stick by the fact that the 6R4 was the best Group B car - I suppose it's all about where your engineering principles lie. With the Ferrari or Lotus way of doing things!

Look at how well the 6R4s did in Rally Cross domanating for a few years (especially in the hands of Will Gollup) whos turbo charged engine was used as the bases to develop the engine into the unit seen in the Jaguar XJ220.

Homework #2, What was the 6R4 engine based on? (BTW Rover developed that in under 5 months on a tiny budget of just over a hundred thousand pounds!)

10 grand you say? - Hmmmmm if I can find one I'm tempted - even if it's in the stock 210BHP Clubman form!

[MacFan]

The original 6R4 engine was basically a Rover 3500 V8 with two cylinders removed. I think they ditched it and designed a new 3.0 V6 when they discovered the chopped V8 lacked power - hardly surprising for a 1950s Buick pushrod engine!

It was a superb example of the creativity that was sadly repressed in the late lamented British car industry - the whole project from start of design to delivered vehicles took about 12 months I think, and on a very restricted budget.

I still think they went the wrong way with the NA engine though - there's no good reason why a smaller displacement turbo engine should be heavier than a larger NA, and the turbo will always have better power and torque than the NA. I think the 6R4's advantages could have held if it had a turbo engine, then it could truly have been the greatest group B car. Would never have happened with a GPB100,000 budget for the engine though - modified MG Metro Turbo engine anybody?

[SideWaysBob]

I'm not 100% on this but i think the 6R4 engine eventually turn up in the Group C Jaguar. They certainly had a turbo charged engine towards the end of the Group C series and i'm almost sure i read it was the 6R4 engine. up to that point they'd been running (and winning) with an atmo V12.

It was a bit viscious, 6 foot of flames out the side and a nasty habit of blowing pistons out the side.

I could be wrong here of course. i would be interested if anyone knows for sure. It would have been the 92 or 93 season i guess

As to a Group B rally car round Estoril hmmm, i thought it was all long sweeping corners and straights. Round Monaco absolutly but Estoril i'd have my money on the F1 car.

SideWays Mr.Bob

[DangerMouse]

Well done you've done your homework! Twas indeed the Rover/Buick with two cylinders lopped off! (but with DOHC 4 valve per cylinder heads.)

the no-Turbo thing was a marketing and engineering decision - Rover only had the odd Turbo car in it's line up and didn't want to be see as a Turbo company like Saab and Audi (then) Patrick Head also agreed that light weight would give the car an advantage.

The problem with Turbos is heat - the block and head has to be quite substantial to cope with immense heatsoak and to provide enough metal to encourage the conduction of heat away to reduce hot spots - similarly the cooling system has to be pretty beefy too, plus they burn fuel like billio - again more weight.

I truly believe that the 6R4 ethic of light weight at all costs was the right one - the stage speeds of the 6R4 proved it, it was often the fastest car despite missing 200BHP and was very kind to tyres and transmission.

All up start line weight the 6R4 weight nothing compared to the other cars - The major thing that let it down was reliablility. (it was a Rover after all )

Re what it would have been like with Turbos? - we know. Will Gollups Turbo 6R4 absolutely dominated European Rallycross for two years until the governing bodies changed the rules to effectively ban it (or at least take it's advantage away) some of the other competitors argued why should they bother turning up such was the 6R4s dominance and threatened to pull out - they were all running ex Group B cars too (lancia's Audis etc) but the 6R4 slaughtered them - not even close.

The Rally Cross 6R4 wasn’t reliable enough for rallying anyway in Turbo form as the engine was too light and insubstantial to cope with long distances running the sort of boost it needed for RallyCross (2 Bar producing over 750BHP 2.4 litre BTW.)

TWR bought Gollups designs off him and created the Jag XJ220 engine from it.

[SideWaysBob]

I think the Turbo Jag was the XJR-13 or 14 whatever the last white silk cut car was.

TWR built the XJR-15 out of the old XJR-11 Le Mans tub.
The XJ220 was a Jaguar (Ford) in house thing i thought. Ford was a bit miffed that TWR had brought out a high performance "jaguar" at the same time as their XJ project. something about thunder and media hits.
TWR did go to Le Mans and Daytona with tooled up XJ220 But i didn't think they had any direct input to the road project. But the old memory ain't what it used to be.

[rainern]

The Ford RS200 has also some F1-heritage!
Veteran designer Tony Southgate beeing the one responsble for the design.
This was truly the golden age of rallying:)
So many charismatic flame-spitting monsters!
Although they were extremely fast it did not take long before the Group A cars were equal fast.

Todays WRC-cars are still masquerading behind the "official" 300HP max limit. The top cars are believed to have at least 350HP and with a massive truck-like torque to go with that.


Rainer

[Billy Gunn]

DM,

The 6R4 engine came from the Rover 3500 engine, but it was codenamed 'REDCAP', and was to be used in the SD1 sedan. This was to replace the Triumph 2300/2600 inline 6 engine that was used in the SD1. The first engine was a 8 with the 2 front cylinders blanked off. Hesketh made the crank, and built the first prototype engine.

The 6R4 engines were made at the Triumph Capmartin Road plant, which was a part of the Jaguar Radford plant complex. The 6R4's were built in the Austin Longbridge plant, in the old Flight Shed area.

REDCAP - that stood for REDuced CAPacity!

[Powersteer]

Powerfull and charismatic it maybe....never forget Henri Toivenen, i must say the Senna of Rallying who also passed away so early, ciao

[DangerMouse]

BG, Didn't know about the REDCAP designation, very interesting!

Bob, The XJ220 was a TWR project. I bought a Jag XJR from TWR who proudly displayed a XJ220 - can't say they'd do that for a Ford project! And why would Ford use a development of the 6R4 motor?

TWR bought the design rights to Will Gollups turbo 6R4 and modified it from there replacing the Jaguar road car based V12 which was (after 30 years!) finally starting to struggle as the basis of a race engine, the V12 was a development of the unit they modded for the TWR XJSs. The basis of the chassis was from the TWR built and designed group C racers wearing the Jag badge.

[Billy Gunn]

DM

Sorry good buddy, your wrong again!
TWR obtained the rights to the 6R4 engine in lieu of payments owed to TWR from Rover when TWR ran the Rover SD1 in Touring Car series. It was reputed at the time that the settlement valued the 6R4 design at 30,000GBP.

Dave Woods was the project engineer on the 6R4, and it was designed/drawn by 2 Triumph engine designers. It carried an unmistakeable likeness to the prototype TR7 DOHC 16 valve engine which was based on the 'O deries' (as the O series was delightfully nicknamed by those within Triumph).

The main problem with the 6R4 was its ability to shed the cambelt, due to the insufficient lap angle of the belt on the crank driving gear. The other major was the destructive torsional vibrations within the crank due to the odd fire sequence resulting from a 90deg V6! The first problem was no doubt exacerbated by the second.

I agree fully with your comments about the overall philosophy of the design though - light and torquey, gentle on tires and trans.

The TWR WSC XJR13 used the 6R4 engine, with twin turbo's. This was done entirely in house by TWR. The XJ220 used a detuned version of this power unit with catalysts to meet emission regs. The XJR14 WSC car used a 3.5 Cosworth F1 engine, and the XJR15 was the roadised version of the XJR 11 WSC car with the mid engined 6 litre V12 ~ as you correctly pointed out a direct desendant of the XJRS Jaguarsport version of the XJS. The only differences from the XJRS engine to the XJR15 was (as far as I can remember from reading contemporary reports) the cam forms, and exhaust system, and a free flowing intake filter rather than the XJRS/XJS 'cricket bat'.

[silver]

Indeed in 1986 in Portuguese rally they had one special stage which was the Estoril motortrack.

Henri Toivonen in his Delta S4 was the fastest and his time would have been fast enough to put him on the 6th place on the grid on that year`s Portuguese grand prix. But Toivonen was regarded by some specialists to be the biggest talent in motorracing in the 80`s.

B-group rally cars were able to do 0-100 km/h in about 2.5 secs on gravel.
After FIA banned B-group rallycars from rallying many of those cars found their way into European rallycross.

Finnish rallycross driver (5 times European champion if i can remember correctly) got his hands onto Juha Kankkunen`s old Peugeot 205 T16.

Tekniikan Maailma (Finnish Technical magazine) was with Matti when he tested his car for the 1st time and did practise starts.
It was raining cats and dogs and the tarmac was soaking wet.

He did 0-100km/h in 2.4 secs and again if i can remember correctly he reached the top speed of 205 km/h in just over 7 seconds.

That car had 1.7 litre turbocharged engine with 650 hp...

Quite a mean machine.

[DangerMouse]

Billy, I'm not questioning the origin of the cylinder heads or anything like that, But I distinctly remember reading an Interview with Will Gollup (fast car in the early ninties?) that the Turbo application used by TWR was based on his car - maybe he and TWR worked on that on the first place I do not know but I definately remember some connection there.

Was the TR7 unit an O series? I thought the TR7 used a derivative of the Dolomite 1850 engine, and the O series was a development of the Austin R and S series engines as used in the Maxi and first fitted to the Mk2 Marina?

[Billy Gunn]

DM,

Yes the TR7 over the counter car was a slant 4, 2 liter - 8 valver. The 1850 Dolomite engine came about from the scrap 2 liter blocks that were then sleeved down to 1850! This was due to the poor quality of the block castings, when they were bored to 2 liter they used to often hit porosity, the sleeve was a reclaim job (hence the 1850).

The engine I was talking about, the TR7 DOHC 16 valver, came about from the need to rationalize the engine line within BL. The O series was infact based on the B series (same block dimensions, main bearing sizes, etc,) and was to be produced in large numbers for the Marina, Princess, Leyland vans, and was due to go into the MG 'B' sports car and the TR7. Unfortunately it would not pass the North American emissions standards (the slant 4 Triumph engine was signed off for about 4 years in advance of then current emissions standards), so a DOHC 4 valve head was designed by Triumph to 'modernize' the O series. It was widely tested in both the MGB(!) and TR7 - but never saw the market place. I have some photographs of it which I will post if you are interested.

The 6R4 connection with Gollup may have been via Garretts, the engine chief at TWR was the very able Kiwi (Ray Bell will probably disagree with that last point!) Allan Scott, and they would have used Garretts in house turbo knowledge, I believe that they had at the time an ex Garrett employee.

To be honest I would have thought that the Gollup car would have benefitted from TWR knowledge rather than the other way around. That is not meant as a critisim of Gollup's abilities though. I understand he was a fine rallycross driver (from all accounts)

[Apollo4]

While we're on the subject of 80s rally cars, does anyone have any juicy Group S info? There is a little info on the group B rally page for those that haven't heard of Group S:

http://www.stormload...m/groupb/s.html

I myself am a MR2 nut and have done a little research into the MR2 Group S car. TTE had made both a transverse and a longitudinal engined version, both supposedly having
600HP. My inquires to TTE for more info have turned up little.

I'd be interested in hearing what you guys know about *any* of the Group S cars. (Are there any good Group B books that talk about this?)

[Ray Bell]

The tricky thing about the Dolomite engines was the single-cam 16-valver that used the same cam lobes for both inlet and exhaust valves, timing being set by virtue of the rocker angles...
It's the same engine used in Saabs... until they woke up and started casting their own.
Again, I'll quote Merv Waggott's professional opinion (having seen one opened up for preparation for Bathurst)... "Typical poms, three eights of an inch of cast iron to hold in the water... and thirty thou to hold in the horsepower!"

[355 boy]

I was once taken for a ride in a 450 bhp 6R4. The owner showed me a little trick where he placed his wallet on the front dash and then accelerated hard from a standstill. The wallet shot backwards and was pinned against the rear bulkhead until he let off the gas...

[DangerMouse]

Ray, I think Saab only used the block with their own spec cylinder head. Could be wrong often am!


Single cam or not 127BHP wasn't bad for a NA 2 litre back then!

[bukusuma]

My three favourite drivers : Ronnie Peterson, Henri Toivonen & Ayrton Senna...

I remember reading about Toivonen just having a daughter born and moving to Monaco. There was a picture of him and his very young baby. Two months later and he is dead.

I am still sad when I remember the picture, remembering how happy he looked holding the baby in his arms...

It put me off rallying for quite sometime.

Lancia erected a small monument on where the accident happened...

Toivonen came third in his first F3 race and had a choice of going rallying or racing. That F3 race was won by Senna, also his F3 debut.

Group B, with, it is said, 700HP plus, really was something. Group A doesn't really excites me.

As far as the best Group B cars, I'd go with the Lancia Rally... First generation Group B, and only RWD, but certainly the best looking.

Bram

[rainern]

The Ricardo designed Triumph SOHC slanted four was used from 1969 to 1973 in the Saab 99. A swedish cast engine-block and a new head was introduced in 1972. From 1974 that engine was exclusively used. That engine owed very little to the british-built engine. Only the 45-degree slanted configuration was reminding of the Triumph. During 1976-77 an 'alternative' 16-valve DOHC cylinder-head was used in rallying by Saab.
It was banned after the 1977 season, when 'alternative' cylinder-heads was outlawed. Toyota / Opel / BMW had also been using 'alternative' 16V heads.
In 1983 a turbo 16valve DOHC was introduced in the Saab 900 series. This design remained in production until 1993, when the longitudinally mounted slanted-4 configuration was replaced by the same engine in a transverse configuration.

Rainer

[Timm]

Those of you wanting to know more about rally cars can do a lot worse than get Reinhard Klein's new book, "Rally Cars". It covers every single car run by a manufacturer and has a good bit about group B and S. The author himself is a huge Gp. B fan and organises an annual event where Gp. B cars get together and do a bit of driving.

There was also a bit about Gp. S in a recent issue of "Motorsport" magazine.