We are going to run a 1984 Ford Laser KB 3-dr with a Rover 3.5L aluminium V8 from an SD1. Being that we are not exactly made of money we are trying our best to make the most of factory parts from various vehicles of which we have either been given, had around the yard or bought for cheap. These are the parts we have together thus far:
Ford Laser KB 3-dr
Rover 3.5L aluminium V8
XF Falcon 4-spd Borg Warner single-rail
VL Commodore diff using XF LSD hemisphere
XF Falcon Watts-link
VY SS twin piston front disc brakes
XF Falcon rear disc brakes
We've completely stripped the car back to a bare shell with a view to getting some sheet metal cut away and see if we can actually squeeze these parts in the car.
We put the VL diff up on stands and put some standard Commodore rims on it for to see how it went for track width. The reason we went with the VL diff is because the track of a VL is only 50mm wider than that of the Laser. We had a couple of XF Falcon diffs out of cars but their track is too wide so we will be using the LSD centers and the Watts Link. Some XF Falcons had a pretty good setup on the rear from the factory it would seem with LSD, Watts link and large ventilated discs.
So we cut some sheet metal away from the rear end mainly in the trunk area, specifically the spare wheel well. The Laser also has a box section running through to the trunk area sitting atop another running from the front of the car. We cut away that which came from the front to give some more clearance for the diff. We can sit the diff at a rough installed height now and lower the car to about a 6" ride height without any problems. Before going any further we have to get a set of wheels so as to figure out clearance with the tires and the final ride height.
So we started on the front end. We bolted the motor on to the gearbox using a Leyland P76 bellhousing, aluminium 360deg job. Because the P76 used a Borg-Warner box (albeit of an earlier design) as well as the Rover V8 the bellhousing uses the same bellhousing pattern as our motor. However only 3 of the gearbox to bellhousing bolts line up with the 4th needing to be tapped. We sat it underneath the car and started lowering the car on to it to figure out what we needed to cut away. We set the motor back so the harmonic balancer was in line with the front axle center line. The rear of the block is miles in front of the center line of the wheelbase. Turned out we needed to cut quite a bit out haha.
The car has 2 de-facto chassis box rail sections underneath the floor pan so our hope was that we could squeeze the engine between the two of them. Turns out a Laser has been designed to accept a Rover V8 as after cutting some of the floorpan away it squeezed tightly between the rails. Now we just have to cut some more of the firewall out as well as some more of the transmission tunnel (for lack of a better term) and it should lower over it nicely.
So that's about it for now, the full range of photos is available on my photobucket HERE. Please let me know what you think of our little project and if you have any questions or comments (or most probably criticism). I know there are probably thousands of projects like this on here that people go into with good intentions and never end up finishing however this cut-up piece is now sitting on my hoist and I need to get it going so I can move it out of the way and put other cars on there so I can't really let this sit here and rust away!
