Jaguar v12
 

Hi, well i hope to build one of these in the near future, and ive recently been offered a jaguar 5.3l v12 engine with auto box. now i would have never thought of putting one of these in this car, but its beeing offered to me very cheaply, and i wondered if i had any use for it and then thought of a haynes roadster. Now i know this is a huge engine(dimensionally) but i am unable to find any dimensions of this on the internet. I also wondered if anyone has done reasearch into this before and does any one think i may have even a remote chance of getting one to fit in the roadster i plan on building;)

Jaguar V12
 

That is one hell of a lump, a bloody good one but huge :eek:

It may pay you to have a visit to the locost builders forum ;)

There are a couple of Jaguar fanatics on there who may be able to offer some advice. :) :)

You'll find a link for them in the links section of the front page.

its not just the size of the engine that you have to take into account its the power, and the weight these roadsters are very light if you try to apply heavy throttle you will get wheel spin. and the weight of the engine is going to make it a very hard to handle car

Other big problem will be, very little room for passengers with the enormous bell housing and most of the weight up front, will probably not handle very well IMHO
Robin Hood fitted one in an early Monocoque S3 but the body was welded round the engine.

this engine would be more suited to a cobra

Its not going to work. V12 knocks out around 300 ft.lbf. I'd imagine the diff might end up loosing teeth off the gears. So you'll have to get a better diff, betterdrive shafts, new uprights, brakes to suit and a redesign of the back of the car. Even if you overcame all these problems, it would be chaos to drive. I believe the saying goes "Power is nothing without Control"