Hi there, I have managed to rescue the only TVR ever to be Factory Fitted with a Holden V8 Engine. The car was bought from the Managing Director of TVR before he retired 18 months ago. It has a twin plenum & fuel injection - and is from 1987/early 88 It is a 1988 prototype concept car, which should really have been chopped up years ago by the TVR Factory, as it was never put into production. The car was built for, and used by, the then Managing Director of TVR � Peter Wheeler. The car was obviously very quick - as PW never drove anything slow! I have been told that it is some type of special Holden racing engine� The engine carries no stamped engine numbers, but has cast Holden part numbers as below: Heads: 92060019 Block: Stamped with '5.0' Crankshaft: 92005960 Crank Stops: Four Hole Type: 92060142 Oil Pump: 2815889 Oil Pump Housing: 7434846 Camshaft: Possibly 7434871 & carries no visible forge marks or numbers Pistons: 92060078 The lump appears to have standard lifters, and has Crane roller rockers. The Con Rods look very similar to the VN rods. So what have I got? It appears to be some kind of Hybrid - but we cannot make it out. We do know that a Holden Engineer was flown out to the UK to set the car up, and rumour has it that it returned around 300bhp and 300 lb/ft of torque. We now need to order shells, rings and other parts from Oz, but don't quite know what to get! Can you possibly help identify this lump for us? Your help would be very much appreciated. Many thanks Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

hey wheres the rest of the car?? did you completey strip it?

looks like a vn Group A set up to me with the twin bodies and all that. with all the part numbers u should be able to contact holden and they should be able to tell ya what you need

Quote: Originally Posted by Atomik hey wheres the rest of the car?? did you completey strip it? Yes - the car is completely stripped & 60% rebuilt. As it's the only TVR ever to receive a Holden engine, we were lucky to be able to rescue it. We need to be able to identify the engine so I can order some new parts & re-build the beast. Any help would be gratefully received... Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

i am no expert but that looks like the same system as the walkinshaw injection , close to same era too with the dates you mentioned as well. A walky member would be able to give you a better run down of the 5 litre engine specs if its a GMH. if its a normal old 5.0 litre parts will be fairly cheap . its that injection thats rare i am guessing ... good luck mate .... Did Walkinshaw model this gear of Rover V8's?

In the late 80's there was a company on the Sunshine Coast in Qld that used the Walky motors in a Alfa V6 body, if memory serves me correctly they called it the Giocattolo and built 15 of them. I'm pretty sure they shut up shop in 1989 and what was left of the enterprise was flogged to the highest bidder. There's a good chance that the engine came from there as they did do "slight" mods to the engines and there was the odd 1 or 2 left over.

Its a VL GRP A plenum and not a VN. VN had a slope at the front of the plenum and the VL did not. http://us1.webpublications.com.au/st.../0053_04mg.jpg (http://us1.webpublications.com.au/static/images/articles/i0/0053_04mg.jpg) Thats a "Walkinshaw" engine. the casting seems to be different on the plenum and so do the rocker covers.

very interesting... good luck with the build

Yeah they are Walky motors

Looks like a Walkinshaw motor to me! The date would certainly put it at that too. There is an issue of Australian Muscle Car that has a huge article about the Walkinshaw that won Bathurst, there is heaps of detailed information about the motors, interviews with the blokes who built the motors, all kinds of neat info about block castings etc from memory. I can't find my issue as I just moved house and everything is boxed up, but someone must be able to help this bloke out! Where is Corsa? As for finding parts, I can't imagine you'd have any problems getting bits that would fit and work fine, but to find bits identical to what you're pulling out you'd have to do a bit of research into what's behind those part numbers. Thanks for bringing this awesome car to our site mate, what a unique piece of gear... looks awesome! Do you have any engine bay pics? What kind of diff/gearbox are behind it?

woo hoo i was right..... Knew i used to listen to much to my mates older brother

the reason the engine internals look like VN ones is because the Group A and VN V8 motors were built at the same time (and parts) apart from the obvious things like block, plenum etc

threads like this were made for corsa. Can i be the first to say that car is fuck-off 80's cool! I love it Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

Holden made no secret that they wanted the fuel injected V8 to be used in some kinds of european mid mounted sports cars in the late 80's early 90's. Holden allowed the locally made Giocattalo to use their engine workshop for testing for free in exchange for use of the car for possible international interests (demonstrations). Maybe this car was the result of this, but never got off the ground??

Hmmm giocattlo seen 1 acouple of years back slam into the wall at eastern creek twin turbo think it was sporting 800bhp you got a nice concept car there mate hope it comes up a real treat and yer it looks similar to a walkie V8.

RIP Todd Wilkes.

What does it weigh? Looks like itd be pretty light to me. Imagine the power to weight ratio with a big comp, solid roller 355 in there. Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

Hi there - The Walkinshaw does make sense, although as has been pointed out - the plenum casting is different. It also bolts from below instead of on the top. It takes a couple of hours to get the plenum off as the common rail gets in the way of the spanners! The box is a Borg Warner T5 which was supplied with the engine - and the car will weigh about 1150kg in all. As it is a TVR prototype, they took the inner body from the previous model and sprayed it with quick-setting modelling foam - cut it to shape by hand and then covered it with a couple of layers of fibreglass. I've taken a complete set of splash moulds just in case it gets bumped... Will be taking it to the UK Holden and Commodore shows when it's finished - I've already got the shirt! Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

fark thats a piece of history, awesome pick up

This is one for CommodoreNut from the VKGroup 3 forums He's the one that will be able to give you the 100% accurate info we'd all be guessing Corsa on here can direct you to him