Bob Gruen

Great thread! I have not read through all of it but I thought I'd add a few things (I hope it is all new material) 1) FARNDON CRANKSHAFTS makes flat plane crankshafts. I found them on an ebay listing from rv8engine-parts-shop: THIS LISTING IS FOR A -( TO FIT A Rover V8 ENGINE ) , ---STEEL BILLET , FLAT PLANE crankshaft. special .--- BY FARNDON CRANKSHAFTS spec- balanced New small journal MAINS - 2.300" ( REQUIRES small MAIN BLOCK TO FIT ) - 2.000" BIG END AS STD 3.9 & 4.2 SMALL BIG END -STD rover WIDTH 3.5 ,3.9,4.2 RODS WILL FIT - 1.586" STROKE - STD nose - RACE PREPPED DE BURRED - LIGHTWEIGHT - RADIUSES COUNTER WEIGHTS - waxed up for protection. this crank is brand new . As far as a commercial enterprise, I think a small flat plane Rover V8 might be a viable product IF you could get it to fit into the Ferrari 3x8 platform. The 3x8 cars are a bit underpowered by todays standards and actually pretty affordable to the type of people that would re-engine them. A Rover V-8 or a flat plane SBF would be perfect for the Cal Spyder 2. 2) Exhaust tube length. Tubes have resonate frequencies, the longer the tube the longer the 1st order wavelength and therefor the lower the 1st order frequency. Mid engine cars have a tendancy to be raspy because the exhaust tubes between the source, sound modifiers, and tip are all much shorter than they are on a front engined car. A proper 180 degree headers system has to have equal length primary tubes, so they all have to be as long as the longest crossover primary dictates. Then you hit the catalytic converter, then another tube: the main exhaust pipe, then a muffler, then the most impactful tube, the tail pipe. In a mid engine car the tail pipe is measured in inches, on a front engined car it's usually (but not always) measures in feet. If you really want the raspy sound on a front engined car you might have to run two custom mufflers, one resonator near the engine that is tuned to kill the 1st - 3rd resonate freqs of the exhaust pipe, and another right at the tip to shape the final pitch you want out of it. The 1960s vintage of the Ferrari GTs (like the 250) had several mufflers under the car. I'm not totally sure of the reasoning, but one result was that it broke up what would have been one long exhaust pipe into multiple shorter sections. (do a google image search for "Ferrari 250GT exhaust system") Tail pipes were long though... 3) Tip (outlet) position. If you want the LRLRLRLR sonic experience of a Ferrari you have to keep some distance between the exhaust tips. The GT40 and Pantera, examples of the "Bundle of Snakes" exhaust system and the Corvette 180 degree system have the two outlets right next to each other, where the negative soundwave from one tip has distructive interference with the positive of the other. Those cars would sound dramatically different if the tips were plumbed away from each other to give a few feet of seperation. 4) On an entirely new approach, you could also get the LRLRLR experience out of an inline 6... Just sayin'... Bob