Thread: Working rig attached to s1, what is it?

How closely related was the South African Land Rover's six cylinder BMC engine to that 4 cylinder Gipsy engine?
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Originally Posted by wrinklearthur

How closely related was the South African Land Rover's six cylinder BMC engine to that 4 cylinder Gipsy engine?
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Unless I am mistaken, about as closely as, say, the 2 litre Series 1 engine to the Td5.

The Gipsy engine was a pushrod Austin engine dating from the 1940s, the S.A. six fitted to Landrovers was an OHC six cylinder version of the engine that first appeared as the BMC-E Series in 1969, familiar here in the Morris 1500 and Marina. The six was pioneered here in the Austin Kimberley/Tasman, and was fitted in S.Africa to the Rover SD-1 and Landrover 3S.

The first was a truck engine designed by Austin before any mergers with other companies, the second was designed at least twenty years later by the BMC conglomerate, probably mostly by Morris designers and with any heritage being from Morris not Austin, and designed as a versatile engine for transverse engined vehicles with four or six cylinders. It was siamesed to reduce length, and seems to have had a mixed reception, although my family experience with the four in a couple of vehicles says it was a reliable and trouble free, durable engine.

John