Thread: Leyland V8 Cam Timing

Interesting, i have a P76 V8 removed from a P76 but it has the extra mount hole already tapped.
Otherwise looks like any other 4.4 i have seen.

First 4 digits of the engine number tells you what the engine was actually (originally) built as. In simplest terms - all original actual P76 engine numbers start with a number between 4400 - 4415 , 4416 were new Leyland factory "short" motors and then the Terriers came in at 4417.

I have seen some P76 motors over the years with the third engine mount hole drilled out - but they are quite rare and I have never found a point to it. Its not something the P76's ever used and you cannot realistically drill them by hand - so I have always put it down to someone loading the wrong machining program - but then it causes the question as to what that program would be for is a mystery. Few theories around - but nothing concrete. The G cab trucks had barely started in Australia - so its unlikely they were testing the V8 in them at that point

Leyland hadn't even concepted the factory short 4416's while the P76 was in full scale production - that sequence came pretty well at the end of production and afterwards as they were either outright purchases or out of warranty replacements . I have only ever seen two 4416 factory short blocks - one of them I still have and both only had / have two holes.

All Terriers are at 4417 and all I have seen are drilled for the third hole - yet Terriers don't actually use it (yup - make sense from that). Terriers only use the same two mount holes as a P76 - so maybe it was drilled as a "just in case" for the Terriers. Considering that trucks could be used or configured for just about nearly anything, that's the most likely answer for why they did that.

Only thing I have seen use that third hole - are Rovers - so maybe the odd P76 engine was tested in a Australian Rover. Some P76 engines got EXP in the engine number - but its not really clear why

Images are two print outs from one of our "run ins" and the actual engine on the dyno glowing the exhausts hot because we were playing with the mixtures. Remember this is a P76 4.4 - using all the 4.6 Rover bits and an aftermarket computer