History
Bought as a replacement for an 1800 rally car that we were building for the Silver Fern Anniversary Rally. The engine had expired and I had a P76 block sitting under the bench. We thought that this could be dropped on the top of the gearbox and the extra torque would make up for the automatic.
Modifications
Turns out the in line and the X blocks are not the same in the bottom flange. The 2200 and 2600 have the same bore. The 2600 has nice slipper pistons and by boring the block .060" we got 2700cc. The center main had to be machined to fit the big crank. The tail of the crank had roughly an inch turned off the end and the bolt holes redrilled for the flex plate for the auto. The machinist went through two cutting tools as the steel cranks are extremely hard. So it was relatively simple. The test came when putting the block on the auto gearbox and wondering if the longer crank would make contact with the gearbox. It didn't! On firing it up the best we could get it top run was on 4 cylinders. Finding some bigger needles for the twin SU's fixed that. Suspension was unmodified. A roll bar was fitted along with a skid plate under the gearbox and some rally tyres. It would easily reach 110mph and we tended keep a bit in reserve, just in case.
