1986 Federal 280i Chassis

[GBinUSA]

Chaps & Chapesses

My latest quest for a wedge has me looking at a 1986 Federal 280i convertible. I think I read somewhere that the factory dropped the V6 chassis and used the V8 chassis with the V6 installed. The particular car I looking at has the radiator in the nose and still has the trailing arm rear suspension. Does anyone know if an 86 would be a V8 chassis'd car?. I'm thinking if something down the road goes pop on the V6 I want to be sure I have the right chassis for a V8 upgrade.

Cheers,

Gavin.

[adam quantrill]

You need to look for a curved pipe in the chassis going east-west under the front of the engine.

The year is fine there were plenty of V8's made in '86.

[adam quantrill]

Here's a lovely picture of what I mean...

[RCK974X]

Beautiful pic !!!

As far as I know ALL chassis made after a certain date were effectively V8 ones, when factory merged production lines, which is about '84. But one of the more knowledgeable guys here can probably confirm that.

The other thing to note is that the (original) V6 frames had an extra bar/rail between the (Cologne) engine mounts, under the engine block, the Cologne is rear sump, Rover is front sump, so quite a bit of the 'underneath' pipework is different in detail
.

V6 frame to top rails are STRAIGHT (but not parallel) from front to back of engine/bulkhead.

Edited by RCK974X on Friday 11th July 23:45

[KKson]

adam quantrill said:

Here's a lovely picture of what I mean...

Green mist of jealousy desends...........

[Tasmin200]

Are you going to put a Rover V8 in it? Can you get them over there? I'm just saying as it's been discussed on here before but a Ford 302 fits in the V6 chassis apparently.

Edited by Tasmin200 on Saturday 12th July 13:34

[mrzigazaga]

And with the radiator in its original position....

[GBinUSA]

Thanks all for the info.

If I have go with an8 conversion I would likely go with the Ford 302. Easily sourced here in the US and cheap, relatively so. But with only 35K on the 6 I hope that such surgery will not be necessary.