It's got to be a V8 for a Cobra, nothing else would sound quite right. The 3.5L Rover was easy enough to come by back when I started this, although they are a little under powered when compared to a larger Ford or Chevy. They are also expensive to modify if you want more grunt.

     Having said that, a fuel injected Rover engine, as fitted to the SDI Vitesse, is around 180 BHP as standard and can be easily modified to get 200ish BHP, which should be enough. In 1999 they were fairly rare, but not impossible to find. I placed a "Wanted" add in the local paper and found one only 4 miles away (No EBay about back then). It had been sitting in their front garden for 6 months and the bloke's wife had had enough of it. It wouldn't start but the owner seemed genuine enough that it had been running up till he took it off the road. However corrosion had got the better of the body. We eventually agreed on a price of £250 and I towed it home.

      I spent a day getting it running, found a few bad connections on the LT side of the coil. Once running everything sounded OK to me. It took another day to get the engine and g/box out, making notes of everything as it was removed. The fuel injection harness is separate from the rest and comes out complete, with all relays, CPU plug, etc, still attached.

     Once it was removed, I put it on a simple frame using wheels taken from a shopping trolley, then, using only the Haynes manual, I stripped it down, cleaning everything as it came off. I had no experience of engine building but the RPI site is full of advice and they are only 2 miles from me. So, as funds became available, I would buy some bits and ask questions, until It was finished. The heads and valves were reused as were the pistons and the crankshaft, this was within half a thow of the original size.

    This is a list of what I replaced;

Valve springs, valve seals, all gaskets and seals, camshaft, fuel injector seals, main bearings, oil pump gears and valve, piston rings, big ends, main bearings, fuel regulator, timing chain and sprockets, hydraulic tappets and the thermostat. Also the distributor cap, rotor arm and HT leads. These were changed later for Magnecore Leads. 

     Total price of parts including purchasing the Rover and for the paint, etc came to under £1100. Not bad for an engine and manual gearbox.

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     I checked out the fuel injection system, this can be done with a digital multimeter, the only component found to be faulty was the "Throttle pot". This is no longer available so I found a part in the Maplin catalogue that I modified to fit.

Which Kit?