Talking to Charlie Broomfield about his 27-litre V12 Meteor-engined Rover SD1 (part 1)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- I got the chance to visit Charlie Broomfield, well-known for his exploits in PPC magazine, and have a good look around his Rover SD1. This home-built fully street-legal monster is powered by a much-modified Meteor V12, and Charlie is currently assembling a home-brewed hybrid forced induction set-up with a view to cracking 200mph. This does get a bit techy, but is a fascinating insight into the workings of a truly ingenious set-up.
#roversd1 #ppcmagazine #meteorv12 #homebuiltsupercharger
Part 2 of this interview is here: • Part 2 - A good look u...
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As he said, Rover were actually manufacturing these engines from 1942.
Therefore, it's quite fitting that he should put one into a Rover car.
Makes me realise how much I miss PPC magazine. Thank you convid
Me too
Agreed.
Definitely, if you see this Mr Holman; PPC TH-cam channel? The £999 challenge and people's home builds would be great.
@@cheharrison7107 Has Kev not got a you tube channel, or blog, website etc now?
@@bigfra79 hmm, not that I can find. If anybody's got any links, that'd be great.
Edit: PPC has a YT channel, just hasn't been touched in 8 years 😞
Enjoying Charlie gently understating his achievements.
I never thought I'd be entertained by someone talking about gear ratios, but he's really figured out how to make it work with that massive engine and I'm impressed.
Gentlemen thank you both for your time and effort making this video.
Men in sheds .. Charlie n Alan Milyard are National Treasures.. liked n subscribed 👏 👍 👌
Wow he looks younger than when I last spoke to him just as he got the car on the road about 15 years ago! He would come to a local pub meet on one of his motorcycles and I would ask how the car was coming along then one day he turned up in the car 😎😎😎
Old school Brit, bloody brilliant 👍👍👍
thanks guys, this video was the neighbor with a garage I never had
Brilliant , such knowledge.
This is what you tube is really for.
I love ld this car when I first saw it. I still love it.
Thank you.
What a lad Charlie is, I knew him when he worked at Tim Norton's. So much knowledge and such a genuine guy.
I could listen to you to guys talk all day long ,
Another thing that was just amazing about the Merlins was how the engineered the manufacturability of it so basically anyone could do it. they engineered it so it could all be made by retirees. There's a famous shot of the Rolls Royce factory making the gear train, and nobody in that shot is a day under 50, so remarkable.
Could listen to all that information for hours. I rebuilt a few rover V8s in the 90s with Piper cams and Holly carbs good times. Hopefully we all get a fusion generators within the next 20 years if they can figure out how to tax it like fossil fuel👍
Great video 👍 As gale bank's said it's about MAD mass air density! Amazing project in the times we live in.
Very interesting listening to the details from Charlie. Great stuff.
Really enjoyable to watch - absolutely resonates with me regarding working through the theory before making things. That's the difference between an engineer & a tinkerer....the amount of peolle who claim to be doing "development" when they have zero understanding of what they expect to see & more importantly why. Clearly Charlie researches the topic, understands the relevant point & then makes things. Doesn't workout every time but iterates, researches, takes advice & goes again....the definition of development.
AMAZING!!!!!
Keep up the good work Charlie!
Thanks for doing this was hoping to hear how Charlie was getting on with it !
VERY interesting. Charlie, you are a legend! 🇬🇧
I live in the next village over . Around 20 years ago Charlie was kind enough to show me around the car
Very talented man
Very Zen philosopy of just getting everything working together ..detuning ( softening) some aspects like cam to achieve harmony .
Luv all this . Just found your channel , wish I was as clever as these people that build these things . New subscriber 👍🤘
Absolutely fascinating!
It's great that this car is actually used, they are undead built to be driven.
It would be interesting to see what it's like driven in anger but I suppose that's a job for a dragstrip.
He’s a great British eccentric. And that engine is a legend.
The guy is real enthusiast and knows his stuff
Very interesting, thanks for sharing !
I found out about this car in 2005 when my mrs bought ppc mag instead of practical classics mag, cos from then on i bought both magazines for a while
Wow I didn't know this thing was still around, saw it years ago on fith gear
Fascinating
really enjoyed this vid, absolute legend of a machine !
amazing. in the old sense of the word
Utterly amazing home engineering - but the kerb weight of an SD1 V8 is about 1500 kg, well below the two tonnes of Charlie's car,
When my dad joined the RAF after WW2, one of his first jobs was to watch over a storage facility with lots of big wooden boxes; which would be picked up from time to time. Spare Merlins being picked up by scrappies for 'scrap' value . . . . no need anymore . . : (
It’s a Rover Meteor tank engine without the reduction gear of the Merlin
I have a Meteor battle damage repair manual
this guy has to be on fred dibnahs family tree somewhere
The compressor- at those RPMs, the blade tips will be supersonic!
British blokes in sheds, can’t beat them,brilliant 😂
Sad that PPC has gone 😭
Big snog at the end... charming!
Fascinating - my enthusiasm, at a distance, is not gonna help you a jot! - old git, UK
I remember my neighbour many years ago telling me he only got 15mpg on his standard Rover P5b
My brother has a friend who's MOTHER owns and flies a Spitfire. In fact she's got the only 2 seater/trainer Spitfire left in the world (as far as I know?) Her Spitfire has appeared loads on TV and in films and I'm pretty sure she featured in the TV program where a celeb was trained up to fly one as a fighter like they did during the Second World War. The engines for a Spitfire the last I heard go for £250,000 a piece! They are so rare that buyers scour the planet in search of them! (I think i heard that she might have once bought an engine from Malta that must have been there during the protection of Malta during WW2!)
If it's the one I'm thinking of mate, she's not flying it any more........very sad.
@@daveh1081 oh no! I hadn't heard the terribly bad news. That is definitely her as the family name was Grace, how heartbreaking for Rich as his father died before. Thank you for letting me know.
@@davekennedy6315 That's the one mate. So very sad........and history repeating itself. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
@@daveh1081 I just contacted my little brother as Rich is his friend but he HAD already heard. Rich was in the car with his mother when the accident occurred and he's only just got out of hospital. Poor guy. RIP Carolyn Grace.
@@daveh1081 no thank you so much. My brother might not have heard and is always there for his friends.
He seems like a very knowledgeable fella. What's his background?
Would have been nice to see it runn
Love it ❤
So, putting humongous engines in small cars is not strictly an American thing then. I did take some aero engineering and found Stanley Hookers book, one he wrote, and seem to remember him saying he did contribute something to the superchargers on the Merlin. I am in awe of British engineering. I made friends with several British guys here in the Seattle area, working at Boeing. Thanks for the inspiration.
The much maligned Rover SD1, I always loved the SD1 V8 Vitesse but with the plenum chambered engine with the higher out put used by the Police in their Special Protection unit.
But there were P6 Armoured vehicles used by the Anti terrorist unit and protection unit.
Be cool to put one in a ex Iraqi war HUMMER chassis and put a whipple supercharger on top.
Saw a funeral car in Leicester many years ago with a merlin in it. Harper and Gutterage, I think the company was called.
People must be in a hurry to get buried
This guy went large
Don't think you need to worry about the how high up the engine sits when the engines bigger than the car lol
The original version used a lorry gearbox turned backwards to increase the final gearing but maintain low RPM,s
Leyland Leopard bus IIRC
Dont you think to make the system that turns off half of engine on the idle?
I need a drawing of your enjine 2 gearbox covertion can u pse assist making a rover mg tf v12 conversion have midmount vw gearbox gearbox aswell as auto matic aswell as 5 speed wagnerg/box for possable front mount where can i get the crank 2 gearbox connection piece
Hmm they took out a V8 of this one, it was a straight 6 2.6 when it left the factory....
Have you considered an elbow by the Victaulic company they do 6" diameter long and short throw elbows in steel and stainless steel ,usually used in fire sprinkler systems capable of handling 15+bar of pressure ,could make a sleeve to bring it down to 5 1/2" .
Jesus christ I thought the title was click bait 🤯
34:30
Roasts people on the internet.
34:42
Reflects on what he just said . .
Then spits out an incredible quote worthy of being handed down to the next generation of potentially useful people.
34:50
This dude is sound as a pound!
My fathers name is charlie broomfield . From canada
1500ft/lbs of torque damm
Did he ever reach 200 ? It did 160 plus with Johnny in the passenger seat.
It will do 200mph but needs a long enough runway to do it and that's in Germany.
naturally aspirated you mean
Homr built
Probably a bit under powered.
If the idea is to get an SD1 to over 200mph surely fitting a brand new supercharged 6.2ltr LS V8 (650bhp out of the box with warranty. Would be pretty easy to get 100+bhp extra if staying with a supercharger) The engine would be SO much lighter, plus also SO much more efficient. You'd also get more than 1 or 2 mpg which has to be the mpg of such a huge V12? The SD1 would then be completely usable on the street.
Sounds kinda boring to me
@@olatron sounds realistic though. A plodding, very low revving, ridiculous 27ltr capacity, massively heavy, plane/tank V12 engine that was designed 80+years ago is gonna be a really terrible choice for making an SD1 go over 200mph. The fact that so much engineering has gone into just squeezing such a huge engine means its not an SD1 anymore. The work its gonna take to completely change this engines designed in characteristics is crazy. For top speed you need higher revs and that is the complete opposite of what this V12 was built for. This engine makes an old diesel engine look like a high revving F1 engine.
You're right, a crate LS would be the easy answer, but I think Charlie's love lies with the old engineering of the wartime V12, not with the Rover SD1 - I think that was just a handy (and cheap) box that could be made to take a Meteor. If he just wanted to do 200mph in an SD1 then he could probably have tweaked the old Rover V8 unit up enough for that (with some long-legged gearing), but anyone could do that. To do it with something as bonkers as an old tank engine is far more of an achievement and shows a level of British eccentricity that really appeals to me...
@@thehotrodgazette the Rover V8 never puts out much power, its heads are horrendously restrictive. Just look at how TVR used to lie about power figures, it is tough to get much over 200bhp (even though TVR was insisting their 5.0ltr put out 350bhp the real figure wasn't much over 200bhp!) Maybe if you fitted Wildcat heads (they actually allow the RV8 to breathe) and forced induction? But this ancient V12 is only putting out respectable power due to its collosal size. Per litre its only (at best, the 650bhp version) 24bhp, that is laughably feeble and you might be doing less than a mile per gallon? All seems pointless. You couldn't pick a more useless engine for the job? They were probably great (at the time at least) for planes and tanks but that's about it. Loadsa torque and nothing else? It's gonna take insane amounts of money to completely retune this and could very well be impossible? There are plenty of better, smaller and way, way lighter V12S that would put out way, way more usable power and that 200mph would be achievable (Lister got big power out the Jag V12 NA and with the addition of twin superchargers) You would also have a car that you could take to shows without needing a petrol tanker following you, especially considering the present crisis.
@@davekennedy6315 The thing is Dave, I do actually agree with everything you say!
But like the previous poster says, it's not about the car - it's all about the engine, the car around it is almost an afterthought or an accessory - the engine is the star of the show, and the obsession! Swap it out for an LS and it becomes just another custom car - pretty cool but nothing to write home about.
A tad excessive?
What a waste of 💰 🤑
22:59
So it should fit nicely into a mkll escort! Great news!🤣
How many drive shafts you sheared