Recently purchased a replacement engine for my TVR on eBay. It was sold without history, but looked very good. The sump, block and heads are all sprayed grey, with overspray on the distributor and the sump gasket.

When I removed the sump to check the shells, they are genuine ford std shells, the crank is near-perfect and there is no ridging on the bores. The crank has some red paint on it and a cap has a blob of white paint on it.

Does anybody have any idea as to the background of this engine? Is it a ford rebuild? (ford shells) or just some local garage bodge?

A mate of mine in the Land Rover and 4X4 business sometimes sprays engines befor ethey are shipped out to end users. This way he can tell if they have been apart in the event of a warranty claim. This might explain the paint.

What engine is it?

TVR are known for re-using from the parts-bin so I wouldn't have thought it that unlikely!
Someone may know if whatever engine it is uses Ford shells.

Cheers,
James

It's a V6 Cologne engine from a Sierra/Granada, bought to replace the same engine in my TVR.

I thought it was rare to see an engine painted in such a way, and as the bottom end looks like it has done very few miles I thought it might have been a rebuild. The block has no engine number on it either. It looked too amateur to be genuine Ford rebuild, but I couldn't see anybody else using genuine Ford shells.

Thanks for the help.

I bought a an engine recently knowing it had been re-built from someone I knew. Pity they did it blind folded in a sand storm

It got a proper re-build, I made a profit and the new owner got a bargain so every one was happy in the end!