Obviously, you can’t just take two sets of rods and pistons out of a V8 and expect it to run perfectly fine as a V6. In essence, though, that is what Jaguar did. With the cylinder heads removed, you can see the spots where cylinder sleeves would go if it were a V8. It does look a little goofy and definitely takes up more space than needed. One might assume that the extra engine block weight might be a bit annoying for chassis engineers, too, but the bigger weight penalty comes with the crankshaft.
Since the engine block remains the same length overall, the crankshaft does as well. Given that it is missing two crank pins and the accompanying throws, a pretty hefty counterweight was added to the back of the crankshaft to keep things smooth throughout the engine’s operation. That, however, isn’t the only modification that was made to the crankshaft to make this work.
