LocostUSA.com

Yeah, what were they getting, something like 800hp out of 1.5 liters...

ok maybe we don't have their fuels... and thankfully I will not have a third arm sprouting from my forehead

But you can still chose between gas or E85... in solo 2 that is...

It's just the technology available to us today is simply incredible

Cheers,

Fred, and yhea I get goose bumps when I think of all that's available

That's pretty much what the marketeers want you to think. I only watched a few rather painful minutes of the Lemans coverage, but it struck me that the engineering guy from GM said " It's all about marketing now ".

The first article didn't mention 45 MPG. These numbers are abstract - there isn't really any context. That's one of my suspicions...

If they are concerned about milage, I would like to see how this improves the fuel specific at 20 HP output. This motor must weigh a great deal for a 20 HP motor, which is what it will spend it's life ( more then %90 ) doing.

Why would you be excited about how much power it produces per litre? That is marketing. It comes from tax laws and racing rules. Power per displacement is meaningless ( mostly), because displacement is not a cost. Fuel consumption, weight, complexity, materials and manufacturability are costs.

These "efficient" engines have been huge failures in airplane use. I think that speaks volumes. Airplanes are much more sensitive to actual issues of physics then cars. Cars are sensitive to issues of marketing, because anything can move a car - except for actual flesh and blood horses.

Car manufactures have failed big time at making airplane engines. Their engines, including the most powerful racing ones have been unable to achieve their power for more then seconds at a time. They heavily depend on corners for a relief. Those big, inefficient airplane engines withstand 100 hour throttle pulls at max power. I was so grateful... Some folks have tried these high power auto engines at the Reno races a few years ago. They died. I don't know the current status...

Well said and absolutely true.
The only thing that really makes it relevant is that we are talking about a racing class that IS displacement limited, a small twincharged engine has huge potential.

Moti

I didn't mean to go so far off on a tangent there, must be a sensitive nerve somewhere. To keep things really relevant, Colin Chapman was a big fan of metering the fuel to the engine rather then having displacement limits. It makes sense, I don't know where things would have gone if that had been done. The big twelves running 12-14k rpms sounded great in the 70's. That was marketing too, I guess.

It was a long time before I started realizing this. I first noticed that the car mags found little space to comment on things like trailing throttle oversteer, and look at those big double pages ads in the same magazines for those same cars.... Hmmm. I finally realized that even a small one sentence comment buried in an article was deserving of a great deal of weight. If that bit you in person, it really got your attention...

I do think some of this stuff might be fun to play with. Our Locosts don't have a lot of extra room, so a small engine with boost could make sense. I'd like to see some physically small pushrod engines get some boost to make up for the lack of revs - that would be a good thing for us...

The "Honda Kids" get crazy power from 1.6 liter turbo engines...

I was just about to write that Kurt... the D i.e. D15-D16 are getting into the 800+HP in drag racing form... ok that not the same as for solo 2, but I got me thinking that 300-350 was not of reach... plus the new Formula 2 Audi 1.8 turbo engine gets 400HP with some spurt at 450HP...

That's why in my discusion with my Solo 2 buddies the 1.3-1.4L turbo engine came up as a potential powerplant for a Solo 2 challenger...

Cheers,

Fred

To alleviate your suspicions, the non-abstract context you need comes directly from the second article: The TSI derivative mated to VW’s DSG system emits 144g CO2/km, and in a Golf application, fuel consumption is rated at 6.2litres/100km (45.5mpg).

That would be where the advantage of an economically tuned 1.4L displacement direct injection engine as the basis for the propulsion system comes into play. I doubt it weighs much (any) more than it would if it's dimensions were increased to provide the displacement necessary to make that level from an equivalent naturally aspirated engine...Thus same overall performance but with better mpg.

Agreed that HP/L is more or less just marketing, except for racing classes like DM...But outside of racing the economy (fuel consumption) advantages of small displacement when only using partial throttle, combined with the buyer pleasing power similar or surpassing that of a larger displacement for acceleration, is more than just marketing. Much like DOHC and Fuel Injection were previously.

And I think that's as valid of a comparison as bragging to a Corvette driver because a Civic has more HP/L.

Agreed...Too bad there aren't more readily available, and affordable, 1.4L automotive motors to build into DM beasts. Off the top of my head the 1.3L Suzuki is about the only one I can think of.

Theres a few... Toyota has a 1.3L, ford has a 1.4L Zetec in the UK for the Honda crowd there a D12 or D13 available in Japan, plus the Cosworth have a DBA derivative...

The rules states that it must be a production base engine... it doesn`t state where it need to come from... nor does it disallow destroking an engine... I agree some of these options can be a bit expensive... but considering the cost of some of the engines used it`s not out of the question.

but your right too bad that theres not more affordable engines...

Cheers,

Fred

Fiat had some interesting 1.3L and 1.4L turbo engines in their Uno models in the 80-90's, don't know what transmission will bolt to it though.

Moti

OK, I read the second article. That was 60 seconds I'll never see again.

It said it was rated, but didn't mention a standard. I guess they just didn't have room to reference the standard. It would have taken maybe a dozen letters.



It's much harder to bullsh*t with planes. They have to pick up their fuel and carry themselves to their destination. The physics are brutal. If your plane weighs 6 pounds more then it needs to - it has to carry one gallon less fuel. Now imagine yourself at 5000 feet and how very much you might want that gallon someday. What does it mean to come up 15 *miles* short of a runway.

Maybe the plane is not so comparable because it spends it's life at high power settings. So the car motor needs to run well at low power too, and in fact will spend almost it's entire life at low power settings - more then %90. Yet all this technology is being used to optimize the motor for something it spends almost no time doing!

I guess i'm missing something here. That car would likely get better mileage without any of that stuff. I don't see anything that is giving it a better fuel specific at 20 horsepower. It is likely worse. For it to be efficient it needs to run at large throttle openings at low rpm to reduce intake manifold vacuum, which works against the power stroke. Yet it has to carry all this extra expensive stuff around.

When you try to run it at large throttle openings and low RPM it probably turns on the blower and kills your efficiency.

I don't see the advantage of the direct injection here. Are they trying to improve the volumetric efficiency by avoiding the displacement of air by fuel fumes? How does that improve the fuel specific consumption?

What it's good at is extracting money from your wallet.

Overhead cams, fuel injection, and water cooling: Apparently just excessive complication and marketing by the auto industry to swindle us out of money...Oh wait...Just one of those archaic aviation engine (with none of this automotive snake oil) still cost more than the average car, let alone the unnecessarily high tech engine power it.


Just because somebody doesn't understand how a system works, or know why it works...Does not mean that it doesn't work.

When did this become part of the discussion? Those are "straw man" arguments. You shouldn't pound your head on the wall, it seems to be affecting your ability to come up with any coherent thought whatsoever.

Are you really just looking for things to argue about? There are sensible reasons to use the above and sensible reasons not to. Different applications might call for different approaches. There are certainly people on this forum that can teach me things and I've learned stuff today - that I appreciate getting some insights to. So go ahead and make my day even more worthwhile.

My point is that this fancy tech on the VW motor is producing a car so expensive - you could own a simpler street car and a modest track car and they would both be better at their job then the VW. Probably by a healthy margin. I think that's where the marketing comes in. The job of that car is not to get you from place to place or even tow a race car. It's to impress other people.

OK, so you edited your post. Sure you don't need to understand how something works and I wouldn't hold that against anyone. There are tons of things I don't know about. Then there are the things I don't know I don't know about...



We can stay off the airplane engines. I don't think they are archaic, they were a good solution to a problem and so they survived. They are not expensive because of what's in them, it's the low production. If I have someone build a motor for me, it costs a good amount to have a talented person put it together by hand. The costs start to even out. I hear the Nascar engines are around 30k or more.

I think at the bottom of this, I am bothered that cars have not become cheaper in a long time. At some level I think we should have moved on as a world and solved other problems.