Jump to content

Fictional engine configurations


reb

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, sierraman said:

Everything they touched turned to shit. By 2002 they were in the dire straits

They weren't much better when BMW took them over. I'd like to know how much money BMW pumped into Rover to stop them from going under.  They literally had not got much to show for themselves. 

The 200/25 was dated by the time Ford came out with the Focus and should have been binned for something new then. 

They were selling the Metro for two years after the Ka came out. 

Whole thing wasn't worth saving save for the 75 and the Mini. But they didn't have a good car for the important small/medium hatchback and supermini segment. Which is where the sales are and money to be made. 

No surprise it was split up by BMW, BMW kept the Mini and sold off the rest to whomever would buy it. Smart move as Rover probably would have dragged BMW down with it. 

Dont get the rose tinted glasses with Rover. They'd some clever designs but dreadful business practice. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Before the First World War steam and electric cars were nearly as popular as petrol ones, mainly because they were more reliable, quieter and cleaner (sound familiar?).

During the War demand for petrochemicals increased massively (obvs) and the oil companies rapidly increased in size and influence, after the War they were left with a massive capacity to refine oil but not the demand for it. Until they started their evil scheming and promoting petrol over electric and steam. Oil companies scheming? quelle surprise.

Anyhow, were would we be now if electric and steam cars were continuously developed from the Edwardian times to today? Can you imagine an actual Rover with a kettle for an engine?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, sierraman said:

We laugh but it was the sort of crazy shit you could imagine them doing at BL/Rover. Like the time they were up shit creek with their bread and butter range so they divested massive funds into dropping a V8 in a car that they knew would sell a handful or developing a sports car for an obscure racing series that nobody gave a flying fuck about. 

I think all that was to dress the shop window in their desperate attempt to find a development partner or buyer.

They really were doomed from the moment BMW departed. A hugely slimmed down company might have survived:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/jon-moulton-i-could-have-saved-rover-but-stephen-byers-wouldn-t-let-me-1786134.html%3famp

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Lacquer Peel said:

We are still talking about them today, this is the forum for shite cars not celebrating asset strippers and capitalists 

It’s not so much a case of celebrating asset strippers, I didn’t realise until recently the extent to which BMW supported the 75 - Rover’s engineers were pretty much given free reign to design a 600/800 replacement, and make it bloody good - the sort of funding that had only been dreamed about for 20 years or more and the design freedom to be an actual Rover, rather than a Ronda. The result was an excellent car, miles ahead in terms of quality and refinement than anything Rover had managed before. But it also showed BMW the extent to which they would need to support replacing the 25 & 45 (good cars in their time, but replacements should have been in progress as soon as the 75 was announced), so they took a prudent business decision, kept the bits they wanted and got rid of the rest. We can be all sentimental about the dead dog, but ultimately it was just as well that it was put out of its misery in 2005.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, 83C said:

It’s not so much a case of celebrating asset strippers, I didn’t realise until recently the extent to which BMW supported the 75 - Rover’s engineers were pretty much given free reign to design a 600/800 replacement, and make it bloody good - the sort of funding that had only been dreamed about for 20 years or more and the design freedom to be an actual Rover, rather than a Ronda. The result was an excellent car, miles ahead in terms of quality and refinement than anything Rover had managed before. But it also showed BMW the extent to which they would need to support replacing the 25 & 45 (good cars in their time, but replacements should have been in progress as soon as the 75 was announced), so they took a prudent business decision, kept the bits they wanted and got rid of the rest. We can be all sentimental about the dead dog, but ultimately it was just as well that it was put out of its misery in 2005.

I think they are a loss to the automotive world. 

Rover were expecting BMW support for the 25/45 replacement. BMW pushed for the 75 to be a ye olde English carriage clock settee type vehicle. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The finishing line up wasn’t much of a loss. They did produce some good cars like the Rover 827, but when I say good I’m talking good for the £4-500 you used to be able to pick them up for. As a business proposition they were never going to succeed, the quality just wasn’t there. I had a Rover 214 SLI, on a G plate, it was lovely inside, pile carpets and proper seats, a cut above the Escort that’s for sure, the thing is though they shouldn’t have been making cars to suit oddballs like me. It wasn’t where the money was I’m afraid. 🤣

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thinking back I worked at a firm and we had one Rover 75 pool car, a 2.0 diesel. It looked great on the outside, inside it was just naff, really tacky, like a carriage clock you’d get free with a funeral plan. It had a sort of shade built in over the wireless, it was just naff. That was the thing, they had a real opportunity to take on the opposition but it just ended up looking like a parody of itself, all this Rule Britannia bollocks on launch just highlighted we were hanging onto past glories, nobody had the neck to bring up that it just highlighted how useless we were as a country when it came to manufacturing. It could all be done cheaper and better everywhere else, it just wasn’t what people wanted anymore. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, sierraman said:

The finishing line up wasn’t much of a loss. They did produce some good cars like the Rover 827, but when I say good I’m talking good for the £4-500 you used to be able to pick them up for. As a business proposition they were never going to succeed, the quality just wasn’t there. I had a Rover 214 SLI, on a G plate, it was lovely inside, pile carpets and proper seats, a cut above the Escort that’s for sure, the thing is though they shouldn’t have been making cars to suit oddballs like me. It wasn’t where the money was I’m afraid. 🤣

The R8 was a huge success. 🤷‍♂️

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/11/2022 at 8:11 AM, sierraman said:

The Rover V8 but as a diesel

Well not quite, but Oldsmobile did make a diesel V8...which was plagued by problems because they basically did just stick a diesel head and pistons in their existing petrol block.  Stretched/snapped head bolts were a recurring issue that dogged it for its relatively short production run.

The noise at idle is truly bizarre... especially in a car rather than a big pickup truck or commercial where V configuration diesels are more common over there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Well not quite, but Oldsmobile did make a diesel V8...which was plagued by problems because they basically did just stick a diesel head and pistons in their existing petrol block.  Stretched/snapped head bolts were a recurring issue that dogged it for its relatively short production run.

The noise at idle is truly bizarre... especially in a car rather than a big pickup truck or commercial where V configuration diesels are more common over there.

and that engine single-handedly put many Americans off diesel cars for life. Didn't somebody on here have one?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Meanwhile back at the fantasy engines...

Transverse six's: there are not enough of these.

Honda showed us how to do transverse with their CB750 and then underlined their expertise with the CBX.

When I was driving that Insight, I dreamed of how much better it would have been with a CBX engine.

1757639430_Screenshot2022-08-13at11_17_16.thumb.png.6d6ab19a4186d50074ac4299ee5bd546.png

Straight eights, v12s and even a V16 have been fitted transversely, so let's not have any of that "the're too wide" bollox.

401905858_251001-3.jpg.7f2ffc6707343ca50b4e87a2bda581ee.jpg

1043558218_Screenshot2022-08-13at11_24_40.thumb.png.55ff3c92ad2c8b6f95e19affc90fca5b.png

Cizeta-Moroder-V16T-Engine.thumb.jpeg.4c4cba91bfd860f1fcda2e0c7e3c76d1.jpeg

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, martc said:

Can you imagine an actual Rover with a kettle for an engine?

K SERIES did a pretty good job. 

The 1.4 multipoint was 105hp I believe, but the Honda concerto with rover badges nailed on a safer bet. 

Never understood why the Honda engines ran backwards? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, SH1TE said:

K SERIES did a pretty good job. 

The 1.4 multipoint was 105hp I believe, but the Honda concerto with rover badges nailed on a safer bet. 

Never understood why the Honda engines ran backwards? 

Because Honda put the gearbox on the passenger side like most other makers (for packaging reasons). But Hondas were designed as right hand drive cars so the engine is on the left therefore has to run "backwards".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

and that engine single-handedly put many Americans off diesel cars for life. Didn't somebody on here have one?

They did, a maroon Delta 88 I think it was, can't for the life of me remember who it was though.

There was a blue Buick Century with the same engine for sale locally a couple of years ago that I absolutely kick myself for not buying when I saw it.  Couple of days later I decided to it had already sold.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Asimo said:

Meanwhile back at the fantasy engines...

Transverse six's: there are not enough of these.

Honda showed us how to do transverse with their CB750 and then underlined their expertise with the CBX.

When I was driving that Insight, I dreamed of how much better it would have been with a CBX engine.

1757639430_Screenshot2022-08-13at11_17_16.thumb.png.6d6ab19a4186d50074ac4299ee5bd546.png

 

I always preferred the big Zed13. Although theres no denying the CBX is a sexy lump. But the Kwak has a nice deeper growl to it.

https://youtu.be/KEBFs9ySBfA

Although engineering genius Allen Millyard decided that wasnt enough and bolted 2 of them together to make a transverse V12.  :D

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was thinking about how complex an engine could be made. I reckon something like a W12 (no, let's go more absurd, a W16) with four valves per cylinder, twin cams in each of the four heads, variable valve timing and twin-spark ignition would be a nightmare - that's 64 valves, eight camshafts and 32 spark plugs plus all the VVT gubbins. Might as well go the whole hog and throw on several turbos and/or superchargers to make it even more extreme than the Bugatti WR16, which has most of those features and does actually exist.

A 7-cylinder could be interesting as that's a prime number. Unless it's a straight-seven, there's no way the cylinders could be divided up evenly so some sort of complicated balancing mechanism would be necessary. Also, we have V12s and V16s so why not a V14?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah yeah, but all those engines have the cylinders in a row (or a multiple of rows). How about arranging them like in the barrel of a revolver. 
 

I bring you the Redrup engine.

A8494F94-B000-4E7E-AB45-43933F6290A0.gif.fe6c1edb39382da973f2ee95aa7d388e.gif
 

The idea was not new but Charles Redrup was engaged by Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company to develop his axial engine for use in their bus chassis, the idea being was that the engine took up less space and so could be mounted under the floor, giving more room for passenger accommodation.

6C28A2C8-B20F-4938-976E-F09D4BAEB499.jpeg.c9e83343e34ebca9dd452e749f44109f.jpeg

The engine drove the crank through a ‘wobble plate’ arrangement where the big end of the con-rod was a ball and socket arrangement, driving an inclined plate so converting the forward/backward motion of the piston into a rotating one sort of like this:

0B2D1A9C-8646-424C-8663-65C20B65196C.gif.150af9534da51b904a19109601c415bb.gif
FA12FC40-8F8F-4688-A166-BB8DF15A6639.gif.a66ccf8e0ddb7ae62f78c53a2e24cee4.gif

 

The engines inlet and exhaust valves a single sleeve that rotated, covering and uncovering ports in the cylinder walls.

All very clever and by the early 30s an experimental unit was put into a Bristol bus chassis for testing (known as ‘the black chassis’. When it worked, it was very very good, giving power outputs far in excess of anything Bristol was using at the time. The biggest problem was the sealing of the sleeve valve and over time it became more and more hard to start, often requiring the test bed to be towed a number of miles before the engine could be coaxed into life.

Further refinements of the engine were tried and after the replacement of the rotary sleeve valve by more conventional poppet valves, progress was starting to be made. However, a change of management at Bristol saw the end to the experimentation and the engine was never used again in a road vehicle (as far as I know, anyway)

Axial engines have found use in aviation where the low torque reaction of this type of engine proved useful when driving a propellor. It was also used to drive torpedoes as the shape of the engine fitted the shape of the torpedo rather well.


edit: further reading on axial engines here

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/axial-ICeng/axial-IC.htm#b

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/11/2022 at 9:23 PM, HMC said:

a KV12. Back to back Kv6 engines. 5.0 Litre/ 48valve. How to exit the automotive industry with a bang, very quickly. Both in terms of road speed and warranty related liabilities.

I suggested a KW12 in the BS facts thread a while ago, using the two KV6s side-by-side instead for potential quadruple OMGHGF.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Rustybullethole said:

Was there ever a flat eight? Love the sound of it in my head.

IIRC Porsche had a go at that configuration with their sports car  racing program in the 60s. Some really interesting ideas with experimental materials, and for a relatively small company at the time, it got very expensive for them.

The peak of this was probably the assembly of the 25 917s in 1969 for homologation  where the 911 line virtually ground to a halt and even admin staff were on the shop floor assembling racing cars. 

IIRC that beast was a flat 12 that was basically 2 flat 6s joined up, and in original form would blow up if you slightly over revved it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...