Ira wrote:
" maybe do something with the crank as well.lighten the who shebang from
ass to
head.make it the lightess V10 ever seen on the planet."
Actually, we're seeing a few V10s now, aren't we? At least the one being
used by Audi and Lamborghini. What's funny is that all the suggestions
here seem to be about adding DOHC heads etcetera, along with lots of
scorn for the pushrods, when that pushrod valve train is not only a good
deal lighter than adding three more camshafts plus their drive
apparatus, but it carries its weight much lower. And 7K rpm is not out
of the question with a good pushrod valve train.
"Advanced" engineering features are not always an unalloyed good. By any
reckoning, the first Cadillac V16 with its narrow V angle and pushrod
OHV heads was a much more "advanced" design than the wide-V sidevalve,
all-iron V16 that superceded it except that the flathead engine was
lighter, quieter, and more powerful despite having a smaller
displacement than the OHV version. It also carried its weight much
lower. This is not to say that the flathead V16 was inherently a better
engine than the earlier one; the early OHV engines had mostly aircraft
and racing practice to draw from, and picking the right combustion
chamber shape was still partly guesswork as well. This engine was not
only highly complicated and expensive to build, it was also cursed with
a noisy valve train; even Rolls-Royce had noise problems with their
early OHV engines, in an age where the loudest sound from a luxury car
coming up the drive was expected to be that of wheels on gravel. The
flathead revision solved all of the major problems at once: noise,
complication and build cost. A few extra horsepower was icing on the cake.
Will
--
to be removed from alfa, see http://www.digest.net/bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to [email protected]
