OT: engines

Troy proclaimed:

Wonder where you were looking. Most old cars had larger engines with less horsepower than a similar displacement today. The vehicles themselves were far heavier due to the typical body on frame. Easily checked if you are not trolling.

You could also answer that question with 5 seconds of Googling. You might even discover that your great grandma might have driven an electric car or your great grandpa a steam one. Or go back a bit further and discover that your great great grandpa probably drove a 2-3 horsepower fully organic vehicle. With a bit more research, you could even compare the pollution of modern traffic in downtown New York City to that of say, 1889 as far as sheer tons of material that had to be removed....

Modern engines make way more horsepower from smaller displacements and weight than ever before. Some use turbos, some use superchargers, some use common-rail or direct injection diesel, some are hybrids with technology dating back to the large diesel locomotives of the railroad era, and soon you'll be seeing ceramic engines, electric superchargers, etc.

Looking at jeeps like: M-422 Mighty Mite... AMC v4 w95 cubic inches, producing 50 hp... tho I know its only like 1500 pounds or so... Model Ts, stuff like that. I'm not old I'm young, I only know what I read ;)

I remember seeing some sort of 4 wheel drive truck model t looking thing made out of wood... can't remember where tho. A friend of my dad's had a bantam with a 17 horsepower motor that could cruise around 65 he said, and I even saw the thing loaded into the back of a van.

I still dont know what trolling is... I just learned today what ramj+w is lol. My expertise is computers not cars, twas why I was asking... looking for input from Mike or Jerry or Bill. They've been around longer than I, and from what I can read on here have seen alot.

Troy

Good one, Lon. Modern vehciles are marvels of complexity, but deliver more power, safety and overall economy than any that have preceded them. Hybrid tech is currently the rpovince of society hating moonbats, but will most likely become quite mainstream and soon, as it' s such a simple tack-on it's a wonder it wasn't assimilated years ago. The biggest yuk in all this, the green-moonbats hatred of SUVs and trucks is only going to get more intense, as hybrid tech will make them more efficient and eventually less expensive to operate. They are the best vehicles in which to adapt the hybrid powertrain, plenty of capacity for big battery packs, and lots of need for efficiency, plus low-end torque.

Troy alleged...

Mike, Jerry, Bill.... you're not going to let that pass, are you? :)

"Cruise around 65 mph" in one of those is being _very_ generous. More like 45. On the roads of the day, that felt like 90 does today. You could likely get it to 65, but it was really working the engine. And zero to 60 took around 30 seconds. You'd get mowed down on a modern freeway. ;)

Cheers, - JJ

That would be a good solution for cars that are used on the street, but not so good for off-road vehicles, unless whatever they bolted on ran all of the time. You really don't want a super charger or turbo to be kicking in while climbing on rocks, but having it give a boost when entering the freeway makes lots of sense.

By all means if you want to turbocharge a Model T, be my guest.

Come to think of it.. I'd pay to see that :)

J.

Troy proclaimed:

Mighty Mite != car

Once you go back past mumble mumble year, American cars rated their engines in SAE Gross horsepower. This is why you would see a 150 British HorsePower vehicle kick rear on an American model of same weight but 200+ horsepower, or similar for a 100 DIN unit. In 19{mumble} they switched over to SAE Net, which maps a bit better, but is still a bit optimistic. Of course there are cheaters on both the upside and downside today as back then. e.g. a 435 Hp 427 ZL1 that made closer to 500 or the "290 Hp" models rated specifically to avoid insurance surcharges on vehicles over 300 Hp. The 6.1 Hemi SRT of today, even though a pushrod design, compares reasonably well to a 425 Hp 427 Chev or 430 Hp Mopar 440. The old 426 Hemi was one of the downward cheaters. Mostly just good engine management control, as some of the older engines were higher compression ratio than pretty much any gasoline you could buy today can handle without knock control which drops HP. e.g. most of the aftermarket tuner 396, 427 Chev and Ford Cammer, 426 ram+hemi, 440, 421, 428 that would run well only on Sunoco 260 or similar.

Plus the older engines were generally much heavier for a given displacement, getting worse as you go back.

Some of the early american sboxen were the Crosley, Nash Metropolitan, etc.

Somewhat instructive to compare modern 0-30, 0-60, and 1/4 mile times and speeds with the older iron. Granted some of that was that the older iron had to carry around real steel capable of taking out a Land Rover when collided with.

Yeah, I've been known to design a computer or two... big ones, not PC's.

Keep YerSpam proclaimed:

Heh, try the old Mercury Capri with the 1600 smog choked engine that dropped 10 mph off cruise speed every time the A/C compressor kicked in. A truly fun way to cross Nevada with those looooonnnng hills and luvverly warm summer days.

The old VW Van had a hard time getting to 75 mph and staying there unless driven off a cliff...

Jason Backshall proclaimed:

I'd think it would be more fun to take an old Stanley Steamer engine and render it modernly and stick it in a FSJ. Or a Doble. Think the Stanley was the first passenger car to sustain in excess of 100 mph measured at Daytona sand beach.

A local tire dealer has a 1948 Crosley in their showroom. There is a 5 page brochure on-line at the link below. Be sure to read the specifications page.

Sadly I don't expect them to build them like locomotives where the diesel can generate enough power to move the train, but just uses electric motors to do so, with a battery available for light duty or additional short term pulling power.

Jeff Strickland proclaimed:

There have been a couple of waves of enthusiasm for turbocharged gasoline engines for more or less the reasons you mention. The one in the late 70s and early 80s was a bit ahead of its time in the engine-controls department, and also it took awhile for manufacturers to consumer-proof the way they cooled the bearings.

In the late 80s, turbos came back, but went away again, mostly supplanted this time with bigger as well as better naturally aspirated engines. Note also that instead of a third wave of the energy crisis, oil was getting cheaper and cheaper, in inflation-corrected terms, in the US market, so the regulatory and economic forces that had been pushing increased fuel economy lost a lot of momentum.

In both instances, the turbos seemed mainly oriented toward a performance variant of any given car rather than toward getting away with a smaller engine for economy.

Toyota made a version of their 4WD pickup that had a turbocharged Four. It was not a huge success in the marketplace. Frankly, neither "turbo lag" nor the need to maintain high revs are what most people are after off-road, or even on-highway in a truck.

Which brings us to one of the other troubles with getting huge power out of a small engine: real-world driveability. Under most circumstances it's more pleasant to drive a lower-powered vehicle with broader torque and power curves than one that makes monster numbers but only with constant attention to gear and rpm to stay in a narrow sweet-spot.

This applies mostly to gassers, of course. For reasons of both thermodynamics and physical robustness, turbos go with diesels like basil goes with tomatoes. They have a good bit to do with diesels' success in both super-duty pickup trucks and economy cars in recent years.

In either case, you also get plumbing/packaging complications, which can range from trivial to damnable depending on the engine and vehicle.

Cheers,

--Joe

There have been a couple of waves of enthusiasm for turbocharged gasoline engines for more or less the reasons you mention. The one in the late 70s and early 80s was a bit ahead of its time in the engine-controls department, and also it took awhile for manufacturers to consumer-proof the way they cooled the bearings.

In the late 80s, turbos came back, but went away again, mostly supplanted this time with bigger as well as better naturally aspirated engines. Note also that instead of a third wave of the energy crisis, oil was getting cheaper and cheaper, in inflation-corrected terms, in the US market, so the regulatory and economic forces that had been pushing increased fuel economy lost a lot of momentum.

In both instances, the turbos seemed mainly oriented toward a performance variant of any given car rather than toward getting away with a smaller engine for economy.

Toyota made a version of their 4WD pickup that had a turbocharged Four. It was not a huge success in the marketplace. Frankly, neither "turbo lag" nor the need to maintain high revs are what most people are after off-road, or even on-highway in a truck.

Which brings us to one of the other troubles with getting huge power out of a small engine: real-world driveability. Under most circumstances it's more pleasant to drive a lower-powered vehicle with broader torque and power curves than one that makes monster numbers but only with constant attention to gear and rpm to stay in a narrow sweet-spot.

This applies mostly to gassers, of course. For reasons of both thermodynamics and physical robustness, turbos go with diesels like basil goes with tomatoes. They have a good bit to do with diesels' success in both super-duty pickup trucks and economy cars in recent years.

In either case, you also get plumbing/packaging complications, which can range from trivial to damnable depending on the engine and vehicle.

Cheers,

--Joe

Turbocharging works especially wel on propane burning engines.

Google "Ak Miller". A real American genius, unlike Hughes.

The '73 Porsche Can Am racer put out a 1500hp from 5.4 litres thanks to a turbo ; this was a car that could drive for more than 4 seconds in a straight line. I wouldn't call that "not of any real value".

Of course, Mack don't know anything about making horsepower either as they use turbos. Guess they aren't Real Trucks.

:-)

Dave Milne, Scotland '91 Grand Wagoneer, '99 TJ

Every over the road truck in the United States today in revenue service uses turbochargers. Even Gardner and Foden in the UK, eccentric but beautifully made engines, went to turbos at the end of their production life. I know of no Fodens stateside but Gardners show up in doubledeck English buses-lots of them come here, especially to places like Las Vegas, Wis. Dells, Branson, etc.-occasionally.

Hughes proves his opacity to reality himself so much better than anyone else could. Properly designed turbo installations add virtually no back pressure and some are tuned so that in the RPM range of interest they actually provide suction rather than pressure. Turbos derive their energy from the heat drop across the turbine! In WWII, Rolls Royce were against turbos in aircraft because they felt the exhaust energy from the stacks provided forward thrust to the airplane which you lost in a turbo. In a truck or car that energy is dissipated in the muffler system.

Mechanical superchargers are very inefficient because they use a lot of crank horsepower. The centrifugal supercharger is the most efficient but, as you know from Fodens, is bad for roadgoing vehicles because they make boost in a narrow range. The Roots blower used on the (you have to admit) more successful Detroit Diesels makes boost linearly but is mechanically very, very inefficient. That's why screw types are now used in fuel dragsters. Detroits with turbocharging only use the blower for starting, it's "unloaded" (bypassed) at speed.

Mack with its Thermodynes were the first production turbocharged road vehicle.I think they were introduced in 1955 and within ten years every four cycle linehaul engine in America was turbocharged. DDA took until the fuel crunch in '73 to get into the act. Of course there never was a naturally aspirated Series 60.

Outside the US, KKK in Germany and IHI were the turbo manufacturers.(ASEA Brown Boveri never made one that small AFAIK.) The English never made turbos for vehicles but there were some interesting things like Jumbo Goddard's turbo 8 liter Bentley.