[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Integrated_Robotised_Eng...
Engine architectures tend to last unless they are bad. They can do a lot on one also, the Toyota GR platform started out as a fairly vanilla V-6 but it has variations with GDI and variations with turbochargers and has been used a lot of different vehicles. A lot of different variations with different levels of compressions and such. It's basically the block and cylinders configuration.
I'll shout out the K-series though, it's a shockingly good platform. Lots of little details have been thought through, it's relatively simple, inexpensive and reliable and maybe one of the easiest engines to work on. If you were new to cars and wanted to start wrenching, the K-series is a pretty good place to start. It can take boost and make power and has lots of aftermarket support. I know civics aren't everyones cup of tea and it's not a big V-8, but I've yet to meet an engineer that isn't at least slightly impressed by the k-series.
Chrysler LA - 1964-2003
Ford Windsor 1961-2000
Ford Inline 6 1960-2016
Modular V8 1990-2014
Still lives to this day. The 5.0/5.2 engines are modular.
Instead, they were tossed aside to promote whatever garbage came out of citroen design centers, i guess to achieve the destruction of stellantis. (except in south america, they still get to use the Firefly)
Great little engine that powered my first car, a 2005 Fiat Uno, made for the Argentinean market in Brazil: 1.4 (1.345L), 8v of reliability.
But in the end an engine can be reliable but still be an environmental liability.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Cl%C3%A9on-Fonte_engin...
I think the car made it to almost 300000 km with the engine showing barely any sign of wear. Some parts broke down, and there was still regular maintenance, which, combined with poor fuel economy and state subsidies made it not economically viable to keep the car even though it still ran. The newer model we bought later didn't last as long, the engine was good but not as robust, but it was still worth changing because of fuel economy alone.
At no point we considered environmental factors, only cost, but they are tied, since better fuel economy means both lower costs and lower emissions.
So in the end, you we a engine that was reliable for sure but didn't meet modern standards in terms of running costs, emissions and performance. When the Twingo came out, the use of the Cléon-Fonte engine was generally considered a serious downside, and it was changed to the more modern and appropriate "Energy" engine shortly after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_XK_engine
I assume the American s will be by with a pushrod v8 soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick_V6_engine
1961-2008.
Probably should pop it open (heh, Fiat Pop, no pun intended) to fix the headlight which has been out for about a year but it was a lot easier to get a (free) veteran's plate than poke around in there and you pretty much have to commit vehicular homicide in front of a cop to get pulled over with a veteran's plates so... I mean, it came with an extra headlight for a reason.
But, yeah, tiny little engine for a tiny little car which does it's job without issue, what's not to love?
Over 75 years of production of that design. It's the AK-47 of engines.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-Quality-Manufact...
Shanghai Diesel Engine Co., Ltd. (SDEC) originated from the Shanghai Diesel Engine Factory, founded in 1947 under the name Wusong Manufacturing Plant of the China Agricultural Machinery Company, where it produced a trial batch of 5 HP gasoline engines. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the factory was renamed Wusong Machinery Plant, which later began mass-producing a single-cylinder, horizontal 12 HP diesel engine operating at 750 rpm. In August 1953, it officially became Shanghai Diesel Engine Factory and started independently designing and manufacturing diesel engines.[1]
That's the engine - that little 12HP single-cylinder horizontal Diesel engine. It's up to 20HP now; there's been progress in 70 years. Here's a full teardown and overhaul.[2]
It doesn't seem to resemble any common US, UK, Japanese, or German diesel engine of the 1940s. All those countries built small Diesels in that period, but none are close to the Chinese design. Don't know who the designer was, though. If you asked SDEC, they'd probably tell you.
[1] https://www.chinadieselgen.com/en/history-of-shanghai-diesel...
A design that is both not fundamentally flawed in some way and cutting edge enough for its time to not quickly rendered obsolete the steady increase in expectations should go far longer. A design that is "ok" and cutting edge will probably go 20-30yr. A design that is behind the times, and very good (easier to not make wrong design decisions when you're not on the cutting edge) will probably do 20-30yr as well.
[1] i.e. not some specialty truck or sports car thing that could become not worth making due to a shift in market conditions for the few segments where it's applicable.
Of course with electric cars obviously coming it is questionable if any engine is worth starting today. There isn't much worth doing that a minor tweak to an existing design cannot do - and even if there is something it is questionable if engines will be sold long enough to be worth it. (at least for cars - if you target boats or construction equipment or such maybe - though you will note smaller boats typically just take an existing engine and tweak it because there are not enough small boats sold to be worth a new design)
GEMA was the collab between Chrysler/Mitsu/Hyundai for an inline 4, and GM/Ford have collaborated on a few transmissions too.
Thanks for the comment as it was the impetus for me to expand my engine knowledge today!
I no longer hold that view. GM's pushrod V8s are considerably smaller than their competition, and lightweight relative to their displacement, for which there is famously no replacement.
Forced Induction has made its way tho. Not all, but a lot of modern turbo engines are great in all three aspects of reliability, performance, and efficiency.
I can see turbo'ed PHEV being the solution to heavy-duty use cases one day. Pretty stoked for the Ramcharger.
The examples you gave show that turbos are nice additions to a specific displacement size.
Op said turbos are a replacement for displacement. My example is there to show him they are not.
There have been sooooo many SBCs shat out into the world in industrial applications that even if GM stops making them someone will keep making them. You can't make a compatible single replacement because you'll break a ton of applications. You can't make a ton of different replacements because that's not economical. Only makes sense to keep making them.
Definitely, and the old carborated beasts just work and can be fixed with minimal tools and ran off of just a few wires.
I've been enjoying watching a coworker resurrect his M715 Military Truck (basically a government J-Series truck from Kaiser/Jeep) with a fresh blueprint SBC and a mix mash of GM and aftermarket drive train parts.
It may be the least efficient truck I've ever ridden in, but it can reliably pull tree stumps out of the ground.
They were, at least.
Massive recall on the 6.2L versions of their V8 engines right now.
https://www.lemonfirm.com/blog/gm-6-2l-engine-recall-what-tr...
Meanwhile Toyota[1] is recalling blown up turbo v6s left and right (for problems that you can't just dump different oil in to solve) because they didn't invest in keeping a big v8 on the cutting like GM did and they didn't invest in making small turbo stuff last long like Ford did.
[1]Mentioned not because they have unique problems but because who if not a Toyota fanboy makes a comment like yours
3.0 Duramax says hold my beer (for the readers not familiar, it has a wet belt driving the oil pump and it's mounted in the back making proactive replacement prohibitively expensive).
My jaded take is that they're sticking with the wet belt on what's generally a europoor economy car engine in order to force planned obsolecense.
Would putting an aftermarket oil pump in these modern engines protect them or is it a deeper design issue?
They spec the thinnest stuff they can get away with to add .0001mpg. Multiply that by all the Chevy 1500s GM makes or F150s Ford makes and you see the draw.
Sometimes it turns out that the thinnest stuff they can get away with just not quite thick enough at the margins or in transient conditions. And of course they stretch out the oil change interval to reduce on-paper TCO as well which doesn't help.
You can mitigate this with thicker oil (what GM did for the recall) by can go too far and create other oiling issues because thick oil drains back slower and going to some super high spec 0-W-<whatever> Euro oil may cause other problems related to soot and sludge so there's no silver bullet.
The "safe" advice most people give out is to use whatever the <nation with no emissions or fuel economy rules> version of your owners manual says to use for oil.
And if you have a high strung turbo engine you ought to take your oil change intervals seriously.
The article mentions this further down:
> The K20C is Honda's current-generation of the K-Series range, upgraded to deliver strong real-world efficiency and long-term reliability across the Honda and Acura catalogs. It's also a redesign that meets stricter global emissions rules and tighter thermal demands that come with modern turbocharging.
The original K20A has been out of production for a long time.
Each iteration of the engine shares a lot in common with the previous iteration, but the redesigns have been significant enough that I wouldn’t say it’s accurate to claim that one engine has been in production for 25 years.
It’s actually very common for engine series to span decades, even though this article is presenting it like it’s an unusual achievement. Chevy has the LS, Subaru with the EJ, Mitsubishi with the 4G.
> rather than scrapped and replaced every few years
This doesn’t really happen for mainstream engines. Maybe for specialty and exotic engines, but not the engines you see powering the commuter cars and trucks on the road. Engine development is expensive. Nobody is scrapping and replacing their bread and butter engine design every few years.
For a while, bulbs had to meet efficiency standards. These standards were configured such that they didn't technically exclude incandescent bulbs, however, for an incandescent bulb to comply, it would have to be driven hard and thus comparatively short-lived.
(for context, incandescent bulbs last something like 4x as long if you let them be 10% dimmer)
It's a big engine for that little car but I'd completely forgotten about them over the years.
It's wild that people are still doing this: https://potentialmotorsport.com/
I might have to reserect that dream. :D
Well that's an evocative term I've not seen before, lol.
https://www.classicandsportscar.com/news/csc-features/mini-t...
I love the idea but I'm a pretty rubbish driver and would probably end up getting myself into trouble.
...would be fun though!
The 'worst' mini I owned was a souped up Innocenti bored out to the max, it was still fairly safe to drive but I would not let non experienced mini drivers others drive it, too many surprise factors. We drove that thing through Scotland (my eldest and me) and it was a trip to remember.
Another interesting one - that I didn't drive but the son of the owner did - was a TR with a massive Ford special products V8 shoehorned into it. If you live in eastern Canada and you're overtaken by something small and wicked fast with 'BAD TR' as the license plate, that was it. Getting in the passenger seat of that thing was an interesting experience, the engine took up half the footwell, and the clutch had so little throw that you couldn't really tell when it was depressed and when it wasn't. It certainly moved though.
Porsche 911 Turbo is not just dangerous, it's actively trying to kill you. The engine is at the wrong end so it doesn't handle (if you throw a dart feathers-first at the dart board, it'll try to flip round in the air so the heavy end is at the front), and the turbo lag and very "peaky" cam gives you a throttle response of <STOMP> nothing, nothing, faint whistling, WWWAAAAAAAAH WE'RE BACKWARDS THROUGH THE HEDGE.
It's hard to think of a worse combination.
The suspension wasnt really up for that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN7tl7nhV0s&list=PLp0KnUFYB-...
They run too hot because everyone runs lawnmower-grade 95 octane petrol these days, which contributes more than anything else to liners breaking free especially with the liners being thinner on later (90s onwards) 94mm-piston engines. I do wonder if the switch from thin steel "shim" head gaskets to composite ones allowed the liners to move more?
Anyway they only break liners free completely (the infamous "dropped liner") if you run them absolutely bone dry of water until one piston expands enough to jam in the liner and start hammering it up and down, just before the engine seizes entirely.
It's cheap and easy to get the liners knocked out and the block machined to take "top hat" liners, with a lip around the top that clamps them in place, something like £1800 last time I looked.
The Toyota, since new, has needed 2 sets of tires and 1 set of brake pads, both normal wear-out items. The air conditioner relay has failed twice, at a cost of ~$15 to replace. The newer part number has a higher amp capacity and seems to be holding up fine since then. The driver side door lock actuator failed once.
It almost gets it's preventative maintenance missed, because nothing ever breaks to jog your mind that the car needs to be maintained.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn...
This was when there was a lot of grousing about those cheap (and fuel efficient!) Japanese cars catching on in the U.S. market.
Hilariously, the Japanese car just kept running and they had to intervene — maybe drain the radiator?
I wish I could find something about it but even ChatGPT comes up empty handed. Maybe it was a half-time stunt? I feel like it was in a stadium anyway.
(My first car was a used 1974 Datsun B210.)
This is called lying. They are lying.
I can't be driven on the street in any meaningful way anywhere but a Minnesota winter.
If you can't drive to work 20 miles away in 75 degree weather without coolant, than no a car can't run without coolant.
And no it can't run without oil in any meaningful way on the street for more than maybe 15 minutes.. so again, no Honda Toyotas are no built so well that they run without oil.
But yeah, you can limp along without the essential fluids for a bit.
Um, no. Go ahead dump your oil and coolant, go drive your car, and report back how "fine" it did.
(No, please don't actually do this. Although here's a guy who did, for the clicks. The Honda did impressively well, but it wasn't "fine". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyejT4VPzlE)
Oil not so much.
The longest I've seen a used car go without an oil change was 40k miles and it was changed when it started making noise instantly on startup. That was basically 90k to 130k. Sure 0 to 40k would go a bit better.. but not 15 years of typical driving.
Between carbon blowby, gasoline dilution, oil burning at the rings/cylinder walls even if minimal, no car is making it 15 years if the person drives more than 5k miles a year IMO.
1) cars have oil
2) said oil should be changed regularly
Similar to how this person went most of a lifetime without noticing and wondering what oil change businesses, advertisements, coupons, etc were for... They also didn't notice someone in their household or a service provider of some kind (brakes, tires, idk) changing their oil.
Rate of heat transfer in general if probably more important.
There are various figures of merit, such as the Mouromtseff number https://doi.org/10.1109/JRPROC.1942.234654 or https://www.electronics-cooling.com/2006/05/comparing-heat-t... for a quick overview.
Some tables of heat transfer coefficients: https://www.engineersedge.com/heat_transfer/convective_heat_...
But, turns out water is just very very good also when you take these other factors into account. Compared to oil, it has, as mentioned, much higher specific heat, it has higher heat conductivity, it has lower viscosity which means less pumping power and more likely to see turbulent flow which helps with mixing.
In a very niche form of motorsport, the civic sport is top in class for a lower tier Street class with the SI being top of another lower tier Street class.
Anyways, nice engines, but you don't need something to be exceptionally reliable to keep it in production for 25 years.
But thanks to aftermarket support you can get third party parts to fix any issue with the K-series, and even see people turbocharging to get them north of 1,200hp. We've got a local guy with a k-swapped Acura NSX that is an absolute monster of a car.
The Rover V8 that powered the P5, P6, SD1, various Landrovers and Range Rovers up to the mid-2000s, TVRs, Morgans, and so on was first built as the Rover V8 in 1964 and only stopped mass production in 2006 - although blocks are still cast and you can buy a brand new one today. If you do, I don't need to tell you that there's no price tag because you already know what you're getting into.
They were based on an earlier Buick design, which makes it all the more hilarious when people freak out about finding an exotic imported engine specialist to work on their Discovery 2 in North America. Go and ask your grandad about old Buick smallblocks...
I don't know precisely what special sauce they have, but while I've parted with a couple of Hondas over the years due to rust or accessory breakdown (and one, sadly, to a crash; hey, I know the Fit has a reputation as a deathtrap, but it saved my life), I've never had one give me engine trouble.
Their starter has a very iconic sound too; I'm a little surprised marketing has never seemed to catch onto that. You can identify the sound of a Honda starting up in a parking lot.
I replaced it with a Corolla hybrid. It gets 60 mpg. I have expectations of longevity for this one, too.
