In 1949, British industrialist Tony Vandervell bought a contemporary Ferrari Grand Prix car - not a straightforward exercise in the aftermath of World War II, as it required an import licence, while the export of currency to Italy required special permission. Vandervell argued to the British powers that be that he needed the car as a test bed for his innovative Thinwall bearings. For its part, Ferrari appreciated the significance of those bearings, even if getting hold of them meant...
The most common aspiration of just about all power unit engineers is that of greater engine performance. Better fuel economy, improved toxic emissions or simply better torque over a wider range of operating speeds - much of it but certainly not all - is down to the selection of the cam profile and its timing. In the search for greater efficiency, compression ratios have increased in recent times, resulting in much smaller, more compact combustion chambers. To avoid mechanical mayhem and...
Pistons are part of the fundamental mechanism of most internal combustion engines, and are certainly very widely employed in racing. While roadcar producers still persist in development of the rotary engine concept, it has been pretty much abandoned by racers, especially by those who produce bespoke race engines. Although rotaries might yet enjoy something of an unexpected revival as range-extenders in electrically driven vehicles, reciprocating (piston) engines will continue to dominate,...
After inventing the internal combustion engine, it became clear that man always wanted more power, not only for racing and record-breaking, but also for his road vehicles. Today we have road-going production motorcycles that are more powerful than their Grand Prix counterparts of 15 years ago. The merits of using multiple cylinders are well known, and to make compact engines with larger numbers of cylinders, 'vee' engines are a good solution. Most bespoke race vee engines have two...
One of the functions of a crankshaft, besides playing its fundamental part in an engine's basic mechanism, is to transfer oil, especially to the con rod big-end bearings. In some cases, where all main bearings are directly fed from the main oil gallery in the cylinder block, and where drillings can take oil directly from the main bearing to the crankpin, there is no requirement to seal any drillings. However, in a great many cases, there is a need to reliably seal oil drillings, and...