Talk:Straight-4
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I once had an 89 Taurus that had a straight four. That was a mistake on Ford's part. The car would have problems climbing steep hills because there wasn't enough power for a car that size. When I bought my 93 Taurus, they had corrected that mistake by then, because by then Ford used the V6 for that type of car, and that car did a lot better climbing hills.
JesseG 23:01, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It's not the question of straight-4 vs. V6. The engine was simply too small for the car. For the same capacity a 4 cylinder will be lighter and have more torque than a 6 cylinder. It's not surprising that the original Jeep had a large straight-4. Ericd 17:11, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
-Hmm... I was thinking about the article down here of the straight four engine. It is mentioned, that the biggest non-diesel of this kind of engine is the Pontiac's motor. But I have read about much larger machines existing, which used petrol/gasoline or similar fuel and worked in the way of Otto- fourstroke cycle and were used in cars. These cars were built in the very beginning of the 20th century, and they were mainly sports- or racecars. On the other hand these vehicles were also sold to the public and some of them were available in the form of familycar.
To name a few which were driven in a Gordon Bennett Cup in 1900-1905 in Europe, a formula one/rally racing of its time;
Napier, Panhard, Mercedes, Richard-Brasier, Fiat, Renault, De Dietrich, Wolseley, Pope-Toledo...
These considerably large cars had the size of engines that would amaze even those who drive around with their big-block musclecars: Generally the displacement varied from 10 to 16 liters. And these giant engines were INLINE FOURS!!!! One of the biggest singular machines was the De Diethrich's 17-liter straight four which is over twice in size compared to the Cadillac 500cid 8.2-liter v8!!!
But the power they produced was not that amazing. Leadless, low-octane fuel; sidevalve configuration; longstroke or undersquare strokeratio and the low technical experience of the beginning of the internal combustion engines era limited the power available considerably. Spesific output was around 10 horsepower per liter and in practice ranged from 60 to 130 horsepowers in these mammoth machines.
I was wondering that could someone find out if I'm right, or wrong and could it be mentioned, that somewhere in the darkness of history there were mammoth engines with displacemend hard to imagine today.
Please forgive me my poor english, I tried to write as well as I could.
-A Machine-enthusiast from Finland... 28 July 2005
Ok. I took the liberty to alter these pages. Hopefully it is correctly done as this was my first time trying this for real.
-A Machine-enthusiast from Finland... 28 July 2005
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- Most straight-4 engines, however, have been over 1 L in displacement.
Maybe in the USA, but not in Europe. I changed to 0.7 L. Please take a look at Simca 1000, Renault 4, Renault 8, Fiat 600. Fiat 850... Randroide 12:41, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
