Talk:V8 engine

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[edit] V8 Diesels

As far as I remember, I think Perkins worked with Land Rover back in the 1980's, to produce the Rover V8D. They reckoned the problem with it was that the pressure was lifting the heads, so the project was abandoned due to the cost of sorting it out. -Ross

Land Rover have a V8 diesel in their current line-up!!!!


Who knows about the Rolls-Royce V8 ? Much more British than the Rover IMO ?

Yes. American-influenced, certainly, but it's a native RR design, and a much more refined V8 than American practise. I have a few articles on it at home; see what I can do to write about it. —Morven 00:23, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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'32 valve engine' is correct; '32 valves engine' is not. —Morven 10:12, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This page seems to be entirely about gasoline engines. Both two and four stroke diesel V8s also exist. Andrewa 18:50, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Reflecting the knowledge of the contributors, I imagine. I myself don't know too much about diesel V8s. I know that there are V8 truck engines (both light truck and heavy truck) and there have been V8s in locomotive engines, but not much aside that. If you have any material to get it going, please add. —Morven 20:09, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
Yes, point taken, will do. There seems to be a lot of oversimplification in the engine articles, and I've added a bit myself and then needed to correct it. We all know a little! Lots of complex editing decisions to correct such things, but long term this is what a Wiki does best. Andrewa 21:07, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

I edited the wording from "Rover were in need" to "Rover was in need". This is a common grammatical mistake. When talking about the actions of a company as a whole, it is a singular noun. It implies "Rover (as a company) was in need of a new engine". If you were referring to individuals within the company, it would then be a plural noun. An example of that would be, "Rover (as a group of board members) were in agreement on their choice of CEO" - Marshall

That is only a hard distinction in American English. In British English either 'were' or 'is' is correct usage for collective nouns including collective proper nouns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences#Formal_and_notional_agreementMeio 13:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Uniquely Australian?

Unlike the Rover V8, the British Leyland V8 was a uniquely Australian design, with a 60 degree bank and a capacity of 4.4L.

Between 59 and 61 degrees? Bewdy mate! Andjam 12:45, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

From the article: 'Unlike the Rover V8, the British Leyland V8 had a 60 degree bank and a capacity of 4.4L. The motor was originally designed and fitted to the Leyland P76 sedan, although due to its light weight and narrow bank, has been used by some street machiners in vehicles that would normally be powered by I4 powerplants.'

I think this is incorrect. The British Leyland V8 is an enlarged, 4.4-litre version of the 3.5-litre Rover V8, both have a 90 degree bank, single camshaft with pushrods and a cross-plane crankshaft. BL Australia did experiment with a Buick V6, but this also had a 90 degree bank, and did not reach P76 production. Deconstruction 22:07, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

The 4.4 V8 is unique to Leyland Australia, not British Leyland. It was a development of the Rover V8 but all castings were indigenous. Leyland experimented with a V6 derived from their own V8, not the Buick per se. However they are related since they share a common heritage in the 215 V8 engine, although the Leyland V8 is of course all alloy.

[edit] Moved back to V8

I have reverted the move of this page to V8 engine.

There are only two acceptable ways to deal with an ambiguous name, such as V8.

  1. Disambiguation page at primary title, all meanings disambiguated. This is suitable where no meaning predominates.
  2. Primary topic disambiguation. Where one meaning overwhelms the others in usage, it is placed at the primary name and a pointer to a (disambiguation) page is placed at the top. This is what was formerly done at V8, and what I have reverted to.

If a topic is important enough to be the primary topic, it should be at the primary name. We do not make the primary name a redirect.

The only time where the primary topic becomes a redirect is if, while it is the dominant meaning of the term, the most common name of the thing is something else. This is not the case here. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 11:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

The first V-8 engine of record was not A De Dion-Bouton but was the Antoinette V-8 of 1903 Antoinette had a 180 degrees crankshaft did all others until Wright, who was making the Hispano-Suiza of 718 cu. In. and 1124 cu. in. in about 1918 or a later wanted to put the 90 degree crankshaft into the 1124” engine but the Navy and the Army Air Corp wanted air cooled Radials so this left it up to Cadillac to do it in 1923. This is recorded in Manuel Lage’s book about Hispano-Suiza page 66, Line 10. http://www.tecsoc.org/pubs/history/2002/dec2.htm That design came from a Frenchman with a background in art, Léon-Marie-Joseph-Clement Levavasseur (1863-1922). He started work on his new engine in about 1900. His engine had eight cylinders, but instead of putting them in a straight line, Levavasseur arranged them in the shape of a "V." It was a powerful and compact design, and when he received a French patent on December 2, 1902, Levavasseur became the first person to patent what we now call a V-8 engine.


http://www.hubertlathamwindkiller.com/Monoplane.htm

The Antoinette engine was designed and built in France by Léon Levavasseur. Named after the designer's daughter, it was Europe's most widely used engine until 1909-1910. The first Antoinette engine dated from about 1901 and was used in a speedboat. By 1905, Levavasseur had produced a water-cooled engine with eight-cylinders arranged in a 90-degree "V" and with direct fuel injection. It was safe, strong, and fairly powerful, generating 50 horsepower (37 kilowatts) and weighing about 110 pounds (50 kilograms). Its power-to-weight ratio was not surpassed for 25 years

Antoinette VII. Designed by Léon Levavasseur, who was an artist as well as a gifted engineer, the Antoinette range possessed an almost art nouveau sense of elegance. The engine, also named 'Antoinette', came first, being designed by Levavasseur in 1903 to power motor boats. Both Santos-Dumont and the Voisins used this engine to power their early machines. The motor was of advanced design, utilizing direct fuel injection and evaporative steam cooling - which took place in long tubes fixed along the sides of the fuselage.

  M. L. Anderson

[edit] Big Big Blocks

The article states "The larger engines, known as big-block V8s, were used in the full-size cars. Big-blocks generally had displacements in excess of 6 L (360 in³), but in stock form are often not all that efficient. Big-block displacement reached its zenith with the 1970 Cadillac Eldorado's 8.2 L (500 in³) 500..."

The big block zenith has yet to be reached. Even the major car manufacturers have pushed past 500 cubic inches. For example, Ford Racing Performance Parts offers a 514 cubic inch version of the 385 engine series http://www.fordracingparts.com/parts/part_details.asp?PartKeyField=9287, Mopar (Chrysler) has a 540 cubic inch hemi http://www.mopar.com/m_perf_subcatCheck.jsp?SubSubGrpID=5&dummy3=1163607048488, and GM Performance Parts offers their 572 crate engine http://www.gmgoodwrench.com/GMPerformanceParts/EngineShowcase/index.jsp?engId=ZZ572720&engine=ZZ%20572/720R&sku=12498827&engCat=bb .

In the aftermarket, engine builders push past those limits. For example Scat http://www.scatcrankshafts.com/ offers a cranshaft that pushes the Ford 385 series to 546 cubic inches. There are plenty of other examples.--72.85.10.218 16:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

You are absolutely right, but this article and that statement refer to V8s fitted by the factory in regular production cars. In that case, the Cad 500 still holds the title, followed closely by the Vortec 8100 496. As far as aftermarket goes, the largest I have seen is a 904CI DOHC drag engine. 99.240.243.25 (talk) 18:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Firing Order

I dont see anything in this wiki about the firing order of V8's.

There's a fair bit of info about this over at Firing order already (including V8 info). I'm not sure if the V8 article needs detailed info about this, it might be better off just directing people to the Firing order page instead. Opinions please? -- Rpvdk 21:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
The firing order of V8s is quite complicated and variable. Manufacturers number their cylinders differently (Chevrolet alternates left-to-right, Ford from front-to-back), manufacturers use different firing orders in different engine lines and change it from time to time, some manufacturers time the engine from cylinder #8 rather than cylinder #1, customizers sometimes alter the firing order of engines, and of course flat-plane V8s of necessity have a completely different firing order from cross-plane engines. I don't know if anybody wants to get into all of this complication in this article. RockyMtnGuy 01:49, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
There is a link in this article now which seems to have gone to the trouble of breaking down V8 firing orders. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.243.25 (talk) 18:53, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Honda/Audi connection

I removed the following bit from the Honda section:

"and the Audi 4.2 Litre engines are based off the Honda design and not Audi's own corporate past 4 litre V8, which means the Audi S4/RS4/R8 V8 engines technically would be Honda's first road car V8."

There was no source for this bit of info, none to be found via Google and common sense tells me it's false. The S4 used a version of the A8 4.2 engine (5-valve, with the cam drive moved to the firewall side). Since the bore, stroke, bore spacing and head design is the same as previous Audi 4.2's and other VAG engines (predating any involvement with Honda concerning race engines), I don't see how it could possibly be based on a Mugen race engine. The RS4 and R8 use 4-valve heads because room was needed for the direct injection. 77.130.19.241 (talk) 03:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of Rover V8

Many years ago I read an article that said the 'discovery' of the Buick V8 from which this engine was developed was a happy accident arising from a visit by one of the Rover staff to the Kiekhaefer Mercury outboard motor company where they had been looking at this lightweight V8 with a view to use with their Mercruiser inboard/outboard units. Unfortunately I cannot remember where the article appeared. Can anyone confirm this and perhaps add it to the article? Colin Mill (talk) 11:08, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

According to Jeff Daniel's book, Driving Force (p. 140), on a trip to the US in the 1960's the chairman of Rover, Spencer Wilks, happened to stumble over a discarded alloy V8 in a boathouse belonging to a GM executive, decided it was exactly what Rover needed, and bought the manufacturing rights to the engine. Other accounts credit Rover Managing Director, William Martin-Hurst. GM only produced the alloy V8 for three years, but Rover used it for about another 40 - although GM built more engines in 3 years than Rover did in 40. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:36, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Here's a link to a more definitive article http://www.britishv8.org/Articles/Rover-Autocar-Article.htm Apparently, William Martin-Hurst saw the engine in a Mercury Marine Company experimental shop in Wisconsin while on a trip to sell them Rover engines. He found the 3500 cc V8 was only 12 pounds heavier and 1 inch longer than the existing 2000 cc Rover engine. So he had it crated up and shipped off to England to be tested in a Rover sedan. It worked so well that Rover bought the manufacturing rights, and GM kindly loaned them Buick's chief engine designer, who was just about to retire, to help with the technical details. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 18:13, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suitable link Re. Rolls Royce V8 development?

I have noticed that the rumour that the 1959 RR V8 was a US design is still widely circulating on the net. I have found the following link to a letter from the designer, Jack Phillips, that confirms that it was a RR design with a degree of novelty to satisfy the design requirements-

http://www.rroc.org.au/library/rr_v8.html

If all are agreed I will add this link to the page (if I can work out how) Colin Mill (talk) 12:36, 24 March 2008 (UTC)