Hello everyone and welcome in this video we are talking about
V5 engines, something there aren't very many of out there Honda actually made a V5 engine for
motorcycle racing and they were actually super successful with it and
Volkswagen has what they call a V5 engine they used in the 90s and early 2000s
it's actually more appropriately would be called a VR5 engine.
So that's what we're going to be talking about in this video the AGZ 2.3L
VR5 engine out of Volkswagen and really what it is is just a VR6 engine and you've chopped off one of the cylinders.
So if you were to look at the block here
you've got 3 on the right 2 on the left and your cylinders are 1 2 3 4 5 easy enough
then you're firing order which is kind of interesting 1 2 4 5 3
so it just goes in this clockwise circle here as it rotates around and you get your power and everything
so it's interesting you know Volkswagen
I guess decided you know the VR6 is too big and too powerful for some cars and an inline 4
just isn't quite enough, so this sits nicely in between and did at the time as far as power output
the first one only producing 150 horsepower, but it was still a little bit more than the inline four-cylinder at the time
and they eventually went to
four valves per cylinder instead of just two valves per cylinder and improved output to something like 170 horsepower
for the 2.3 liter pretty interesting and actually this firing order is the same as an inline five-cylinder.
So it's a lot like an inline five-cylinder except it
just kind of smashed into the wall and all the cylinders got bunched up, but from from you know a dynamic standpoint
how it works things like that it is pretty similar to an inline five-cylinder engine
it just does have a single valve train up on top which is a cool thing about the engine that
Volkswagen has done with these VR engines
so this is a poor sketch of what that looks like
but you've got a camshaft on one side for the intake so you've got a camshaft on the other side
for the exhausts and it will stretch over and you know activate that intake on one side activate the intake on this side
depending on where those pistons are and one of the interesting things looking at this engine here, so it's at a 15 degree
angle and because of that angle and because these cylinders are so close together
you can imagine that as those cylinders are bore down as you follow that bore down into the cylinder those those cylinders
you don't want them to overlap or contact each other you want some space between there for coolant jackets things like that of course you
just need some metal between
the cylinders and so there they had to offset the cylinder so they'll push them out a little bit in order to do that and
as a result the interesting thing is that the centerline of the cylinder does not line up with the centerline of the crankshaft,
and that's pretty much the case with other
engines an inline engine or a V engine you'll have that centerline of the cylinder match up with the center of the crankshaft and
that keeps kind of a smooth even motion as that piston goes up and down as far as how it rotates
it's a it's a little bit different, but it's almost the same going up and coming down versus well with this engine here
it's actually going to be quite different
you know as its going up there versus as it's going around here
so it's got a kind of weird motion as it's going up and down at a different motion
you know for going up versus going down with regard to this crankshaft here, but just kind of an interesting design feature there
i'm sure that's something that you know makes it a bit more challenging to balance another thing
that's interesting about this engine is how they've
oriented the cylinder so they've kind of flipped them around on the other side of the engine so you've got your intake valve on the
right on the right on the right
and then they're flipped over on the other side of the engine so now it's on the left and on the left and so you've
just got your intake manifold on one side of the engine you've got your exhaust manifold on the other side of the engine and then
within the cylinder head you can see you've got these paths so it allows you to pair up two of the intake valves together
pair up two of the exhaust valves together as it's exiting the engine within that cylinder head makes a little bit simpler
within the cylinder head to have this design
when you have those cylinders switched on the other side so you can pair up the intake and exhaust valves
it is a bit weird though. I mean think about it
you've got five cylinders
and two of the cylinders out of those five have a longer distance for the air
intake air to travel and then two of those cylinders
have a shorter distance for the exhaust air to travel, so you know it's a little wonky. It's a little strange now
it's also interesting to think about from a balancing perspective. You've got two. You know cylinders going up and down on the left
you've got three cylinders going up on down on the right and an inline five-cylinder
actually isn't that poor of a design from a balance perspective it has a rocking moment where you know the
engine itself kind of wants to rock back and forth along that line
but you know ultimately it's it's a fairly smooth running engine this however
you've now split that up, so you've got different forces going this direction and this direction because you've got different number of cylinders
so you've got a different mass on each side and you can counter a good amount of this
using your crankshaft design and having counter weights that balance that out, but ultimately there's probably gonna
be some kind of unique vibrations that are associated with an engine like this. So you know what's the logic of it?
Well again it's that happy medium and at the time it may have made sense to do of course
it was killed by the inline four-cylinder turbocharged engine like a cool a lot of cool engines out there
it's you know. I guess unfortunate, but it's not all that logical
it's neat to kind of look back though and see something
as as strange as this that actually made it into production. You know there are still
i'm sure cars with these running around out there so kind of cool
i'm sure it has a unique sound as well that kind of an inline five-cylinder sound to it
but with different, you know length exhaust
so it's got some unique characteristics to it for sure so thank you all for watching
and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave those below.