- You know about inline engines, V engines.
You maybe even have heard of a VR engine layout.
But what do you know about W, H, or U engines?
Since cars have been on the road getting our human butts
from divorced-dad's house to step-mom's house,
engineers have been putting all sorts
of wild engine configurations in them.
And today, we are going to go through every single one.
Let's go.
(upbeat music)
Thanks to Keeps for sponsoring today's video.
Any moment now, the love of my life is gonna walk
through those doors.
Her name is Gerry with a G.
I know, talk about exotic, huh?
We dated years ago, but Dave scared her away.
So, I locked him in the basement hoping she'd come back.
She never did.
And then, I found her on this new dating app,
just for bird friends.
- Jerry?
- Gerry?
You look beautiful.
- You look different.
- Ever since you left, I became one of the two
out of three guys to experience some sort
of male pattern baldness by the time they were 35.
- Oh my sweet, sweet Jerry.
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- That's what I've been telling them.
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- All this talk of Keeps makes me realize
how much I miss you.
- Wow, brains and beauty.
(hawk crowing)
Dave, what are you doing here?
Get out of here, Dave.
David, get.
David, I'm using your full name
so that means I'm really mad at you.
- I hate birds.
- No Gerry, stay.
Dave, get out of here!
No Gerry, no!
Now, the first rule when watching
any type of YouTube list video is that one,
there are no rules.
Okay, now that we've established that we're going
to go through every engine configuration that I could find
that's been put in a car.
Now, if I happen to miss any by the end of this video,
just go ahead and write them down.
You can mail them to me.
We have a PO box.
I'm going to take all of them
and then I'm going to put them in the trash.
Okay, so let's start off with inline engines.
All of the cylinders are in a straight line,
hence their name.
And the straight cylinder design seems pretty intuitive
if you were to start from scratch
in building your own engine,
but it's also a very mechanically smart design.
With only one cylinder head, there are fewer moving parts
than the engines with multiple cylinder heads.
So, you have less stuff means less chance
for other stuff failing.
This allows for a less mechanically complex layout.
They're simple engines.
And because they are simple, they're cheaper.
And for the most part, they're easier to maintain.
So, let's start off with the least number of cylinders
in this inline configuration.
And in all honesty, I was going to start with an inline two,
but there are some cars out there with single-cylinder
inline engines, one cylinder, one piston,
one connecting rod, one crank, one balancer, two valves,
the 1903 Oldsmobile Curved Dash,
which is documented actually
as being the first mass-produced car, well-known fact.
From there, we can go to our inline two or straight twin.
The Fiat 500 sported this two-cylinder setup.
Of course, of all the inline engines,
the coolest is the Koenigsegg twin-turbo inline three.
Inline fours, we have every engine
in the majority of cars on the road.
My first car, 1990 Toyota pickup had a 22RE.
You guys know the story.
My sister freaking stole it from me and then sold it.
So if you have it, I want it back.
There's the Mitsubishi 4G63T,
the S14 B25, and BMW's E30 M3.
Honda, they got the F20C, S2000.
Now, they're small so you can put them anywhere.
There's front engine, mid engine, rear engine.
The four-banger is a worldwide staple.
The only downside to an inline four
is that it needs a counterbalancer.
The secondary forces aren't balanced,
which ultimately limits the size of the engine.
And because of that, they often need balancing shafts
to cancel out those vibrations.
Okay, that's inline fours.
So now, let's get to inline fives.
But why would you want that?
Well, they're smoother than an inline four
and smaller than an inline six.
To help me explain why the five-cylinder's smoother,
we need to look at the timing of the power strokes.
Now, four-stroke engines operate in four cycles,
suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
Every cylinder fires once every 720 degrees,
two rotations of the crank.
If we divide 720 degrees by the number of cylinders,
we get how often a power stroke occurs.
Your power stroke can't last longer than 180 degrees
of crankshaft rotation.
So a three cylinder engine,
there's a gap in the power delivery.
So, if you take 720 degrees divided by 3 minus 180,
there's 60 degrees of silence
when no power strokes take place.
So, for a four-cylinder, it takes 720 divided by 4,
that's 180.
You subtract 180, you get zero.
So at the end of one cylinder's power stroke,
another cylinder fires.
Now with a five-cylinder, there's a 36 degree overlap,
meaning another power stroke has occurred
before the crank shaft rotates to the 180 degree mark.
This results in a very smooth power delivery
instead of this kind of relatively jolting action
of an inline four.
And you can use this equation
for any type of cylinder configuration
to see when they're firing.
So, who uses inline fives?
Well, my favorite is the Swedish American built 2.5 liter
in the Focus RS 500.
Also GM, they have a 3.7 liter in the Hummer H3.
And the RS2 Avant got one,
but we never got in the US, so whatever.
Next, we have the sexy sixes,
the perfectly balanced, sexy sixer.
Now, there are so many great examples of this engine.
Our favorites are the RB26 and the 2JZ of course.
But there are, like I said, there's a ton of them out there.
They're long and strong, and the smoothest engine out there.
They're just a better inline four.
From there, we go into inline eights,
the hungry eights, the straight eights.
And they were the performance engine of choice
in the late 20s.
Bugatti, Duesenberg, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz,
they all had a version of the straight eight.
The Alfa Romeo 159 Alfetta,
it won 47 of 54 Gran Prixs in F1
between 1938 and 1951.
That little 1 1/2 liter, supercharged inline eight
could get all the way up to 10,500 RPM.
That's screaming.
Skip over the inline tens 'cause there are none,
go straight to inline twelves.
Now, there are the few that were ever built
in the early 20s and with good reason.
When you have a frigging crank shaft that's super long
and you have all the pistons kind of rocking,
it creates this jump rope effects.
So, you've got to have a crank that is super, super stiff,
really, really strong.
That being said, there were some made so they're
on the list, but there're not a lot of them out there.
(engine revving)
The V type engines split the cylinders into two even banks
with a common crank shaft at the bottom of the V.
Now, they're best bros with the inline engines.
For the most part,
as the cylinder number increases V engines are more compact
compared to their inline bros.
And they also have a shorter length
than an inline engine with the same number of cylinders,
but they're wider.
Inline engines, long and skinny, V engines, short and wide.
If Nolan was an engine, he'd be a V.
If I would be an engine, I'd be an inline.
If James were an engine, a boxer.
Good job.
Twin cylinder Vs, the V twins,
so obviously there are a ton of Harleys.
The hogs, they have V twins.
Which actually some in street bikes.
I am obsessed with twin-cylinder sport bikes.
I have an Aprilia Mille, a Honda RC51.
I've owned a Suzuki TLR9.
Ducati 1199, I want one of those.
Volkswagen actually took a Ducati twin engine
and stuffed it in their XL Sport.
Mazda's first car, the R360 rear engine kei car was powered
by a V twin engine.
We go to V3s.
There are no cars that I could find with a V3,
but they are in some motorcycles.
The V3 engine, it's got two cylinders on one bank
and one cylinder on the other.
It's a pretty rare configuration,
but they did have some MotoGP bikes
that supported this setup, most famously Honda's NS500.
Next, we go to V4, a MotoGP staple.
But while they're the go-to motor in MotoGP,
there's not a ton in cars.
The Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 car used a two-liter turbo V4
from 2014 to 2017.
V5, no cars, but again, got some rare motorcycles,
the Honda RC211V.
V6, the most beloved here at the Donut Shop.
We've blown up two Nissan VQ.
Right, two?
- [Man In Background] Yeah.
- I have an EcoBoost that's a V6.
You probably have one in your NSX.
You own an NSX, right?
Yeah. Cool, cool. Yeah.
V8, the classic, Hemi, LS1, Ferrari F106,
the Toyota 1UZ-FE.
They can be a flathead, overhead valve.
They can be a push rod with a crossplane
or flatplane crank.
The most iconic engine out there
with boys who like to brag, unless you have a V10
like in the Viper, or unless you have a V12
like in an Aston Martin.
Now, the V12 is a neat engine
because each bank operates like a straight six.
Remember,
the straight six is already a well-balanced engine.
So, if you use correct V angle between the two banks,
a V12 engine can achieve perfect balance.
Now, what wouldn't be balanced would be a V14.
Which there are no instances of them being in cars,
but we do have V16 engines.
Cadillac made a V16 in the 30s.
There's also a V18 in the BelAZ 75600 hauler trucks,
one of those big ass mining trucks.
There's a V20 in the Caterpillar 797 dump truck,
and a V24 in a custom-built 359 Peterbilt.
It makes 3,424 horsepower and is insane.
(engine revving)
You've probably heard of VR engines before.
The VR6 badges are on the back of Gulfs, Passats, Jettas,
and they're all in the Volkswagen lineup.
Now, VR engines are the results of taking the best
of both worlds from the inline and V engine layout.
The word R in VR comes from the German word inline,
which is reihenmotor.
Did I do good?
You get all the benefits of a V engine
in terms of performance, but package it
in a way which would allow them to fit into compact cars
without having to compromise on their size and weight.
Also, you need only a single cylinder head
for both banks of cylinders,
which means only two camshafts are needed.
Most common is the VR6,
but there are also a few other versions of the
V reihenmotor, starting with the not-very-well-known VR4.
This engine was used in the Lancia Lambda.
Now, it had a 20 degree narrow-angle single-head VR layout.
Volkswagen built a 2.3-liter VR5 engine from '97 to 2006.
Just take a VR6 and take one of the cylinders off.
Why would you want that?
Well, when a VR6 is too big.
So is there anything bigger than a VR6, maybe a VR8?
Well, there's no single VR8,
but there is an engine out there that smashes two VR8s
together to make a double-V or W configuration.
The W engine uses three or four cylinder banks running
off the same crank shaft, and it makes that W shape.
Starting with the smallest, we have the W3.
You can actually buy 150 cubic-inch Feuling W3 engine
for your motorcycle for a cool $100,000.
We have the W6 that was in the Rambler Tropin Wagon.
If you put two VR4s together, you have a W8.
The sole W8 engine to reach production
was the Volkswagen Group W8 engine,
which was in the Passat.
You slam two VR6 together and you get the W12.
We actually did a whole entire episode on "B2B"
about this engine.
Click, click here if you want to watch and learn more.
Put two VR8s together and you get a W16.
The first car that comes to mind
in the 16-cylinder configuration is
of course the Bugatti Veyron.
But, the earliest prototypes incorporated
an 18-cylinder engine, the W18.
There are two ways you can make a W.
You can have two banks of two
or you can have three banks have one.
The W18 is three sets of six-cylinders.
But, there is a flaw in this design.
With a standard V layout, you've got your cool intake air
on one side, you've got your hot exhaust on the other.
But with the three-bank W engine, you can't do this.
The way the geometry works out means that you're going
to have exhaust next to your intake air.
Hot exhaust doesn't mix your cold intake here.
So, by the time the Veyron reached production,
it had ditched a couple of cylinders,
added four turbochargers, and got their W16,
which was a pretty smart idea.
Boxer engine.
(upbeat music)
Sometimes called the horizontally opposed or flat engine.
Subi boys and girls, you guys are having fun right now.
You're like, yeah, that's my engine.
Yeah, woo.
Now, they have a central crank shaft
with two banks of cylinders.
But unlike these, boxer engines have cylinders laid
out horizontally with the pistons moving left and right,
rather than up and down.
Now, that horizontal arrangement gives them a low center
of gravity, which helps give you power to the wheels
and improves handling of whatever car this engine is in.
Power delivery, oh, it's super smooth throughout.
And the engines are easier to cool
because of this spread out design.
Now for a long time, these engines were air-cooled.
But there are some negatives.
Boxer engines, they're large, okay?
And because they're big and spread out,
it's a pain to do some simple jobs.
Now, I'm not saying it's harder to work
on them than any other cramped V engine or inline engine.
I'm not saying that. So don't yell at me, okay?
The cylinder heads, they can be pushed up
against the sidewalls of the car.
Stuff like changing spark plugs is pretty hard to do.
They're also a little bit more expensive to manufacturer.
Don't hate me, boxer fans, I'm just giving you the facts,
Jerry facts.
So of the boxer engines, we have a flat twin.
The French company Panhard used a flat twin
to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
There's the flat four which the OG Beetle sported
and the beloved or hated Subi EJ.
There's a flat six in a Porsche 911,
a flat eight in the Porsche 908.
And Subaru has even built a flat 12
to try their hand in building engines for F1.
There's was also a Ferrari flat 12 out there,
but it's really not technically a flat 12.
There's some, like, technicalities
because they share crank pins.
A true flat 12 would have separate crank pins.
But, it's there.
Actually in 1971, Porsche developed a flat 16 prototype
for their 917 that raced in the Can-Am series.
But instead, they ditched it and went
with a flat 12 that was turbocharged.
Opposing piston engines often get confused
with boxer engines, but they are different.
While the flat layout is similar,
opposing piston engines have pistons that meet
in the middle.
They don't have a cylinder head.
And because of this, these engines have the potential
to lower emissions compared to a more standard layout.
Achates Power has been building diesel versions
of these engines for some time now,
but the opposing piston design have been around
since the early-1900s.
The Commer TS3, Commer Knocker,
was an opposing piston engine put in Commer trucks
in the 50s and 60s.
It uses two pistons per cylinder, three cylinders total,
unlike an opposing cylinder engine like the Napier Deltic.
It used only one central crank.
And it's voted the most unique engine on this list by me.
(tape beeping) (engine revving)
And when I think of the Wankel or rotary engine,
gotta think of Mazda, spinning Dorito.
In a Wankel-type engine, there are no piston rods
and no valve train components.
There's a single piston that revolves around a gear shaft.
The inside of this engine is shaped
so that the triangular piston turns,
it goes through all four cycles that
a standard internal combustion engine would go through.
That's the suck, squeeze, bang, and blow.
If you want a rotary to make more power,
you only have a few ways to do it.
You can use force induction or you can add more rotors.
We have single rotors like the 40A,
the good old 13B.
Or even better, 13B-REW and the RX-7 FD sported two rotors.
Mazda also use a three-rotor
in the Le Mans racecar, the 757.
The R26B used a four-rotor.
And some Wankel lovers out there even have
built their own six-rotor and even 12-rotor design.
That is a lot of spinning Doritos.
The U engine, also known as the square four.
These engines are two separate straight engines
placed side by side and coupled at a shared output shaft.
Look at them from the front and they look like,
guess what letters, guys, a U.
The Ariel Square Four motorcycle
and the Suzuki RD500 use this U engine.
The benefit is that it's able to share common parts
with a straight engine, which it was based off.
Also, if there's two crankshafts rotating
in opposite directions, the gyroscopic effect
of those rotating components cancel out.
So you have a naturally very, very smooth engine.
Now, the H engine also uses a similar comp set,
but they're stacked vertically.
And H engine or H block is a configuration
in which the cylinders are aligned so that
when you view it from the front,
guess what letter it looks like, guys?
That's right, an H.
So, flat fours often look like drunken Hs from above,
but an H block looks like an actual H
when staring straight down the pipe.
So, an H engine can be viewed as two flat engines,
either one on top of each other or side by side.
They have their own crank,
but are geared together to power the transmission.
The British Racing Motor H16 Formula One engine
won the 1966 US Grand Prix in the Lotus 43.
There's even 1,000 cc H4
in the Brough Superior Golden Dream.
You know what my golden dream is?
To shoot an episode of "Bumper 2 Bumper"
in a Las Vegas hotel room.
We had to come out here and shoot some episodes,
and so there's no downtime.
It's a Saturday.
We could be out hitting the slots.
Instead, we're in a freaking hotel room shooting
an episode of "B2B".
I hope you guys enjoyed this.
This was fun making.
There's a lot of crazy engines out there.
I know I skipped over some. There's some technicalities.
So if you're yelling at me in the comments,
I don't want to hear it.
Put them down there anyways.
I'd like to see what I missed, if I did.
But I don't know if I did.
Follow us here on Instagram @DonutMedia.
Follow me @JeremiahBurton.
'Til next week, bye for now.