From: c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Spiros Triantafyllopoulos)
Newsgroups: rec.autos
Subject: Re: Why is US engine technology so retrograde?
Date: 11 Jan 93 15:22:04 GMT
Organization: Delco Electronics Corp.

In article <1993Jan11.065053.24565@koko.csustan.edu> james@koko.csustan.edu (Jonas Grumpy) writes:
>For what its worth to the argument, we already have had an engine
>hit our shores, 50 state legal from the manufacturer that put out 170 hp/ltr
>The Ferrari F40 was under 2.9 liters and put out over 500hp EPA certified.
>If Ferrari decided to build a 2 liter Version it would probably put
>out over 350hp 50 state legal. It would not /should not cost 
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>astronomical amounts of money to build such an engine. When you
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>buy the F40 your paying alot for the *opportunity* to buy it.
>The current best from the Japanese is about 100hp/liter. btw
>the F40 put out as much power per unit of disp as the little
>model airplane engines running 15% Nitro!!

That (and much of Izza's comments earlier along with it) are classic
symptoms of no experience or knowledge of how the real world operates,
and in a subject in which you are probably not trained on.  From what
I've seen in various TV programs and read in books, (i.e. without
going into internal details) mostly anything in a Ferarri is
hand-built. As in by HUMANS (or even better, Italians :-) who are a
bit strange when they build cars and actually enjoy working two and
three generations deep in Ferrari, apprenticing their way for years
before doing anything important to an engine block/panel/whatever).

Hand building has a very obvious advantage, in which tolerances and
everything are at their best, and cost is hardly the object. Ferrari
builds maybe a few thousand engines a year at best. Not different
from the way, say, a Corvette ZR1 engine is built (by Mercury Marine :-)).
When you build 3000 engines a year you can afford to spend time to
look at individual engines. When you build, say, 300,000 engines a 
year, things get different.

Then there's the issue of design specifications. I used the model
airplane analogy (which typically IDLE at 10,000 rpm :-)) to indicate
that these exotic engines are really designed for a single purpose and
a rather narrow envelope in which this is attainable. With lots of
expenses and a few catalytic converters the car gets to be street
legal.  Fine. Examine the power vs rpm vs DRIVEABILITY of the car
and you'll see what I mean. The requirements are different, PERIOD.

Many serious model plane people either hand modify their engines to
reduce tolerances to minimum (much of what Ferrari does) or, for
the economically disabled, buy or swap components till they end up
with the RIGHT combination of tolerances. "take engine(s) apart,
measure everything, put back, etc". 

Since i'm also answering Izza's post here, he mentioned Toyota and
whoever else building (or attempting to) build commercial aviation
engines. Cool. Kindly take a look at any light aircraft engine 
built in the US and tell us the kind of technology found there 
(magnetos!) and the reason (legal liability). It's not that people
can't build a better engine; the system has it that they CAN't
and Toyota/whoever should know better. Companies like Continental
and Lycoming have known this for years.

The bottom line, folks, is that you can't (CAN'T) take very limited
production hand built components and compare them to mass production
built cars.  Some of the technology sure finds its way to the mass
production, but a lot of what makes a 300 or 400 hp 2 liter Ferrari
engine is not likely to find its way into a 120 HP Fiat.

And I have not even touched things like maintenance requirements;
reliability requirements; performance envelope requirements (i.e.
we do 300 hp, is the car driveable to the local Burger King by
your great aunt Millie (age 73))... Is the engine applicable to
more than one chassis or tranny? can you use EXISTING components
where possible? What would be the life span of the design?

If this were the case Cray could build a PC using the same methods
they build the YM-P and it would be the Mother of All PC's. They 
*don't* because Cray and, say, Gateway or Dell sell to different
crowds with drastically different requirements. 


Spiros
-- 
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos                    c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com
Software Technology, Delco Electronics       (317) 451-0815
GM Hughes Electronics, Kokomo, IN 46904      [A Different Kind of Disclaimer]