Vroom Vroom | Knowledge•Day
Yash YadavHello there,
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Vroom Vroom
I, unfortunately, can’t make text play sounds magically but we can try to know what makes the engines rev differently. I love it, more the horses, better the vroom.
But how does the engine roar really differ? Let’s see…
V for vendetta
V6 – V8 – V10 – V12
If you’ve read or watched about cars, you probably have seen people talk Vx in engines. But what this is?
Well, it’s just the regular engine bent to make space for unnecessary things like the hydraulic braking system. >.>
But… Yash… What does a regular engine look like? Before the paralysis? I’m glad you asked.
It’s just crankshaft that rotates and motivates the wheels. But this crankshaft is initially thrusted by the piston who is hyped up because there’s fuel being burned into gas around it. If that was not to easy, I hope it wasn’t, I’ve brought a gif:
Yeah, the crankshaft is that zig-zag road(red) connected to the pistons(blue). The zig zag is to convert the linear push from pistons to the rotation. It’s all in sync, has to be. This was a regular motor’s rotation.
Back to the V-ision
The sports cars and quirky derivatives (supercars, mega cars, etc) talk in V numbers. And the 'V' here stands for the arrangement of pistons, numbers are basically the count of cylinders. More the cylinders, more the bangers hitting the crankshaft. A quick look at another gif for the picture.
How are they connected to the road performance and...uh… the roar that you speak of?
The ‘V’ as I said is just done so the engine can be accommodated inside the space. They just can’t align 12 cylinders in a single row without having to send you to the top of the vehicle.
Psst. They can accommodate, it’s just not efficient.
Let’s take an example, a 6 liters V8 engine vs a 6 liters V12 engine. The liters refer to the cylinder’s capacities so we can do a little math.
V8: 750cc per cylinder.
V12: 500cc per cylinder.
Clearly, V8 would have bigger cylinders, heavier valves. This means, more difficult to rev compared to the V12. On the other hand, a V8 engine is simpler, lighter, and has better efficiency (less moving parts). If you want to supercharge it, you can’t until you have a V-car but if you did, the V8 is the better choice to get an engine that is not too heavy and too complicated.
But again, those are just the Cylinders and crankshafts we looked at. The speed and acceleration depend on a lot of things otherwise we’d probably already be seeing V-32 engines on racetracks (With the driver sitting above the car on a sofa as expected). But that’s not the case right? Nor is the scope for this issue, I let you sit your curiousness until you find a friend pursuing mechanical engineering or discover knowledge online.
I still think we could beat the engine a bit more…
And it’s being done. Yes, you could even place cylinders in a ‘W’ fashion. For more bushy bangers. Due to complexity, these are rarely produced but nonetheless, this very popular French-origin car maker has used W-16 engines in their Veyron, Chiron, and related models.
Even rarer is the ‘X’ design, even more, difficult but not impossible. Rolls-Royce made an X-24 engine named Rolls-Royce vulture. And boy it was off the shells, well, literally. Avro Manchester bomber plane used it to fly and bomb around. You’re looking at the times of world war ii.
The end
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