Oh, there was an engine more than light and powerful enough. Only it was in the hands of one Dr Langley. Who had the backing of the US Government. That was the Manly-Balzar 5 cylinder radial.
Oldsmobile of General Motors USA put their new , of the time Rocket 425 ci V8 engine in Cessna's to prove its power and smoothness ! They flew coast to coast , with double the power of the Lycoming .
light aircraft market has shrunk. Not enough funds for R&D. In the meantime, auto engines are made by the millions and have made huge advances in design, medullary and production techniques. The volume of scale makes them much cheaper than Ly-Contis and Rotax Aero-engine coversions of Honda 15 engines by Viking and Suzuki engines by Aeromomentum are worth considering for experimental aircraft
Great content, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In the US, the V-8 arrived well before the muscle car, which probably isn’t news for most. Perfect for our family sized cars when the interstates were built.
Amazing that in less than 50 years, the idea of powered flight went from a fantasy, to reality. From 12hp engines, to the monster P&W4360 that produced over 4,000HP....and beyond to the age of jet engines.
Glen Curtiss really liked the V8 design for aircraft and even made a motorcycle with one in 1903 that set a world record. You can see both this motorcycle and his airplanes at the Curtiss-Wright air museum in Hammondsport N.Y. at the southern end of Keuka Lake which is also the site of the first aircraft to fly a mile.
👍👍 Excellent and so informative! I admit I cringe at the thought of high-revving automobile engines converted for aircraft use. It's not just their heavier weight and complexity, but the fact they weren't designed for continuous high rpm operation. It seems like a reliability recipe for disaster. 😲😲
The VW Beetle engine and the 911 motor were both light and reliable air cooled flat four and six cylinder, and were successfully fitted to a number of aircraft and an airship
From what I've read, the prop speed reduction units are a weakness of the auto engine conversions. Even with the numbers that have been built and flown and the experience gained thereby, it's still a tiny fraction of the development time of the engines themselves. One of the prominent builders of auto engine conversions for aero use lost his life just a few months ago when the PSRU on the aircraft he was flying apparently failed on takeoff and the propeller departed the airplane.
V engines can also very challenging to get the centre of thrust in the right position whilst still retaining decent forward visibility . Not so bad when designing an aircraft around a specific engine , but otherwise can be an issue .
Great video. I’m perplexed by secondary balance/imbalance and why they create an upward vector at both TDC and BDC. It seems unintuitive, but I know that it’s true. Still working on understanding that.
Pretty much all the radials were two-valve hemis, including the Pratt and Whitney R-2800s on the Thunderbolts that weren’t XP-47Hs. From the early 1920s onwards.
How bigger crankshaft weight can sap engine power "on propeller"? It may take slightly more power to "spin up", but that's it, once constant rpms are reached, no extra power needed. "slower to rev up, no extra power to keep spinning". So only some extra weight of crankshaft with beefier side counterweights might be an issue, but may seem reasonable pay for engine longetivity. Imho though main reason for V8 not able to hold against V12 is warbirds needing more and more power in hunt of speed, and going more displacement route. But at some point of increasing displacement by increasing cylinder volume (with bore and stroke) hits limits of reciprocating mass for used material strength and cylinder filling efficiency with AF mixture, so at some point adding more (smaller) cylinders became only way to go.
response times are a big thing in aero engines since you might need power quickly if performing a go around or while recovering from a stall and especially so in a warbird where the pilot might need to throttle up and down in a dogfight. This also was a big thing when the switch from piston airliners to jets was happening since pilots who flew the piston aircraft expected fast response times from jets and made mistakes as a result of jets taking much longer to reach peak power from idle.
@@mertvaran5733 by far throttle response being not THAT important (and thus that being even remotely the main reason why no V8 in WW2 warbirds). Even more so that eg. many other rotating masses like prop itself, weighted much more so then potential extra 1-5kg on crankshaft, so needed relatively more energy to spin-up due acting as "heavier flywheel", also normally managing engine includes apart from throttle also includes adjusting prop pitch (which btw can make rpms change MUCH faster then throttle inputs), fuel mixture, supercharger speed, cooling, keeping an eye on many instruments
@@church493 I don't see your point when it comes to the prop pitch and other engine management since none of what you mentioned is significant when it comes to sudden power demands since power is not a function of just RPMs. If you're making sudden changes to power levels I don't think anyone would mess with mixture cooling or supercharger gears since those are not absolutely critical for going from idle to a significant power setting. If you need go around power with a Constant speed plane you just increase throttle, climb and then do the rest of the engine management when you're at a more significant altitude (I'm assuming mixture is already set to full rich and prop is full forward since that's probably in the before landing checklist)
If an aircraft needs the power of a V8 it's time to consider a turboprop to get the same or more power with far less complexity and longer service/overhaul intervals.
@@loddude5706 Only because of economy of scale. If all aircraft were turboprop or turbojet powered the engines would be no more expensive than piston engines. It is only because in the light aircraft market piston has a 100:1 advantage of numbers over turboprops that make those engines artificially cheaper to buy even though in many ways they are more difficult to manufacture than turbines and turboprops.
@@loddude5706 Specific Fuel Consumption, Expressed as LBS/HP/HR: *Turboprops - .5 to.7 lbs traditionally, mid .4s to .5 for newer designs. *Two Stroke Gas - Similar to older TPs, About .6 *Four Stroke Air Cooled Carbureted - About .45 *Four Stroke Air Cooled Fuel Injected - Low .4s *Four Stroke Fuel Injected Liquid Cooled - High .3s *Diesels - Low to Mid .3s As you can see fuel costs while higher on a turboprop are completive. What drives the price up is solely the cost of acquisition, maintenance, and parts. This is where I say if a turboprop was the more common engine in light civil aviation than piston the economy of scale drives the cost down on them. I agree right now a turboprop is roughly 50% more per hour in total operational cost consideration but that price goes down with more mass production and lower per part/unit costs.
Pleasesit down and stay calm and do not think about the Alfa-Romeos prewar DOHC Engines but americans did invent the most important automotive device ever : THE CUPHOLDER!!
Yes the Beetle motor , from 1932 still driving around ! Just think of how many 1930s cars are on streets today , and still look ok , the Bug is the only one , nearly 100 years old !
@@SlowSTEN V-dubs are going into small homebuilt aircraft all the time. There are even 1/2 VW's going into ultralight aircraft (literally 2 cylinders removed). Good little engines if used within their limits.
Hispano-Suiza had a remake in 'Motores Elizalde', also a Swiss man, finally seized by Franco politicians to make 'Empresa Nacional de Motores de Aviación', ENMASA.
Harmonic DAMPING is needed because of crankshaft rigidity leading to torsional spring-mass couples which will fatigue the crank. Some engines are externally balanced by both flywheel and harmonic DAMPER. Most engines require some form of harmonic damping, even radials have crankshaft damping weights.
Flywheels help but they are not enough, you realistically need a specialized part (which as far as I'm aware all automotive vehicles have) called a harmonic damper. Especially because of something called Crank whip and Harmonic Resonance, a flywheel cannot cope for these forces alone.
pretty sure if they did with the rotary what they did with pistons- 32 rotary with counter spinning rotors... and a super scavenger turbo 😀 would be amazing 😂🤣
😄 or a single rotor radial! it would counter spin and stay really cool. gons of torque. what i find odd is they pretty much gear them down to stay at like 3600 rpm. instead of giving the pilot blade control. you need to wait for the engine to spin down to decellerate... which is probably why the poston design persisted... it provides resistance and spins down fast... while resisting spin in a dive... but its prone to stalling while clinbing, or any kind of turbulance... a strong cross wind can stall the engine and take away lift at the same time. leading to many failed take offs even today. if propeller planes could tilt their blades to reduce lift to maintain higher rpms, it would save fuel and likely be more reaponsive if you want to try and dive... engine maintains speed, provides an air brake and you can switch back onto power rapidly. 🤔
WWII V12 Aero Engine Design Explained : ua-cam.com/video/Tz8vTnl-pAU/v-deo.html
The Perfect (yet absent) Inline 6 aero engine : ua-cam.com/video/Su9WN0Pi04s/v-deo.html
The Deltahawk Jet Fuel Piston Aero Engine : ua-cam.com/video/uLPym5Xmsow/v-deo.html
Your videos have improved significantly, thumbs up for very solid technical content.
Thank you
@@LetsGoAviate You are very welcome sir, Cheers!
The crazy thing is is that the Wrights built their own engine as they couldn't find anything light and powerful enough.
Oh, there was an engine more than light and powerful enough. Only it was in the hands of one Dr Langley. Who had the backing of the US Government. That was the Manly-Balzar 5 cylinder radial.
The Liberty V12 went on to power a number of tanks as well. It had an excellent power to weight ratio, for its time.
Oldsmobile of General Motors USA put their new , of the time Rocket 425 ci V8 engine in Cessna's to prove its power and smoothness ! They flew coast to coast , with double the power of the Lycoming .
That was an excellent dissertation on engine balance problems & solutions! Thank you!
light aircraft market has shrunk. Not enough funds for R&D.
In the meantime, auto engines are made by the millions and have made huge advances in design, medullary and production techniques. The volume of scale makes them much cheaper than Ly-Contis and Rotax
Aero-engine coversions of Honda 15 engines by Viking and Suzuki engines by Aeromomentum are worth considering for experimental aircraft
Great content, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In the US, the V-8 arrived well before the muscle car, which probably isn’t news for most. Perfect for our family sized cars when the interstates were built.
Fun fact Ford never made a 6cyl engine until after WW2. They went from 4 cyl to 8 in the Model A.
@@billwendell6886 look up Ford Model K for grins. It wasn’t for economy though, especially at 405 cubic inches.
Amazing that in less than 50 years, the idea of powered flight went from a fantasy, to reality. From 12hp engines, to the monster P&W4360 that produced over 4,000HP....and beyond to the age of jet engines.
Glen Curtiss really liked the V8 design for aircraft and even made a motorcycle with one in 1903 that set a world record. You can see both this motorcycle and his airplanes at the Curtiss-Wright air museum in Hammondsport N.Y. at the southern end of Keuka Lake which is also the site of the first aircraft to fly a mile.
👍👍 Excellent and so informative! I admit I cringe at the thought of high-revving automobile engines converted for aircraft use. It's not just their heavier weight and complexity, but the fact they weren't designed for continuous high rpm operation. It seems like a reliability recipe for disaster. 😲😲
The VW Beetle engine and the 911 motor were both light and reliable air cooled flat four and six cylinder, and were successfully fitted to a number of aircraft and an airship
Them Duke Boys sure got a Chrysler 440 to fly on many occasions !
From what I've read, the prop speed reduction units are a weakness of the auto engine conversions. Even with the numbers that have been built and flown and the experience gained thereby, it's still a tiny fraction of the development time of the engines themselves. One of the prominent builders of auto engine conversions for aero use lost his life just a few months ago when the PSRU on the aircraft he was flying apparently failed on takeoff and the propeller departed the airplane.
Hey up mate that was e good and super interesting video thank you and as a V8 lover appreciated
V engines can also very challenging to get the centre of thrust in the right position whilst still retaining decent forward visibility . Not so bad when designing an aircraft around a specific engine , but otherwise can be an issue .
Must be why so many are inverted - - heads down, crank up.
Please note the Levavasseur V8 was equipped with a unique fuelinjection system!!
The first fuel injection engine, from what I heard.
Also a 60 degree V12 has way less frontal area than a 90 degree V8 of the same capacity. In Aircraft less frontal area is important.
thank you very much very informative, grate video, M
The Argus AS10 V8 of the Fieseler Storch was very sucessfull in WW2 Germany
Great video. I’m perplexed by secondary balance/imbalance and why they create an upward vector at both TDC and BDC. It seems unintuitive, but I know that it’s true. Still working on understanding that.
Study the rod angle to the crank throw, not to level. The piston travels further in the top of the cylinder compared to the bottom.
An hemi was originally a v16 for planes but it come to late for the war..
Pretty much all the radials were two-valve hemis, including the Pratt and Whitney R-2800s on the Thunderbolts that weren’t XP-47Hs. From the early 1920s onwards.
well done video...........thx !
How bigger crankshaft weight can sap engine power "on propeller"? It may take slightly more power to "spin up", but that's it, once constant rpms are reached, no extra power needed. "slower to rev up, no extra power to keep spinning".
So only some extra weight of crankshaft with beefier side counterweights might be an issue, but may seem reasonable pay for engine longetivity.
Imho though main reason for V8 not able to hold against V12 is warbirds needing more and more power in hunt of speed, and going more displacement route. But at some point of increasing displacement by increasing cylinder volume (with bore and stroke) hits limits of reciprocating mass for used material strength and cylinder filling efficiency with AF mixture, so at some point adding more (smaller) cylinders became only way to go.
response times are a big thing in aero engines since you might need power quickly if performing a go around or while recovering from a stall and especially so in a warbird where the pilot might need to throttle up and down in a dogfight. This also was a big thing when the switch from piston airliners to jets was happening since pilots who flew the piston aircraft expected fast response times from jets and made mistakes as a result of jets taking much longer to reach peak power from idle.
@@mertvaran5733 by far throttle response being not THAT important (and thus that being even remotely the main reason why no V8 in WW2 warbirds). Even more so that eg. many other rotating masses like prop itself, weighted much more so then potential extra 1-5kg on crankshaft, so needed relatively more energy to spin-up due acting as "heavier flywheel", also normally managing engine includes apart from throttle also includes adjusting prop pitch (which btw can make rpms change MUCH faster then throttle inputs), fuel mixture, supercharger speed, cooling, keeping an eye on many instruments
@@church493 I don't see your point when it comes to the prop pitch and other engine management since none of what you mentioned is significant when it comes to sudden power demands since power is not a function of just RPMs. If you're making sudden changes to power levels I don't think anyone would mess with mixture cooling or supercharger gears since those are not absolutely critical for going from idle to a significant power setting. If you need go around power with a Constant speed plane you just increase throttle, climb and then do the rest of the engine management when you're at a more significant altitude (I'm assuming mixture is already set to full rich and prop is full forward since that's probably in the before landing checklist)
If an aircraft needs the power of a V8 it's time to consider a turboprop to get the same or more power with far less complexity and longer service/overhaul intervals.
But, finance wise, a whole different kettle of piranhas : )
@@loddude5706 Only because of economy of scale. If all aircraft were turboprop or turbojet powered the engines would be no more expensive than piston engines. It is only because in the light aircraft market piston has a 100:1 advantage of numbers over turboprops that make those engines artificially cheaper to buy even though in many ways they are more difficult to manufacture than turbines and turboprops.
@@larrybremer4930 I fear one of us may be running on fractured logic : )
@@loddude5706 Specific Fuel Consumption, Expressed as LBS/HP/HR:
*Turboprops - .5 to.7 lbs traditionally, mid .4s to .5 for newer designs.
*Two Stroke Gas - Similar to older TPs, About .6
*Four Stroke Air Cooled Carbureted - About .45
*Four Stroke Air Cooled Fuel Injected - Low .4s
*Four Stroke Fuel Injected Liquid Cooled - High .3s
*Diesels - Low to Mid .3s
As you can see fuel costs while higher on a turboprop are completive. What drives the price up is solely the cost of acquisition, maintenance, and parts. This is where I say if a turboprop was the more common engine in light civil aviation than piston the economy of scale drives the cost down on them. I agree right now a turboprop is roughly 50% more per hour in total operational cost consideration but that price goes down with more mass production and lower per part/unit costs.
I would like to see a opposed piston engine running on diesel for aircraft .
Continental CD-230 🙂
What ! America did not invent the V8 ? Next you will say we did not invent the Hemi V8 !
😆
Pleasesit down and stay calm and do not think about the Alfa-Romeos prewar DOHC Engines but americans did invent the most important automotive device ever : THE CUPHOLDER!!
@@michaelpielorz9283 Peugeot had 4-valve head DOHC racing engines in 1913.
Right ..but Ford did invent the first economical v8
henry ford : 🤨
I assume that the V8 was a smoother and more powerful motive drive, than was possible with a straight 6, and also took up less space?
And they are still fitting VW Beetle engines (sometimes modified) to aircraft.
Last I knew they quit doing that in favor of a more modern air-cooled flat 4 design by Lycoming
Yes the Beetle motor , from 1932 still driving around ! Just think of how many 1930s cars are on streets today , and still look ok , the Bug is the only one , nearly 100 years old !
@@SlowSTEN V-dubs are going into small homebuilt aircraft all the time. There are even 1/2 VW's going into ultralight aircraft (literally 2 cylinders removed). Good little engines if used within their limits.
@@JosephCowen-fz8vjDon’t forget the Deuce , there’s more of them now than there were in 1932.
Ls3 makes 450hp stock bro that’s the ls1 hp spec
The aero converted version makes less since they lowered max rpm
Opposed piston or straight 6 = best
Hispano-Suiza had a remake in 'Motores Elizalde', also a Swiss man, finally seized by Franco politicians to make 'Empresa Nacional de Motores de Aviación', ENMASA.
smoother lighter less complex means less money for a six
V-8 engines need a flywheel for harmonic balance.
Harmonic DAMPING is needed because of crankshaft rigidity leading to torsional spring-mass couples which will fatigue the crank. Some engines are externally balanced by both flywheel and harmonic DAMPER.
Most engines require some form of harmonic damping, even radials have crankshaft damping weights.
Flywheels help but they are not enough, you realistically need a specialized part (which as far as I'm aware all automotive vehicles have) called a harmonic damper. Especially because of something called Crank whip and Harmonic Resonance, a flywheel cannot cope for these forces alone.
Bologna.
V8 are superior.
I'll take the muscle car at the start, gorgeous! If only I had a driveway and ££££s and a garage etc etc l
pretty sure if they did with the rotary what they did with pistons- 32 rotary with counter spinning rotors... and a super scavenger turbo 😀 would be amazing 😂🤣
😄 or a single rotor radial! it would counter spin and stay really cool. gons of torque.
what i find odd is they pretty much gear them down to stay at like 3600 rpm.
instead of giving the pilot blade control. you need to wait for the engine to spin down to decellerate... which is probably why the poston design persisted... it provides resistance and spins down fast... while resisting spin in a dive... but its prone to stalling while clinbing, or any kind of turbulance...
a strong cross wind can stall the engine and take away lift at the same time. leading to many failed take offs even today.
if propeller planes could tilt their blades to reduce lift to maintain higher rpms, it would save fuel and likely be more reaponsive if you want to try and dive... engine maintains speed, provides an air brake and you can switch back onto power rapidly. 🤔
IT TAKES A MULTIPLE OF 8 CYLINDERS TO PROPERLY BALANCE AN ENGINE.
Yep, 8, 16, 4 cylinders
ever heard of an inline 6? or v12? why are all heavy diesels inline 6’s?🤡
That beautiful woman at 3:42 is going to ruin her lovely outfit. Always wear overalls while working on engines! Sorry, please continue everyone.