What if.....?

[rusty ol ranger]

I was on the phone with a buddy of mine the other day, and we alwaya come up with hypothetical stuff like this but...

What if someone built an engine that would fire one whole bank of cylinders at once? Say a V8, fire all 4 on one bank at once, and then the other 4.

Besides serious vibration and breaking of motormounts....would this either.

1- Create tons of power but be totally undriveable.
2- Turn it basically into a iarge Vtwin and have power comparable to a briggs 20hp.

Or...

3- Not really have any effect on the power?

 

[Dirtman]

I'm assuming your hypothetical engine has a crank and cam designed for this craziness. You're technically moving the same volume of air and engines are simply air pumps. But in order to maintain the same RPM you now have to fire the "banks" 4 times faster. So I think you would have more power before the inevitable disastrous explosion. But it would also be terribly inefficient before blowing up since now all 4 cylinders per bank are linked and no two cylinders are ever identical in performance, some cylinders would be dragging and some pushing but all throwing fuel down the tubes.

 

[pjtoledo]

option 2, for the least painful result.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Most two cylinder John Deere tractors are horizontal inline two cylinders.

There was a thing 10-15 years ago that was almost a fad but it was so ridiculously expensive not many could afford it where pullers would cut the cranks in half and weld them so both holes would fire at the same time. Cam was custom of course.

When I was into pulling there was a late A John Deere that had that done, sounded VERY weird. IMO it didn't seem to do much more than a comparable built puller with the stock 1-2 firing order. Basically made it into a 300+CI one cylinder and when it pulled down so far it struggled to keep momentum going.

 

[RonD]

Problem with the idea of 2 cylinders firing at the same time is that both(or all 4) would have to have exactly the same explosive power, which they won't, lol, do a compression test and see if all cylinders are an exact match, they aren't
So ONE cylinder would be the driving force and the other one(or 3) would just be along for the ride, might add some power but not much.

The point of multi-cylinders is to add power to the crank at closer intervals, like every 120deg of crank rotation with a V6 or every 90deg with a V8

So with a 4 stroke 8 cylinder timed as a 2 cylinder(4 cyl fire at the same time) you would have 360deg power added cycle, so long gap between Power Strokes
If you switch to 2 stroke it would be better, Power stroke every 180deg but still have the only One Cylinder out of the 4 would drive the crank

 

[adsm08]

It would be totally .

I think you would actually be better to run 4 V-twins with the cranks welded together.

 

[Dirtman]

Theres some weird russian guy on youtube who welded 4 - inline 4 cylinder lada engines together at the cranks. I cant remember the channel though. It was hilarious but overall useless.

Edit - the channel is called "garage 54"

 

[RonD]

If you timed it correctly you could get a power added stroke every 45deg rotation of the crank(s)
So like a V16 engine

real hard to time that , but it is just math and welding the cranks at the right offset one engine to the next

Wonder if you would get the higher torque of the in lines longer strokes, lol

Kind of the same as timing 2 V8s together, which was not all that uncommon over the years
You want the power strokes offset to get that 45deg separation

 

[97RangerXLT]

Theres some weird russian guy on youtube who welded 4 - inline 4 cylinder lada engines together at the cranks. I cant remember the channel though. It was hilarious but overall useless.

Edit - the channel is called "garage 54"

He has some interesting things... he made a set of tires out of nails in one video, sank a car in a lake for a year (also a lada) and pulled it out and started it up, burried three cars for a year and dug them out and started them up, also filled the tires with expanding foam and drove the car to see if that would work as a fix a flat


AJ

 

[Dirtman]

I just checked his channel and his newest one is putting a 7 liter truck engine in a lada... He's hilarious. The narrator sucks though.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Problem with the idea of 2 cylinders firing at the same time is that both(or all 4) would have to have exactly the same explosive power, which they won't, lol, do a compression test and see if all cylinders are an exact match, they aren't
So ONE cylinder would be the driving force and the other one(or 3) would just be along for the ride, might add some power but not much.

The point of multi-cylinders is to add power to the crank at closer intervals, like every 120deg of crank rotation with a V6 or every 90deg with a V8

So with a 4 stroke 8 cylinder timed as a 2 cylinder(4 cyl fire at the same time) you would have 360deg power added cycle, so long gap between Power Strokes
If you switch to 2 stroke it would be better, Power stroke every 180deg but still have the only One Cylinder out of the 4 would drive the crank

That is basically the problem I saw with the one that used to show up. If he could keep the revs up he did pretty good, as soon as he started pulling down even the big flywheel couldn't save him and it did a faceplant.

Too bad it was before everybody had a video camera, I am striking out at finding a video of one.