Re: Crating vr6's

[Eliot Lim <eliot@u.washington.edu>]

On Tue, 14 Nov 1995 PDQSHIP@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 95-11-14 01:33:23 EST, you write:
> 
> >
> >perhaps you can explain it in your own words!  no offence to scott, but i
> >just cannot see why an engine cannot be judged independently of its
> >installation.  certainly if you follow racing (i.e. F1), engines are
> >judged entirely independently of its chassis. 
> 
> HMMMMMM......  Yo Eliot, you were the one indicating that there were other
> factors in how you rate an engine and you can't compare a audi v8 with a BMW
> 8 without exchanging them in the chassis........ 
> Are you changing that argument?.....  

no.  i said that you cannot conclude that one engine is better than another
based on performance numbers if the chassis and bodies are different. subtle
but significant difference. 

>Engines can be rated independently, the real world dictates
> that you must put it in something to put those numbers in context.......  If
> you screw that up, and wait for the complaints, how far ahead is your engine
> development?   

so if you put a good engine into a bad chassis you are saying it's
automatically the engine's fault?  no way will i agree with this. 
 
> The vr6 has been in enough chassis to prove its strength is NOT the engine,
> but the package, eliot, and the different makers are buying the packaging
> strengths over the engine strengths.....  Think of it this way, you can put a
> big 4 in that engine bay, or buy the vr6 to fit in the same engine bay....

>  Not much thinkin here......  And that's the only thinking.......  The trade
> off is that the vr6 is NOT lexus like (and should be), but the crate sell is
> the SELL, compared to a large four, it holds its own, plus some.....  Not a
> bad strategy at all.....  

ok, i understand where you're coming from, but i disagree that the vr6 has no
other virtues other than the fact that it is compact. 

i say that judged on the test bench without a car body, it is a great engine. 
if i had a choice, i would want this engine to power any car body i have that
weighs under 3000 pounds. 

i am also saying that this engine is superior to the 325i's engine,
irrespective of what it is installed in. 

> But to place it against a lexus-like (your term,
> not quite in my opinion, but close) v6 from your own division is just silly,
> you are asking it to compete against the silky smooth 6's and the 8's, and it
> just wasn't designed to do that.......

a silky smooth engine does not have to be characterless.  the vr6 proves
this. 

and you may be interested to know that BMW only went to V8s because the
number crazed americans would not believe that a straight six is better in
vibration terms to a V8.  lexus had a v8 and it was eating into BMW sales, so
they had to bite the bullet and make a V8... 

why did you think BMW held out against a V8 for so long?  if a V8 was that
great don't you think they would have built one before they went to a V12? 
wouldn't that have been the logical MARKETING thing to do? mercedes went that
way.  no, BMW stuck to 6's and 12's because they were superior and only went
to 8's because they were forced to. 

acoustically speaking, a 6 will produce sweeter sounds than an V8. ask any
musicians about odd order harmonics. 

> >how about drivetrain inertia? that's the resistance of the static mass.
> >it has nothing to do at all with friction.  think flywheel.
 
> And the 29 pound flywheel in Eric's and my cars is not the best drivetrain
> idea in the world, however engine design can eliminate or at least reduce the
> need for that weight......  

i was asking eric to think of flywheel effects (i.e. inertia) of the extra
driveshafts that the quattro drivetrain requires.  since audi engineered each
axle to be able to handle 100% of the engine's output, these driveshafts are
massively overengineered and as you can imagine, hefty to get spinning, just
like a big heavy flywheel.  i am not talking about the engine flywheel
itself.  just that the effect is the same for the driveshafts. 

so when you have at least twice the inertia of the transmission to
overcome, you certainly lose standing start performance.  this has
absolutely nothing to do with friction, and completely unfair to
blame the engine for.



eliot