10 Strangest Engines of All Time

technology has come a long way since the invention of the first internal combustion engine in 1872 by American George Brady since then there have been a lot of new engine designs and even some so crazy that people said they would never even work some of these engines are super rare and unusual so if you're a gearhead and you love cars and engines then buckle up and check out the most unusual engines VW's v5 and vr6 engines are admired for their throaty wholly addictive exhaust note in their performance Volkswagens vr6 engines were hot news when they appeared in the late 80s but many of you might be wondering what the V R stands for basically the big guys at Volkswagen wanted an engine that was as compact as their existing four-cylinder Passat golf and corrado engines but had more power to fit in the same place the vr6 was designed as a narrow angle engine with VW designing to narrow cylinder blocks which are 15 degrees apart and sharing a single cylinder head the V describing the shape in the are referring to the fact that the cylinders were in line it is the offset banks of cylinders that gives the engine its unique sound the vr6 made its first debut in the Passat and corrado in 1991 and was a 2.8 liter with about a hundred and fifty horsepower in 1999 it was given 24 valves which increased horsepower to 210 capacity was increased to 3 point 2 litres in 2001 for the 225 horsepower RSI beetle but by 2015 the engine was dropped from options and no longer being made there was talk of a vr6 revival in the form of a 496 brake horsepower 3.0 liter twin-turbo unit but with the constant evolution of four-cylinder cars and increased awareness of environmental issues the plan was dropped the Mazda rotary engine was an incredibly unique design that had everyone wondering how it worked Felix Winkle himself was a German engineer who came up with his version of a rotary engine way back in the 1920s however the first working prototype wasn't invented until the 1960s a rotary engine is a barrel shaped internal combustion engine that lacks many of the major parts you find in a conventional piston engine for one there are no Pistons moving up and down instead rounded triangular rotors from two to three rotors spin around a shaft through a hollow barrel the amazing thing about these engines is that you can actually add or subtract a rotor and barrel assembly you might think that this engine first came out in the RX models but Mazda put these engines in the German NSU ro ad and the Citroen GS buy rotor as part of a joint venture between 1967 and 1977 the engine did end up in the RX designation cars and finally the rx-8 mazda last built a car powered by a rotary engine in 2012 and abandoned largely due to poor fuel efficiency and emissions everyone knows about electric cars by now with Tesla and a bunch of other car companies jumping on the electric wagon following in their footsteps however even electric cars have their shortcomings and the biggest one of those is their range however some hybrid cars can be equipped with the free-piston range extender which runs on pump gas and in turn generates electricity allowing the vehicle to charge while you are driving it the piston-driven gasoline engine gives an electric car owner the flexibility of long range travel and connects directly to an electric motor so the gasoline engine isn't turning the car it is actually directly connected to the electric motor which increases the electric motor range it's a cool concept but last time we checked it was still being evaluated by makers of electric cars here's a weird one that many people might not be familiar with many people probably do know that in the late 60s and early 70s Cadillac made the largest engine available on a car at 500 cubic inches and it was among the most powerful engines available at the time and owners expected this however by 1981 Cadillac had to change things because vehicle emissions were getting stricter and fuel economy regulations were laid down on car manufacturers by the time the emissions laws got done with their v8 engines they were so anemic that a caddie could barely out accelerate a compact car so Cadillacs answer was a strange one year only v8 6:4 engine it was a variable displacement engine that had newly developed electronics that would measure engine load and then deactivate cylinders leaving the valves open so there was no compression no fuel would go to the injector and spark would be cut off at the plug sounds cool but Caddy owners didn't care for the system with one of the biggest complaints being how rough the engine ran in v6 mode the good thing was that you could just disconnect one wire to disable the system and it's estimated that 80% of the owners had the dealer pull the plug so to speak infinity makes a great car and their technology when it comes to vehicle manufacturing is cutting edge so it should come as no surprise that they have been working on an engine for the past two decades which is variable compression usually a combustion engine comes in one compression only and the higher the compression ratio matched with the necessary higher octane fuel the more power you get out of the engine the problem is that high compression engines will also eat a lot more fuel and also put out a lot more emissions the variable compression engine can alter its compression ratio which is the volume of the combustion chamber when a piston is at the bottom of the stroke compared to when it reaches the top the result is said to be an engine that can deliver the high performance of a gasoline engine as well as the torque and efficiency of a diesel the vc turbo is a turbocharged 2.0 liter inline-4 with direct fuel injection and will initially deliver a peak 268 horsepower and 288 pound-feet of torque infiniti has confirmed the engines availability from 2018 [Music] the Oldsmobile Jetfire was an interesting engine concept and in 1962 it was seen by many people as something futuristic and innovative the engine itself was a 215 cubic inch v8 but had a Garrett turbocharger that relied on what olds called turbo rocket fuel this had to be added to a completely separate reservoir inside of the engine compartment under the hood it came in a glass bottle with a yellow sticker and looked like a bottle of skim milk inside of the bottle was a mixture of distilled water methanol and the corrosion inhibitor this stuff had to be always topped off because the engine had 10.25 compression and without it the engine would knock because of the low octane fuel available at the pump in case you're not familiar with engine knock this is also known as detonation and is the equivalent of taking a hammer and smashing the top of your Pistons with it for many drivers this of course ended up bad because many would forget to fill the reservoir with turbo fluid and the car would end up with engine damage a frequent owner complaint was lack of power and a trip to the dealer would reveal that the owner had run the turbo rocket fluid tank dry performance wise the engine put out 215 horsepower one per cubic inch and three hundred foot-pounds of torque at 3000 rpm that was impressive for that time however the whole concept only lasted two years before being discontinued the Porsche Furman engine codenamed type five four seven and named after its creator Ernst Furman was built from 1953 until 1964 it was an air-cooled four-cylinder boxer engine with four overhead camshafts which are powered by four vertical shafts the crankcase cylinder and cylinder heads were made of aluminum alloy which gave the engine low weight with its small size the technology for the time was very complex and the engine is very rare with just under 2,000 ever made it incorporated an innovative valve drive which allowed drivers to reach astonishing speeds the engine was so good that had put Porsche on the racing podium several times the Furman engine in the Porsche 904 or the Korea GTS had been enlarged to two litres and produced a mighty 185 horsepower which was incredible for the time however the Furman engine was not frost proof and made jam at low temperatures a wing to the differing expansion rates of the metals used Mini 356 carrera vehicles therefore underwent heart surgery to remove their vertical shaft engines and make them more usable on a day to day basis thus ended this remarkable invention [Music] the Tucker type Oh 335 is a horizontally opposed six-cylinder engine that was derived from an air-cooled Bell 47 helicopter engine designed and built by Franklin for use in World War two the engine was modified for automotive use and utilized the industry's first sealed water cooling system the engine was then supplied to Tucker and put in the Tucker 48 torpedo the engine itself was a 335 cubic inch flat 6 engine that had overhead valves and put out only a hundred and sixty-six horsepower but was a torque monster with 372 foot-pounds of torque Tucker claimed the engine was capable of accelerating the torpedo to 60 miles per hour in 10 seconds and up to 120 miles per hour top speed the engine was very innovative for the time and it sure looked clean but the design was definitely interesting as a flat 6 engine this engine is rare not as rare as a type 5 4 7 but a good rebuilt example sold for about 35,000 at an auction recently in 1991 dr. Herbert Hudlin begin to look at the traditional auto diesel combustion engine and how its efficiency could be improved with some help he came up with a compact spherical motor generator combination that is radically different from the traditional inline combustion engine with significantly fewer moving parts the way it works is like this two opposing curved twin piston heads rock on the same bearing when two heads are pushed apart the opposing Pistons are pushed together this has the effect of rocking the cylinder heads back and forth the crazy part is that on the top of each of the four piston heads is a large titanium ball bearing that runs in a channel that is circular in one axis and a sine wave in the other the channel completely encompasses the Pistons and their rocking causes them to rotate on an axis perpendicular to their bearing axis by swimming along the channel a ball bearing guide channel is fixed to one side of the spherical aluminum housing while on the other side a permanent magnet ring is attached to the rotation axis of the cylinders fixed to the inside surface of the enclosing sphere is a ring of electromagnetic coils and the in with the spinning magnet causes the generation of electricity it's a cool concept but it would seem that electric car battery technology likely killed the idea when people thought it would be decades to be good enough for an all-electric car a company named Duke has been working on an axial motorcycle engine designed for over 20 years now they have designed a prototype that looks nothing like a conventional internal combustion engine from the outside and the differences extend inside the cases as well five conventional 200 cc cylinders are arranged around the engine center line with the cylinders parallel to the crankshaft much like chambers in a revolver for a total displacement of a thousand CC there are no camshafts push rods rocker arms valves or springs instead a series of sliding seals similar to a rotary engine take care of intake and exhaust duties the cylinder group rotates counter to a z crankshaft at roughly 20% of the cranks rotational speed to significantly reduce vibration and torque reaction power output is competitive the firm claims 125 horsepower and 88 foot-pounds of torque at 7500 rpm the maximum engine speed while that might not seem like much you need to keep this in mind Duke says it's 5 cylinder prototype weighs just 86 pounds and measures roughly 17 by 10 by 10 inches that's about two-thirds the weight and half the size of the conventional 1,000 CC inline-four can you say awesome power-to-weight ratio [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: MAD LAB

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Keywords: Engine, ENGINES, 10 STRANGEST ENGINES, ENGINES of ALL TIME, MAD LAB, Most Unusual, STRANGEST ENGINES, motor, Top 10 MOST UNUSUAL, 10 strangest, top 10 engines, 10 unusual, 10 weird, top 10, most strange, cars, car, Wheel, Power, Turbo, Biggest engine, antique engine, rpm, Rotary Engine, Future car, Future Engines, Greatest Engines, car engine, engine design, petrol engine, old engine, old engines, Twin Turbo, combustion engine, smallest engine, strange, new engine, most, unusual

Id: J2weoTGsi5c

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 13 2019