4 Reasons Why The VR6 Engine Is Dying Off

hey charles what are you doing drilling holes why are you drilling a hole charles because of jason hello everyone and welcome thank you for that fantastic introduction charles from homemechanic.com that's my favorite thing to do so in this video we're going to be talking about four reasons why the vr6 engine is on its way out it's not actually totally dead uh volkswagen still use vr6 in a few of their models yeah right so we volkswagen still has it in the new atlas has it in the passat and the tour ag okay and then there is also a porsche model that uses it as well cayenne cayenne cayenne all right well i think a more appropriate thing to be talking about engines dying would be volkswagen's diesel engines i would agree because heartedly legitimately hanging out in random dealer lots random dealers and stadiums sequestered to stadiums yeah just abandoned stadiums with abandoned cars so anyways we're gonna talk about uh vr6 engines gasoline engines and why these have kind of been phased out what the latest and greatest replacement is and i think it's also important to note that the newest generation vr is actually a little bit different from this one oh this is a 15 degree angle the newer ones are 10.6 i think there's also some 12 degree angle so it is similar but not exactly this is a 2.8 and the new ones are 3 6 correct but that's why i have this guys as usual a white board i'm going to go over here come this way i'll hold it up so here we have a comparison the new 2018 atlas uh offers a 2.0 liter turbocharged inline four cylinder thank you for the beautiful hands vanna white or a 3.6 liter vr6 engine so here on the left this is the base engine that it comes with the two liter i4 and one of the things that's cool about it is you can see this nice flat torque curve versus on the right looking at the vr6 engine's torque curve which is naturally aspirated you have a peak and so there's really one point where that engine's at its most efficient and producing maximum torque versus turbocharged engines you can tune the wastegate and the amount of boost that you have so that you have a perfectly flat torque curve gives you a nice linear you know throttle application you know exactly what maximum torque is for a set rpm it's the same thing going across it gives the driver control and so there's a benefit there to that and you can see that it reaches that peak torque earlier on now the the vr6 does produce more power 3.6 liter versus the 2-liter but you're getting peak torque earlier with the 2-liter inline 4-cylinder and so you know earlier on in that much more usable range this is a family what would you call it suv i don't know yeah this is a seven passenger suv seven passenger suvs so it's not like you're ringing that engine out to you know with your family in the car you probably want some good mid-range torque right this is not a gti that we're we're putting the tires and burning up rubber this is a family car so if you need all-wheel drive the vr6 is the only one that offers it but if you're going with front wheel drive version you can get the vr6 or the inline four i think the inline four makes more sense because of that nice beautiful torque curve now the second reason i want to talk about and of course we're going to talk about efficiency is efficiency yes and so you know clearly there are fuel economy regulations there are reasons why you want to be efficient there's reasons why we want to reduce emissions so good gas mileage is a great thing to have and that is one of the benefits of you know a smaller turbocharged engine versus a larger naturally aspirated engine so as an example going from the 2005 gti to the 2006 gti where it previously had the 2.8 liter vr6 and then went to a two liter uh inline four there's also one eight yes uh so the one eight was also in o5 and then o6 the only option for the gti was the 2-liter bpy that's going to be a timing belt driven direct injection 2-liter turbo now we know now we know and so both of those engines 2005 vr6 2006 2-liter turbocharged engine 200 horsepower the turbocharged one does hit that peak horsepower sooner and as you would imagine it hits peak torque way sooner so at 1800 rpm you're getting 207 pound-feet with the 2006 turbocharged inline-four versus the 2005 vr6 you're getting 195 pound-feet at 3 200 rpm so more torque earlier with a turbo the car weighs 300 pounds more that's kind of i was surprised they added a lot of weight in 2016 it was it was a huge redesign fasten it up it's a pig but regardless better fuel economy i didn't write the numbers on my sheet i'm going to go find those numbers i'm going to sit here awkwardly and not talk to you and just do this to this vr6 and he's back all right so what's interesting about you know the car weighs 300 about 300 pounds more in 2006 versus 2005 with this engine here and yet it's able to achieve better fuel economy 21 in the city 29 on the highway versus 19 in the city 27 on the highway now that's only a two mile per gallon difference so combined 22 versus 24 but that's actually a 9 difference and when you're considering that the car is a little over you know a little under 300 pounds heavier and it still has a 9 improvement in fuel economy and more torque i mean that's a pretty huge difference and i don't think it was really uncommon for people to see low 30 mile per gallon on the highway rather than that 29 that it was rated for again fuel economy depends so heavy on how you drive it yes absolutely so number three is actually size now we're not talking the difference between a w12 and an inline four the vr6 footprint is actually not that much bigger than the four cylinder and that's actually one of the really awesome things about the vr is that it's only what did we measure two inches two inches longer and an inch or so wider than a footprint of a four cylinder but you are also not having the enormous size of a v6 or you know width or an inline six right length right so from a naturally aspirated standpoint you know you're getting a lot more power in a much smaller footprint but regardless an inline four cylinder is smaller and yes you're adding in that turbo charger and that takes up space but space is critical when i used to be a real engineer before just doodling on whiteboards one of the tasks i had to do was design a cooling system and i was told jason here's your little box make a cooling system work in this box and so the the size of my radiator was completely restricted because i only had this much space to work with so engineers love to have extra space it gives them flexibility you know it can change your suspension geometry it can change how much steering angle you can have with those front tires if you have more space to turn them in so you know a lot of things can change based on the size of an engine it gives you a lot of flexibility you could make it nice for mechanics it does help it does help with technicians working on vehicles and making maintenance doing maintenance and repairs or you could just shrink the size of the car so the mechanic has no more room to work which let's be honest that's what the overall goal is anyway but regardless uh size is a benefit to the smaller four-cylinder engine uh which gives all kinds of benefits out there and can overall help you know if you can reduce the size of the car you can also pull out some weight and there are of course tons of benefits of removing some weight right i think by the time you get the vr6 fully constructed and then all the components to the turbocharger fully constructed the weight is not huge but even saving 50 pounds on the front end can really change the driving experience of a vehicle absolutely now the fourth thing we're going to talk about is consolidation because it's very beneficial for a company to offer less overall options it's cheaper for them to produce a larger quantity of you know one thing than five different things of that same overall quantity uh and so i think you can probably talk a little bit about you know the engine right options in the volkswagen world and you can actually take and do more thorough engineering a better job that's why certain car companies that may only have one option or two engine options across their entire line don't have to worry about seven different oil filters and six different air filters they have one oil filter one air filter that fits everything but when it comes to the vw engine the vws and the vr sixes as they move more towards the mqb platform which shares components exactly across the brand it does make it a lot easier to just have one engine option or two engine options across the board instead of having a one-eight turbo a four-cylinder a vr6 a diesel option and all that it it makes the car more affordable and you can really focus on that one engine and make it of better quality it drops the parts of maintenance prices because the parts for maintenance are more affordable i mean even doing maintenance speaking of maintenance doing maintenance on a four-cylinder right you lose two spark plugs two pistons two spark plugs two pistons less oil in the crankcase so everything comes down quite a bit the other cool thing you know with a with a two liter turbocharged engine you can put that in a gti then you can slap a bigger turbo on adjust play with your boost a little bit and put it in the golf r and you can have you know significantly more powerful much more thrilling engine that's you know based on the same platform uh not a huge differentiator between like going from a 2-liter turbo and then to a vr6 we've got two completely different worlds and back in the days where this was a really common high line option you know a tune or a chip might net you 30 horsepower and 40 pound feet of torque where now when you're tuning a 2-liter for 600 bucks you're getting 50 horsepower and 80 pound-feet of torque and it completely changes the driving experience of the vehicle in a better way every single way possible you know as a vw enthusiast as a vr6 enthusiast my heart will always belong to the mark iv r32 right it is the pure r32 model in my opinion fast forward to the golf r in 2017 other than the nostalgia that i have for that mark iv that car is a far superior car in every way the new golfer is amazing is an amazing vehicle or you know take that into the audi line with the s4 and even audi has dropped the vr6 from their their platforms now and their highline stuff they're doing five-cylinder turbos or they're simply running modified two-liter turbos uh porsche really was never huge in the vr6 world i think only the cayenne was the one that had that option that's mostly because it's essentially it's horrid so four good reasons there for the manufacturer and also a couple good reasons maintenance and tunability you know for those who are buying it right because you know they're gonna want something that they can play with for less money overall and still have some amazing uh improvements from as an enthusiast i can do more for less money on a tune as your average driver it the lifetime overall is going to be cheaper to maintain in most instances yep so i think that concludes uh charles is actually going to be building up this engine on his channel and putting it into his 98 gti 98 gb last year of the mark iii gti the white wookie the white hook quite hooky quite hooky okay rhymes with cookie yes and so you should subscribe to his channel i'll put a circle on his face put a circle on my face wait i think my face has to be a little lower the circle this is where the circle has to be though okay because i have that box i'll put it right there and you should click on that uh and i'll maybe put some other videos we've done because we've done a good number of videos this is like our 10th video yeah we've been uh you think 10 uh let's lay wager i think 10. okay

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 953,316

Keywords: Vr6 engine, volkswagen, vw vr6, inline turbo, ea888, why the vR6 is dying, humble mechanic, how vr6 engine works, engineering explained, rotary engine, german engineering, porsche cayenne, 2018 VW Atlas, vw, vw atlas, vw atlas review

Id: 6UZRmNXzveQ

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I want to say 6's in general are a dying breed. Even Bimmers that were known as historically "straight-6" cars like the 328i etc are using turbo 4's.

[u/Drzhivago138]

I never knew the VR6 was really alive in the first place.

[u/Fugner]

Interestingly VW just put a VR6 in the new Atlas.

[u/CToxin]

WOOKIES NEVER DIE

Also, the can and should turbo it already