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 Brayton. Since then, there have been many new engine designs and even some so crazy that people said they would never work. Some of these

engines

are super rare and unusual, so if you are a gearhead and 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, addictive exhaust note and performance. Volkswagen's vr6 engines were hot. news when they came out in the late 80s, but many of you may be wondering what vr means.

Basically, the big boys at Volkswagen wanted an engine that was as compact as their existing four-cylinder Passat Golf and Corodo engines, but had more power to match. At the same location, the VR-6 was designed as a narrow angle engine with VW designing two narrow cylinder blocks 15 degrees apart and sharing a single cylinder head, the V describing the shape in the R referring to the fact that the cylinders were It is the offset cylinder banks that give the engine its unique sound. The VR6 made its first debut in the Passat and Corado in 1991 and was a 2.8-liter engine with approximately 150 horsepower.

In 1999 it was given 24 valves that increased the power to 210 capacity. It was increased to 3.2 liters in 2001 for the 225 horsepower RSI Beetle, but in 2015 the engine was removed from options and no longer in production, there was talk of a revival of the VR6 in the form of a 3-cylinder twin-turbo unit. .0 liters and 496 brake horsepower, but with the constant evolution of four-cylinder automobiles and increased awareness of environmental issues the plan was abandoned Mazda's rotary engine was an incredibly unique design that had everyone wondering how Felix Winkle himself was a German engineer who came up with his version of a rotary engine back in the 1920s, however, the first working prototype was not invented until the 1960s.

A rotary engine is an internal combustion engine with barrel shape that lacks many of the major parts you would find in a conventional piston engine - for one, there are no pistons. moving up and down, instead rounded triangular rotors of two to three rotors rotate around an axis through a hollow cylinder. The amazing thing about these engines is that you can actually add or subtract a rotor and cylinder assembly; you might think this engine appeared for the first

time

. RX models, but Mazda put these engines in the German NSU Row80 and Citroen GS Per Rotor as part of a joint venture between 1967 and 1977, the engine ended up in cars with RX designation and finally the RX-8 Mazda last built once a car.

Powered by a rotary engine in 2012 and largely abandoned due to low fuel efficiency and emissions, everyone already knows about electric cars, with Tesla and a bevy of other car companies jumping on the electric bandwagon following in their footsteps; However, even electric cars have their shortcomings and the biggest of them is their range, however, some hybrid cars can be equipped with the free piston range extender that runs on pump gasoline and in turn generates electricity, allowing Allow the vehicle to charge while you drive it. The piston-driven gasoline engine provides an electric car. owner the flexibility of long-range travel and connects directly to an electric motor so the gas engine doesn't spin the car;

It is actually connected directly to the electric motor, which increases the range of the electric motor. It's a cool concept, but last

time

we checked it was like that. is still being evaluated by electric car manufacturers, here's something strange that many people may not be familiar with, many people probably do know that in the late 60's and early 70's cadillac made the largest engine available for a car with 500 cubic inches and was among the most powerful engines available at the time and owners expected this; However, in 1981, Cadillac had to change things because vehicle emissions were becoming stricter and fuel economy regulations were imposed on automakers when emissions laws killed off their V8 engines.

So anemic that a Caddy could barely accelerate a compact car, so Cadillac's answer was a strange one-year-old 6-4 V8. It was a variable displacement engine that had newly developed electronics that would measure the engine load and then deactivate the cylinders exiting the valves. open so there was no compression, no fuel would go to the injector and the spark would cut off at the spark plug sounds good but the cart owners didn't care for the system and one of the biggest complaints was how hard the engine ran in v6 mode . The nice thing was that you could simply disconnect a wire to disable the system and an estimated 80 of the owners had the dealer disconnect it, so to speak.

Infiniti is 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 last two decades that is variable compression. Typically, a combustion engine comes with only one compression and the higher the compression ratio combined with the higher octane fuel needed, the more power you get. of the engine, the problem is that high compression engines also consume much more fuel and also emit many 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 engine. the race 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 2.0-liter turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine with direct drive. fuel injection and will initially deliver a maximum power of 268 horsepower and 288 pound-feet of torque. Infiniti has confirmed availability of the engine starting in 2018. The Porsche Furman engine, codenamed type 547 and named after its creator, Ernst Furman, was built between 1953 and 1964. It was an air-four boxer engine. cooled cylinders with four overhead camshafts driven by four vertical shafts. The crankcase cylinder and cylinder heads were made of aluminum alloy, which gave the engine reduced weight. With its small size, the technology for the time was very complex and the The engine is very rare, being manufactured just under 2000.

It incorporated an innovative valve drive that allowed drivers to reach surprising speeds. The engine was so good that it put Porsche on the racing podium several times more than the Furman engine in the Porsche 904 or the Correa GTS. It had been enlarged to 2 liters and produced a mighty 185 horsepower, which was incredible for the time; However, the Furman engine was not frost resistant and could seize at low temperatures due to the different expansion rates of the metals used. Many 356 Carrera vehicles therefore underwent heart surgery. to eliminate their vertical axis engines and make them more usable on a day to day basis, thus ended this notable invention, the Tucker type or 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 II the engine was modified for automotive use and used the industry's first sealed water cooling system the engine was then supplied to Tucker and placed in the Tucker 48 torpedo the engine in Yes it was a 335 cubic inch flat 6.

Tucker claimed that 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 sure looked clean, but the design was definitely interesting as a flat 6 engine. This engine is rare, not as rare as a type 547, but a good rebuilt example sold for around 35,000 at auction recently in 1991. Dr. Herbert Hudlin began looking at the traditional automotive diesel combustion engine and how its efficiency could be improved with a little help. He came up with a compact spherical motor generator combination that is radically different from the traditional inline combustion engine with far fewer moving parts.

It works like this: two opposing curved twin piston heads balance on the same bearing when two heads move apart the opposing pistons come together, this has the effect of rocking the cylinder heads back and forth, the crazy thing is that in At the top of each of the four piston heads is a large titanium ball bearing that runs in a circular channel on one axis and a sine wave on the other. The channel completely surrounds the pistons and their rocking causes them to rotate on a axis perpendicular to its bearing axis. When 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 magnetic ring is fixed to the axis of rotation of the cylinders, fixed to the inner surface of the surrounding sphere is a ring. of electromagnetic coils and the interaction with the rotating magnet causes the generation of electricity.

It's a cool concept, but it seems like electric car battery technology probably killed the idea when people thought it would take decades for it to be good enough for an all-electric car. The Duke company has been working on a motorcycle axial engine design for more than 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 and five conventional 200cc cylinders are arranged around it. the centerline of the engine with the cylinders parallel to the crankshaft, much like the chambers of a revolver for a total displacement of one thousand cc, there are no camshafts, pushrods, rocker arms, valves or springs, instead a series With sliding seals similar to those in a rotary engine handling intake and exhaust duties, the cylinder bank rotates against a z-shaped crankshaft at approximately 20 percent of the crankshaft's rotational speed to significantly reduce vibration. and torque reaction, the power output is competitive, the company claims 125 horsepower and 88 pound-feet of torque at 7,500 rpm as the maximum engine.

Although it may not seem like much, you should keep this in mind. Duke says its 5-cylinder prototype weighs just 86 pounds and measures about 17 by 10 by 10 inches, about two-thirds the weight and half the size of the conventional 1000cc engine. inline four, can you say an incredible power-to-weight ratio?