Alfa Romeo BUSSO V6 - What makes it GREAT? - ICONIC ENGINES #15

welcome to an episode of

iconic

engines

, as you just heard, today we are talking about our first italian engine with

iconic

engines

, the

alfa

romeo

buso v6, so why is it called buso? because the person who designed it was called giuseppe

busso

, i mean you. I have to love Italians because for them it's all about personality. I mean, let's look at the Germans, for example, this man's name is Paul Roche and he designed most of the most iconic BMW engines of all time. I mean, they could have just as easily been called. This is the Russia V12, I mean, it also has a pretty nice sounding last name, but that's too exciting for the Germans, so they call this engine the S70 Slash 2.

It sounds like a mailing address in a big apartment complex in East Berlin,

what

about the Japanese? Well, no. Don't even get me started on the Japanese because calling an engine by the engineer's last name would be an incredible disgrace, shame, so of course this isn't the Yamamoto engine, it's the 13b, nor is this the Kajitani engine, it's the B16 and all other engines. the famous ones are also just a cocktail of letters or numbers or anything else and for many of them we don't even know the name of the engineers who have worked on the engine, of course pointing out a team engineer would be an insult. for the team and a shame for the individual, even the British and Americans who are definitely capable of displaying extravagance do not call their engines by the engineer's last name, so this is not the Hanes engine, it is the xk nor is this the corner engine, it's the Some of the other locomotives have relatively interesting names, but none of them have engineer last names, but the Italians are different, their locomotives have names of people who know colombo, lampredi and the star of today's video, buso, then Mr.

Giuseppe Bouzou was born in In 1913, in Turin or Jiren, he graduated from the Polytechnic University of Turin and in 1937 he got his first job, which was working as a calculator, also known as a human computer, for the engine department. Fiat aeronautical companies and the experimental railway office. By the way, children, he was a human computer because that is the only type of computer they had then, it was made with washed bones and many neurons, but Mr. Busso was not calculating for long because already in 1939 he was recruited by Mr. Alfredo ricard, a spanish man who headed the

alfa

romeo

patiali studies or special projects office. and here buso worked on racing engines and also researched, developed and tested various advanced engineering theories.

He was so good that his work from those years would later become lecture material at the university from which he graduated, but then came World War II and instead of building race car engines and researching engineering theories the Mussolini's fascist government forced all car manufacturers to make ammunition for war machines and research the best way to kill people, but fortunately the global nightmare came to an end in 1945. Italy was largely in rubble and car manufacturers automobiles established their with a view to regaining their former glory, it was at this time that Enzo Ferrari, also a former Alfa Romeo employee, was working hard to get his startup up and running.

The kids back then the startups were really cool, they wanted to make race cars, obviously, to build race cars. He also needed to build engines, so Mr. Ferrari needed an engine designer and he set his sights on a man called Joaquino Colombo, the man who designed the engine for the Alfetta 158, the car that won every race in the first season of Formula One. , obviously, this caught. the attention of ferrari but there was a problem colombo was already working for alfa romeo and ferrari was just starting out so although he offered the position to colombo he could not afford to offer a salary that was even comparable to

what

colombo was already receiving from alfa So what did Colombo do?

Poetry refused, no, he decided to work on Ferrari's new engine in his free time, obviously he couldn't be physically present at Ferrari, so he suggested Ferrari hire Buso to oversee the entire project now. . Busso was unemployed during the second world war, so of course he accepted and so in 1946 Mr. Giuseppe Busso became the first technical director of Ferrari, but this agreement did not last long because at the end of 1947 the head of design of Alfa Romeo , orazio satapulia, discovered Colombo's moonlighting for Ferrari, of course, he was angry with it and the two came to a big disagreement apparently this agreement is a soft word because according to witness accounts there was a lot of angry shouting, many of you know, gestures with hands and stuff. well and it all ended with you being fired no, i resigned then colombo left alfa romeo but he could do it because now ferrari had enough money to be able to offer him a decent salary but oracio santa puyo was not happy with and decided to screw colombo, so he hired again I'm looking away from Ferrari to take Colombo's old position at Alfa.

I mean, you have to love Italians, even the engineering career is like a soap opera, so in 1948 Mr. Brusso started working for Alfa Romeo again. It was the beginning of the Buso years, a time during which Alfromei would transform from a low-volume sports car manufacturer to a mass-production powerhouse and Mr. Busso was instrumental in creating almost all alpha males in the next two and one years. half a decade bousso's reign began in 1950 with the launch of the iconic alpha 1900, a car that debuted another of boso's engineering masterpieces, the alpha male twin overhead cam engine, a four-cylinder engine with twin overhead camshaft that benefited from extensive use of aluminum alloy.

An innovative and innovative idea at the time that made the engine exceptionally light. The twin cam Busos engine would be found in almost all Alfas for decades to come. In fact, Alfa Romeo continued to take advantage of Buso's dual-cam architecture until the mid-1980s, almost a decade after Buso was retired. by Alfred May in 1977. In the years that followed, Boosel's engineering mind would play a key role in the development of many of Alpha's most memorable classics. Of all of these, Julia would prove to be the biggest financial success that fueled men's appetite to reach higher levels and expand more aggressively in the high-end segments and to do so they needed a larger and more powerful engine than the current four-cylinder engine. and double camshaft, so that at the beginning of the 60s the development of a new six-cylinder engine had begun, the first prototypes were already available.

In the late 60s, but in 1973, the oil crisis hit, it was a huge engine killer that made every large or sports engine look like financial suicide, so Alfa Romeo was forced to wait and the V6 Busso remained inactive until 1979. In fact, Giuseppe Busso had officially retired from Alfa May in 1977 and was officially still very present at Alpha and the area plant where his V6 was manufactured. The Boso engine began life in 1979 as a 2.5 liter overhead camshaft 12 valve engine under the hood of the newest released Alfa Romeo 6. Now rivals from Germany, Japan, France and even the US at the time sported some form of electronic fuel injection, but not the Italian V6, the Booster V6 left the factory with six Delorto frpa carburetors.

I'm sure tuning and adjusting them was a breeze, no it wasn't, but apparently Buso and his engineering team didn't want to compromise on throttle response, they wanted the ultimate in throttle response, so they wanted individual throttle bodies, but no commercially available fuel injection. The system at that time could support individual throttle bodies, so instead there were six carburetors, but the carburetion did not last long because already in 1980 the buso v6 found its way under the hood of the impressive gt v6 and here, instead of six carbohydrates, received the bosch algebraic system. fuel injection system and it was a huge improvement, journalists, car enthusiasts and everyone else couldn't get enough of the car, they were raving about it and many praise this car to this day, so despite the lack of half a dozen, there were no carbs nor even a single throttle body system the v6 quickly became known as the fiddle of areas it's not often an engine is compared to a fiddle so to understand how it happened I'll shut up and let it happen the buso v6 talk to this day many believe the buso v6 is the best sounding v6 ever made, it made some believe it is even the best sounding engine ever made, so inspired by all the positive comments for years to come , alpha decided to play a game called let's put a

busso

in everything, so in 1983 alpha 6 was renewed it received the new buso with fuel injection in 1984 it was the alpha 19 in 1985 it was the alpha 75 and in 1986 the empire invaded 1986 It was Alfa Romeo's last year as an independent car manufacturer because in this year it was overtaken by Fiat and ironically merged with its traditional rival Ranchia in Alfalancia Industrial Espa under the management of Field and, to the dismay of many car enthusiasts, Alpha began to move away from rear-wheel drive vehicles towards front-wheel drive vehicles, the first of these models being introduced as early as 1987. the new flagship of the front-wheel drive 164 alpha and under its hood was, among others, the buso v6, of course Sofia may have killed the rear wheel drive but at least they couldn't kill the buso but there was more good news, the buso had grown from 2.5 to 3 liters and also received this perhaps the most memorable and attractive visual feature of all the transversely mounted brusso v6 engines.

To fit the b6 buso under the 164's low-profile hood, the engineers were forced to move the intake point to a different location and so they decided to make lemons out of lemonade and gave the transversely mounted buso these beautiful, shiny pipes. intake an impressive visual feature that would remain with all transversely mounted buso engines until the end of production in the late 1980s, all 12-valve overhead single-engine. The camera thing was becoming very old-fashioned, everyone was getting on the dohc train and also the 12-valve buso v6 was approaching the end of its production, but before leaving it would receive a very special swan song, its most recent version. powerful would graze the engine compartment of a very special alpha the s z born from a special cooperation between centroagatochentrostille alpha enchantrostyle fiat the sz received a dose of italian style and was a very special car, but the 12 valve swan song was not a true swan song in all 12 hours would continue to live until the year 2000, although in a diminutive size and with an unnatural aspiration.

Yes, it had a turbo. The two-liter V6 turbo bus was introduced in 1991 in the 164 to allow the Italians to avoid the strong attacks of all cars with engines larger than 2 liters. It was also available in the GTV coupe and in the 166 until the arrival of Euro 3 emissions standards put an end to this little engine. In 1992 two more camshafts and 12 more valves were introduced, it was the birth of the El Cambuso twin 24 overhead valve v6, the new engine boasted impressive numbers, improved efficiency, reduced emissions and soon found its way into many alpha and even launch cars, but the 90s were the beginning of the end for the famous and historic Alfa Romeo plant that Fiat showed.

There were no intentions to keep the plant alive and by 2000 no cars were manufactured at this plant; In fact, the Buso V6 was the only thing being made at the steadily declining plant, but it wasn't over yet, the Buso V6 would. I don't leave without one last guttural roar one last taste of its beauty and glory in 2001 Alfa Romeo launched the 156 GT8 Gran Turismo Alegrita or Grand Tour Light and Lightning Grand Tour and in its engine bay was the final form of the Buso V6 clamped before. With a displacement of 3.2 liters, the four cambuso generated an impressive 250 horsepower just one year later, in 2002, the 147 gta would receive the same engine known as the busone or big bousso.

The engine accelerated the GTA cars to 100 kilometers per hour in just over six seconds. True to tradition, it was still beautifully naturally aspirated and wonderfully smooth and offered instantly addictive acceleration to GTA cars, but it also seemed unable to attract drivers despite Cosworth's interest in purchasing the V6 production line. The last batch of engines left the area plant on December 31, 2005. Giuseppe Babusso decided to follow his beautiful creation into the afterlife. A few days later he died on January 3, 2006. Now let's look at some of the numbers, since we know the bus is a v6 engine. and the angle between the twobanks of the v is 60 degrees, which means that it is a fairly narrow and compact v6 engine during its production, the buso v6 existed in multiple displacements from 2 to 3.2 liters and here we have the bore and stroke of each one of These displacements and as you can see in each of its versions, the v6 booster is a fairly square engine design that lends itself well to high rpm operations, regardless of displacement, we now have an open platform or aluminum engine block with wet sleeves, although it is an open deck design, it is a fairly rigid block construction within the engine block, we have a fully counterbalanced forged crankshaft of exceptionally good design, as we can see, between the individual crank pins we have large arms Flyers that lead to a very strong and very good design.

The balanced crankshaft is also one of the reasons why the V6 Buso is such a smooth running engine. The connecting rods are also forged, while the pistons are cast aluminum with various coatings on later engines. In addition, the Booster V6 engine does not feature any balance shaft as often. can be found in v6 engines, however, it is balanced externally through a crankshaft pulley and a weight-compensated flywheel, these effectively counteract the primary imbalances present in all inline 3 and v6 engines and, at the same time time, they reduce friction losses that would otherwise be present if balance shafts were Employed, compression ratios are relatively conservative throughout the boost, making it a family of V6 engines and vary from eight to one for the two liter turbo engines at 10.5.a one for the 3.2 liter gta engines that go up to the cylinder head we have two versions of the cylinder heads the 12 valve one and the 24 valve one in the 12 valve one we have one camshaft per head and directly actuates the intake valves while indirectly actuating the exhaust valves through a small pushrod, although the short pushrod system for the exhaust valves works, it may be subject to premature failure due to materials used and if things are not set up correctly, it is also one of the reasons for the relative vo stock. rpm limit of many 12-valve engines, the 24-valve has two camshafts in each of the heads and directly drives all valves via hydraulic valve lifters, unlike the 12-valve that uses shims and needs periodic valve clearance adjustments, hydraulic lifters obviously No adjustment of valve clearances is necessary as long as they are working properly and here we have the camshaft specifications for most engines and now, If the exhaust specs for 12-valve engines seem especially mild, don't forget to multiply. them by the rock ratio which is 1.4 when it comes to valve sizes we have some pretty healthy valve sizes on both 12 valve and 24 valve engines.

The 12-valve engine features a hemispherical combustion chamber which, while fine when modern findings and you know best practices apply when it comes to combustion chamber design, is really not an optimal design for performance. On the other hand, the 24-valve engine has a typical boom-roof combustion chamber, which is much better for ultimate performance goals, although the v6 booster existed until 2005, we don't have any type of variable valve timing or Variable valve lift present on neither cylinder head, the camshafts are belt driven on both the 12-valve and 24-valve engines and there is a hydraulic timing belt tensioner which was prone to problems in For many of the engines, the engineer's design of the hydraulic belt had already been revised to make it a bimetallic one, but this was also not ideal, so many owners resorted to DIY or aftermarket timing belt tensioning, some of which had quite good As a result, the ignition is a distributor based on most 12-valve engines and evolved to a coil-over-plug configuration on 24-valve engines.

The intake started out as six carburetors but later evolved to a large platinum intake with a single chamber sized throttle body and the intake runners are usually large enough for most stock applications and slightly tuned, but it is It is necessary to increase them for more serious modifications and more performance-oriented adjustments. The exhaust manifolds are cast iron on many of the 12 valve engines, but they are bent steel on the 24 valve engines, so that's enough dry numbers, now let's talk about fun stuff, tuning up, what can we do with this now before talking about tuning? a disclaimer, first of all, the buso v6 engine is not your 2jz k20 ls 1.8 liter turbo or any other globally ubiquitous engine that was produced in massive quantities, the v6 booster is not as plentiful, it is a bit rarer , especially in some parts of the world, which means that the aftermarket engine boost isn't even comparable to many of the more popular tuning platforms, which means that if you want performance stuff, it will often be very expensive or difficult to find or you will have to make things yourself, which means that when it comes to tuning it is not a very beginner friendly engine and it is not a very beginner friendly engine when it comes to maintenance, like many Italians, it is very temperamental and won't like the kind of nonsense you try to implement after watching a 10 minute DIY video on YouTube, so you know, even finding the TDC on this engine can be more difficult than many other engines, plus it has some parts quite expensive replacements and often quite short service intervals so if you think you know ok I can wait with the timing belt these parts seem very expensive and this replacement interval seems awfully short maybe I can drive it a few more weeks, what could go wrong, well, an interfering engine breaks, but that's what could go wrong.

Some of the v6 uh buses are famous for this so definitely be careful with this. If you're buying a car with a bus, uh, if it has suspiciously low mileage, it's best to be very cautious. Often a high mileage engine is a safer bet if it is running properly because you know it has been through everything. setbacks and the inherent problems of these engines because if it had not been maintained it would have died by now. The good news is that this has been around for quite a while, so all the bad ones, uh, and the poorly maintained ones, are mostly already dead and The only people who are still willing to really invest in these engines are in Mostly enthusiasts these days, so you can be relatively safe when you know what and who you are buying the buso v6 from, so let's get the disclaimer out of the way.

By adjusting what you can do with a thruster, you can actually do a lot of things because despite that disclaimer, the buso is a very capable engine platform, if you do things right it is a very special engine that can provide sensations that many other engines can't, it is an incredibly smooth sounding engine that, when done right, can provide a lot of power. Now let's start with natural aspiration, as we usually do. Let's imagine that we want to maintain momentum. What can we do well? The most basic thing you can do is some performance. relatively smooth oriented cam intakes, uh, some you know, performance oriented exhaust, maybe clumsy a little bit with some kind of cold air intake and you know stuff like that, doesn't require any major modifications or removing the engine, you know, bolts basics that in the aftermarket don't really exist for the boost source, you can't really do much and you won't get any significant power increase.

You could change the way the engine feels. You could change the power curve slightly with some paddles, but it's not really going to be a drastic change, but let's imagine you have a bigger appetite for naturally aspirated. To satisfy those appetites you will have to take the Brussels out of the car and disassemble it, but if you do that then you can increase the compression get some higher compression pistons or maybe some thinner head gaskets or maybe soften the heads a little. There are a lot of things you can do and higher compression will benefit boost, but be careful because some older engines are susceptible to detonation even in stock form, so be prepared with some knock monitoring you already know in case you do.

Whether you're playing with one of the older engines, most of the newer engines are pretty good with knock and don't have these issues out of the box and do have knock monitoring. you know, on the factory ecu, since the engine is off, you can try to make power by porting the headers and while you know there are gains to be made, the intake port and exhaust port shapes are honestly pretty good and the Cast parts are quite consistent, so you really won't create miracles and the portability will be really beneficial only if you decide to also add other more serious modifications.

Something that goes very well with portability are larger performance-oriented valves, especially on the intake side of the 24-valve. Engines that really benefit from larger valves, obviously this won't be cheap and will require special machining, but if you want some really serious, well-breathing naturally aspirated boost, this is usually a good idea if you decide to actually go for it. If you get serious about naturally aspirated tuning and get oversized valves, then you're going to have to get rid of a new bottleneck that just appears because you have a very well developed engine and that bottleneck is now your intake plenum, your throttle body, your intake pipes. and you're going to have to get a bigger one of all of these, obviously none of this is going to be cheap or if you're already spending all that money then you can go with an individual throttle body intake system and a custom ECU and we're talking of a small fortune, but it will create a really amazing naturally aspirated engine, really special, since you already have the engine and you are spending a fortune, why not also increase the engine size if you have a three liter engine?

As a starting point, you can increase it to a maximum size of 3.5 liters by getting custom liners and pistons. There are many different ways to solve this and different liner and piston combinations. Most of it won't be really cheap, but it can be done, there are also some DIY approaches to this, but you know? It will again take a significant amount of money if you start with a 3.2 liter engine and then you can increase it to a maximum size of 3.7 liters, such a large displacement combined with all. From the crazy things we did to the intake, valves and inside the head, you can create maybe around 300 to 350 horsepower, it will be an absolutely useless engine on the street, but if you take it to racing events, You will know it will absolutely scream and it will be something you will never forget, so when it comes to naturally aspirated your best bet is to increase the flow as much as possible and increase the displacement as much as possible to get maximum power because as we know, there is no replacement for displacement.

Wait, there is a replacement for displacement and it's called forced induction. Now there is bad news when it comes to turbos and superchargers for boost, so if you are waiting for a turbo or supercharger that you know, tried and tested, you know it is an affordable turbo or supercharger. kit, you can forget it, there's really no such thing for the buso and if you decide to turbocharge things yourself or supercharge them, you'll have to do a lot of DIY and a lot of fabrication. which depending on how you do things can again be very expensive but if you have DIY skills and don't have to outsource everything to someone then you can speed up a bus because you know a lot less money and generate more energy than you would otherwise. . naturally aspirated, with a lot more money, you know, invested in naturally aspirated.

Now, when it comes to bus and boost, you can add some boost to a bone naturally aspirated engine, but don't expect to be able to make more than an extra 50 or 60. horsepower safely because from the bottom end they are strong, the crankshaft is very strong and the blocks are stiffer than they would appear in an open deck design, the weakest thing is the connecting rods so if you want to make a big boost, you will have to replace them. the connecting rods and obviously also get forged aluminum pistons. The other option would be to start with an already turbocharged two-liter engine and then increase the boost and obviously this engine will be capableof taking more boost than a naturally aspirated engine, though, uh.

At the end of the day, the small displacement of the two-liter engines will be a limiting factor and ultimately leave less room for growth than some of the larger three-liter or 2.5-liter engines. In addition to this, two-liter engines. They are quite rare and also extremely difficult to find outside of Europe. Another thing that could be a problem when it comes to forced induction is that despite being a narrow angle v6 engine, the v6 booster is still a relatively large engine relative to compact cars in Which was discovered, although in theory a twin-turbo V6 booster could be made, space could be a real concern, especially on transversely mounted engines, and there you have it, the Buso V6, an engine with undeniable charm that feels and sounds like no other. and now it's time to end the video and we will end the video as always with some embarrassing rap this time in Italian of course.