Sunday, December 16, 2007
Random PRI stuff
A diesel with compound turbos. I've heard about these, but it was the first time I'd seen a compound turbo engine in person. You can get a lot of boost by feeding the discharge side of one turbo into the inlet on a second, smaller turbo - too much boost, in fact, for almost anything gasoline powered. But diesels can get away with it.
This is the mystery motor that's shown up in a few magazines. Ford's been making a big show of running this thing out at drag races and not saying what it is. All I could tell is that it's got overhead cams, a distributorless ignition, two injectors per cylinder, and it's really, really big and fast. Most of the speculation is that it's a future truck motor, which makes sense given its size. But it would be pretty cool in a Crown Vic, or maybe an Aussie Falcon. Whatever it is, I'm guessing it's meant for production vehicles and probably not meant to be race only. Not too many racing classes would let in a motor that's such a far departure from a production block, and if it were headed for something like LeMans Prototype I'd have expected it to have appeared there before anything else.
Garrett / Honeywell had a drag car on display fed by two massive turbos. The turbos on there make my GT4082 turbo look tiny.
I took this photo at the end of the show when everyone was packing up and going home. Somehow, I'd missed this Gasser-style coupe when it was on the showroom floor. But it sure looks pretty, even if it has to be pushed out on car skates.
Labels: PRI
