ShopTalk Forums | Aircooled VW Tech & Restoration Help

Wesayso wrote:

Wally wrote:Ray is right, but VW only aquired Lambo a few years ago. The latest two new models are all developed under VW supervision. VW is now also owner of Bently and BMW owns Rolls Royce...

Don't forget to mention Bugatti

.. and Seat, and Skoda ..

Yep, though GM claims to be the largest car mfg company in the world, I believe that is only in one or two characteristics. I think I read somewhere that VW/Audi group is actually the largest car mfg comglomerate in the world for some time now. Ray

kelwa1 wrote:........That's why all your M/C manufacturers have all gone 4-stroke except for their high end MX racers, and even then just about everybody out there now is going to 4-stroke technology. .........

Yea, emissions is why 2-stroke has gone by the wayside.

I couldn't find the company thqt makes rotary valve heads for the small block Chebbie, but I KNOW it has been done.


Don

[quote="dstar
Yea, emissions is why 2-stroke has gone by the wayside.
Don[/quote]

Isn't this a pie-in-the-sky exercise? If we're going to start cutting off design options due to current development & environmental practices, then you have to eliminate the T4 crank premise as well. Aircooled engines have fallen out of favor due to noise and emissions issues as well. Even H-D has gone to water.

So while I'm still dreaming, I'm also thinking of a lowered & chopped microbus sporting a mid-engine LS-1 on a Corvette chassis with a central driving position like the McLaren F1.

Actually....no...emmissions had little or nothing to do with the move to watercooled from airdooled. An aircooled engine with a catylyst works just as cleanly as a watercooeld one, and we already know how well the aircooled responds responds to the better effiicencies of injection.

The main things that doomed the aircooled are:
(1) cost. The aircooled engine is easily 6070% more expensive than a waterpumper due to materials, machining, #of parts vendors, QC etc. Actually the watercooled configuration of the aircooled engine ....the wtaerboxer...was even more complex and expensive. So part of that equation is the configuration.
(2) Noise. By 1975, the VW beetle was in violation of most major noise ordinances in a lot of Eurpopean cities.
(3) Further development costs. To get the kind of HP needed for increasing needs...along with reliability.....vw would have had to spend many times the money...for less return, then it did on the water cooled line.
(4) VW already has emmissions that surpassed many catalyst cars...even without catylysts, when they slaved the FI to their engines. That was good through about 75/76. Adding catylysts and EGR was no problem.

But..emmissions is why two strokes have fallen out of favor. But...not all two strokes have to run oil injection or oil in gas. The othe rproblem with two strokes is incomplete combustion...which could be solved by some of the combustion catylysts being experimented with now....and NOX. Its just that there has not been much devlopment of two strokes lately. Ray

Actually Ray, the personal watercraft industry still uses state-of-the-art two stroke technology. look at all your jet-skis out there and your outboards, until 2 or 3 years ago, 100% of the market was 2 stroke,,,, now Honda, Yamaha, and a few others have stepped up to the plate and made some 4-bangers, Honda even has a TURBO four stroke personal watercraft, I think it's about 1200 to 1500cc.

Anyway, 95% of the new watertoys out there are still 2-stroke with cleaner emissions than many 4-strokes. Go figure.