02.23.16 - Dan Gurney
Automotive Social Technology Fewer Cylinders Make Great Power

Fewer Cylinders Make Great Power

02.23.16 - Dan Gurney

Dan Gurney has been a racing legend, an engine design phenom and even was a spoof to be elected president by the team at Car and Driver back in 1964. You might think at the tender age of 84 he might choose to retire with all the accolades and notoriety that he has in his life, but he decided to make another contribution to the automotive world with a new engine design that is made to be right for anything from a motorcycle to a helicopter and make use of fewer cylinders to get great power from the build.

The engine is called the MC4S and is made to offer a roll cancelling feature when a car corners. Although most car engines only roll a little bit in corners this particular engine will cancel it out which is great for motorcycles but might not be as much of a boon for cars because their engines only roll a little as they are. You can see how a motorcycle your helicopter would benefit because these vehicles have to roll a great deal in order to corner well or turn sharply which means there certainly is an application for this engine on the market.

Would it make its way to the four wheeled vehicle world? Actually it just might because it could be applied to engines that are four, six and eight cylinders in size. What this engine has is a large 5.0-ich bore for each piston and an extremely short 2.8-inch stroke. This helps to increase the durability of the parts which is also aided by limiting the piston speed to 4200 feet per minute and 9000 rpm. Because of this setup, the MC4S is an engine that can be fantastic for added reliability which is a major concern for automakers.

Another fantastic feature of this particular build is the power you can pull from it. For this two-cylinder build the simulation test predicted a full 250 horsepower that can be had on this engine. This means we will be able to have massive horsepower from engines that are larger than this one, or have a two-cylinder build put into your typical daily driver and have the most horsepower on the road for this type of car. The predictions show that it’s a powerfully built engine and Gurney states it could make as much as 262 horsepower from a specialized head or as little as 189 when a conventional head is being used.

Are there more questions to be answered? Absolutely, we need to learn what this engine can produce for fuel mileage and what transmissions will work for this build. While there are many questions to be answered, you can imagine your commuter vehicle coming to you from the factory with only two cylinders under the hood but with more power than you ever have had on these cars. This engine may be the one that puts our V8 engines over the top with more than 1,000 horsepower for the excitement it can bring. Let’s get these questions answered and see exactly what it can do for the automobile world.

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