3.9L V12, over 150 hp/L, over 12k RPM, Shell 0W-40

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d00df00d

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Gordon Murray Automotive T50. The successor to the McLaren F1, by its original designer, designed from a clean sheet with no corporate constraints.

Engine is an all-new clean-sheet V12 from Cosworth: 3.9L, naturally aspirated. Over 600 hp, which means over 150 hp/L -- again, no turbo or supercharger. Redline is over 12,000 RPM, and it can get there from idle in 0.3 sec. For reference, that's well over twice as quick as the 4.8L V10 in the Lexus LFA, which needed a digital tach because an analog one couldn't keep up.

Here, someone from Cosworth says the engine uses some off-the-shelf Shell 0W-40. Must be Helix Ultra, yeah?

 
I want to see that engine in a suitable vehicle in a pull off with a CTD equipped Ram. 12000 rpm versus 2500 rpm.
 
Motorcycles have been making that kind of power per liter and turning 16,000+ rpms in street bikes for years and living on standard oils. No reason you can't scale that to a V12 and make it live pretty easily. Especially with computer controls and all of that. My old ZX6 was carbed and I beat the snot out of it on a regular basis. Sold it with 60k on it still running like new.

Won't matter anyway. Those cars will all be bought by collectors or speculators and never get driven.
 
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ctechbob said:
Motorcycles have been making that kind of power per liter and turning 16,000+ rpms in street bikes for years and living on standard oils. No reason you can't scale that to a V12 and make it live pretty easily.
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Fair point -- but there must be SOME reasons, or else someone somewhere would have done it at least once, no?

This is the highest redline in a production car engine ever, and one of the highest specific outputs period, let alone naturally aspirated. Second highest redline is ~11k, and that literally is a motorcycle engine transplanted into a car (Light Car Company Rocket). There are a couple more 11k RPM cars coming out (Valkyrie, Project One). Everything else that currently exists is under 10k. If all they had to do was scale up a bike engine, it'd be hard to explain why this is the world we're living in.
 
d00df00d said:
Fair point -- but there must be SOME reasons, or else someone somewhere would have done it at least once, no?

This is the highest redline in a production car engine ever, and one of the highest specific outputs period, let alone naturally aspirated. Second highest redline is ~11k, and that literally is a motorcycle engine transplanted into a car (Light Car Company Rocket). There are a couple more 11k RPM cars coming out (Valkyrie, Project One). Everything else that currently exists is under 10k. If all they had to do was scale up a bike engine, it'd be hard to explain why this is the world we're living in.
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Mainly because that's not the type of engine most people would enjoy in a car. (Even supercar owners) They don't feel 'fast' unless you're hammering on them constantly. There's no place to do that but on a racetrack, and outside of a small percentage, most supercar owners don't track their cars.

Only have to look as far as the first-generation Honda S2K. Endless complaints about no torque. Next-generation had a torquier, slower spinning motor.
 
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ctechbob said:
Mainly because that's not the type of engine most people would enjoy in a car. (Even supercar owners) They don't feel 'fast' unless you're hammering on them constantly. There's no place to do that but on a racetrack, and outside of a small percentage, most supercar owners don't track their cars.

Only have to look as far as the first-generation Honda S2K. Endless complaints about no torque. Next-generation had a torquier, slower spinning motor.
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That's kind of the point though. This is a fundamentally different kind of engine because the design criteria are different, so the bike engine analogy doesn't work the way it seems like it should.
 
d00df00d said:
Fair point -- but there must be SOME reasons, or else someone somewhere would have done it at least once, no?

This is the highest redline in a production car engine ever, and one of the highest specific outputs period, let alone naturally aspirated. Second highest redline is ~11k, and that literally is a motorcycle engine transplanted into a car (Light Car Company Rocket). There are a couple more 11k RPM cars coming out (Valkyrie, Project One). Everything else that currently exists is under 10k. If all they had to do was scale up a bike engine, it'd be hard to explain why this is the world we're living in.
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I think we were coming up against engine controller limitations. Controlling 4 cylinders at 12k rpm is one thing, controlling 3x the amount of cylinders while going from idle to redline in 0.3s is something else entirely. That’s a LOT of data to be moved around and processed.

From what I can find, the engine makes a peak 654HP at 11,500rpm and 344lb ft of torque at 9,000rpm, though they say it makes “at least” 245lb ft starting at 2,500rpm.
 
Skippy722 said:
I think we were coming up against engine controller limitations. Controlling 4 cylinders at 12k rpm is one thing, controlling 3x the amount of cylinders while going from idle to redline in 0.3s is something else entirely. That’s a LOT of data to be moved around and processed.
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Very true.

They may be using multiple ECUs (e.g. one per bank). I know that's been a thing for a while.
 
I will grant you, this is a motorsports ECU, but those cars can be insanely complicated.


Low pressure injection
  • Max. 12 cylinders up to 16,000 rpm, high impedance injectors only

The MS 7.4 engine control unit manages gasoline engines up to 12 cylinders. The MS 7 line features a powerful digital processing core with floating point arithmetic and a high-end FPGA for ultimate performance and flexibility.

17 function related inputs
21 internal measurements
10 digital inputs
8 analog/digital inputs (shared)
42 function related outputs
15 freely configurable outputs

All that from a dual-core 1ghz FPGA. Processing power isn't the issue here.

Not sure who Cosworth is using for the ECU, but I'm sure it will be one of the big players.

1 GHZ = 1 Billion cycles per second.

12,000 RPM = 200 Revs per second. I'm sure modern processors can handle that with time to spare.
 
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