UKC

Was at a Maclaren car dealership yesterday and they had one of there old F1 cars as a display. The info next to it said the engine was a 2.3ltr which produced just shy of 800BHP. Even my noob understanding of engines had me impressed... 800BHP from 2.3ltr engine.

Thinking about it this morning and my company car has a 3ltr engine and appears to produce 310 BHP.

So.....

Side by side my engine is 30% BIGGER yet produces about 275% LESS power.

Can a mechanically minded person explain this?

BTW my car is a diesel and I assume the F1 car a petrol.

In reply to Indy:

Company car @ 310bhp!! Lol

In reply to faffergotgunz:

Beemer, innit

In reply to BnB:


740d

In reply to Indy:
It's about tolerances. That Maclaren engine is designed to run at 15,000 revs for about 12 hours before something breaks off at unimaginable velocity and shatters the block. Your 740d is designed to go for 100,000 miles before a quick timing belt change and then 100,000 more before things start to wear decisively.

Slight simplification but you get the gist.

In reply to Indy:
https://www.quora.com/How-are-BHP-torque-and-engine-volume-interrelated-in-...

In reply to Indy:

Power is (essentially) a function of how much force you generate per cycle and the number of cycles per second (rpm).

The redline on an F1 car is probably somewhere around 15k rpm. On your car is is probably around 5k rpm. Effectively, the F1 engine is around twice the size of yours.

In reply to Indy:

magic of turbochargers... there was an era where F1 cars were using silly boost pressures.

that sort of power is not exclusive to F1. top spec rallycross cars are 2.0L and chuck out 600BHP plus... and that’s with an air restrictor.

Basically you can fit more air/fuel into the cylinder if you force the mix in under pressure (Forced induction) than just the vacuum effect of the piston (naturally aspirated). Many road cars have turbos but they run at relatively low pressure to provide better reliability and fuel economy

More fuel/air mic in the cylinder and you get a bigger explosion. Which means more power

In reply to BnB:

Thanks.
So there's nothing intrinsical different between the engines its just a power/reliability thing?

In reply to Indy:

Not jus an engine innit.

Engin + turbo + heat energy recovry + brake energy recovry + batterys 2 store xtra energy.

In reply to faffergotgunz:


300 of those BHP's are needed to just get the 2.2 tons moving.

In reply to Indy:

Better materials, optimized geometry and shorter service life allow the the F1 engine to rev to 15,000+ rpm, probably more like 20k, yours to 5,000 ish. Your engine and the F1 engine produce broadly similar peak torque but at radically different engine speeds actually yours probably produces much more torque but at about 2000 rpm, the F1 motor's torque curve probably peaks somewhere past 12,000 rpm

Power = Torque * Angular velocity

There's more than one way to skin a cat and there's more to the suitability of an engine than it's pk power figure.
jk

In reply to paul_the_northerner:





I suspect this is a 2.3l v8 era car rather than turbo.

Reportedly they are now close to 950bhp on a 1.6l v6 hybrid turbo... Astonishing performance (and they have to last 4 race weekends now

In reply to Indy:

There’s a lot of differences. Different materials, manufacturing tolerances, different ways of putting fuel in the engine and so on. Compression ratio could also be HUGE in a race engine. But the fundamental operation of the engine is the same as a road car, google 4 stroke engine 

In reply to Indy:


There's just about everything different at a detail level.
jk

In reply to paul_the_northerner:

No turbo/super charger. Engines have been naturally aspirated since 1987 I believe until 2014?

In reply to Indy:

Wow, quite the barge. At least there should be plenty of room to kip in it in the north face car park.

In reply to jkarran:

was trying to understand where the extra power comes from as a ltr of fuel has only so much power in it.

In reply to Indy:


It probably uses a lot more fuel than your car too.

In reply to Indy:

F1 fuel will be considerably higher octane than the pump gas you use, and the F1 engine will have a considerably worse MPG than even your 2.2 ton(!) barge, so there is your extra power I'd guess

EDIT modern F1 car will get about 2.5 mpg, the older ones were considerably worse!

In reply to Indy:


Have I answered your question?

Both engines operate with broadly similar chemical to mechanical energy conversion efficiency, your diesel is probably better in this respect as it'll be turbocharged.
jk

In reply to Dandan:

Octane rating has nothing to do with energy density. It relates to the fuel-air mixture's propensity to ignite and or detonate when compressed adiabatically.

F1 cars achieve very poor mpg due to the high drag devices used to generate downforce combined with the high average road speed.
jk

In reply to bigbobbyking:


Just looked on google and the figures I'm getting for an F1 car are between 3 and 4 MPG.

So all is not as equal as it appears at first glance.

In reply to Indy:

Noise is a big factor too. One of the biggest restrictions on the amount of fuel a road car can move through the engine is the back pressure created by the restrictive exhaust systems needed to keep the noise within legal limits.

Race cars, not having this restriction are noisy buggers.

In reply to Indy:



Unless my maths is wrong - which wouldn't be a first - your car produces about 61% less power. Or are you factoring in something else?

In reply to Indy:

More of a random fact than an explanation, but I understand that F1 engines are effectively seized when cold, and that having warm oil pumped into them (and possibly heat applied in other ways) is required to get them to move freely.

In reply to Fraser:


It's a BMW isn't it? The extra power required to stay nose-to-tail with the car in front? Though of course he should make some minor savings from the lack of indicators...

In reply to Indy:


If the engine revolves 10 times as fast as yours, it will suck in and burn much more fuel per second than yours will, and generate much more power as a result. Yours will probably tick along at maybe 2000 to 3000 revs per minute whereas the one you saw will do several times that from the sound of it.

In reply to Indy:
What I'm getting from this thread is that you have a car that delivers 310bhp. If this was a storyline in one of my daughter's Peppa Pig videos the Year 2 class would be very impressed and in unison go "Ooohh!"

In reply to john arran:

Are you proclaiming it is a back door brag? Like when people post stuff like "Does anyone know the best place to park in Cambridge, because we're dropping our daughter off at university to study medicine tomorrow"

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

Does anyone know of a good way to dispose of an Arc'teryx hoodie in last year's colours that's now surplus to requirements?

In reply to john arran:

I get this from most of Indy's posts!

youtube.com/watch?v=U8Kum8OUTuk&

In reply to jkarran:



I guess that is why they call them 'spoilers' . Much loved by boy racers .

In reply to Fraser:

You've just done your percentages the other way round:
310 = 39% (100-61) of 800

800 = 275% of 310

I make it 38.75% and 258% for each way round.