Saab Bites the dust

Yeah, it is, if you really like engines. I think that Bottle's link, combined with the history of engine design before we had much computer analysis, wraps up the subject pretty well.

If you want to see some of the different angles that are taken on the design side today, the SAE site has literally hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of papers concerning engine balance. You can only read the abstracts without buying them but even they provide a lot of information you won't find elsewhere.

Actually I've had BB's link open for a week and occasionally read another

6-10 pages. Very well written to the point of over making the point but I like that it includes the mathematical model.

Naaah, this one is quite sufficient. Maybe my threshold of vibration is lower but I don't find any production engine "unbalanced" or objectionable. As I said, I disconnected the counterbalance shaft on our old Volvo. I also drove V8's with high lift and long duration cams on a daily basis. Personally I think people want too much, if they want to ride on a couch take the train... Motor vehicles should be finicky, gives'm personality.

Then you would have loved my AC Aceca. Bristol engines were God's gift to people who like finicky engines.

At least the Saab 9-2x owners can still get parts and service at your friendly local Subaru dealer.

Talk about cynical ideas, a Saab badged Impreza Outback Sport!

David

FWIW;

The Saab V4 I had, (AKA Ford Taunus), had a balance shaft and was quite smooth running. The balance shaft stuck through the front timing cover and was what drove the fan, alternator and water pump. The crank did not extend through the cover at all, and the pulleys were approx 1:1 in size as I recall. When I ran my first SCCA race in my '67 E Jaguar, there was a fellow with a fairly well modified V4 Saab Sonnet. Said he shifted it at 8500 rpm. Not bad for a pushrod motor in 1980 that did not have the benefit of a lot of aftermarket parts. Also I happen to have a 1990 5 cylinder Audi 200 Turbo Quattro. The only clue that it's a 5 cyl. from inside is the exhaust note, which is more horse than a 6 cyl. Vibration in the car is nil, partly because the balance Audi struck is a good compromise, it's only 2.2L, and partly the liquid filled motor mounts. This car is at 247K miles now, was chipped to run 15psig boost at 100K miles and still uses very little oil...just made a 6k round trip to Colorado, (mostly under 100 mph), and still at the full line. Amazing engine durability, of course fresh Mobil 1 every 7k miles helps a lot.

My E type racecar has 4.2L six that is very smooth up to about 5500 RPM, beyond that it get a little rougher, (I have solid motor mounts on the race car). The seven main crank which weighs about 75 lbs. on this engine, is typically fitted with a larger damper and a very light flywheel for racing. With the lighter flywheel, Carrilo rods, and bigger damper the crank survives 7500 rpm without too much trouble. With a 4.125 stroke I guess a I should be happy the vibration at 7500 is not worse than it is..

Wow. My '58 Alfa Romeo, only 1300 cc., hit 4,000 fpm piston speed at only

8200 rpm. That was considered the limit for a racing motor in those days but of course they go higher now. Still, 8500 on the V4 is pretty impressive.

Again, that's some rpm. I was reading an account of Jaguar at LeMans in the '50s a few years ago, and I remember that the redline on the LeMans D-types, in '55, was 6,000. That worked out to exactly 200 mph, which, said Jaguar's engineer/driver, it would just touch at the end of the Mulsanne Straight (there was no Ford Chicane in those days).

Maybe you know -- I can't recall -- but the '55s might not even have been

3.8L. They might have been 3.4s.

Anyway, at 7,500 with a 4.125 in. stroke, you're running at over 5,100 fpm piston speed. Things have improved a lot. I don't think I could have kept the rings in the pistons at that speed, in 1966. That was a Tom O'Brian motor, BTW, first-class stuff.

Yeah, I think the '55's were 3.4L. I don't have much trouble with the rings, I use gapless rings that are quite a bit narrower than stock and the pistons are gas ported on the top ring. The 13:1 pistons are set up a bit loose in the bore, rattle a little when cold, but once warmed up they are quiet. Love to know what the car would do on a long straight with taller gears. The 3:54 gears in the car give about

170 mph @ 7200 with the tires I run. I though about destroking once to allow higher revs, but have been talked out of it as giving away too much displacement. In any case I knew one fellow running a 4.2L stroked to 5.0L which required among other things a 5 inch stroke..he only rev'ed it to 6800 though. Only reason I guess you can get away with this is the 7.125" long rod centers in Jag engines keeps the piston acceleration down. For survival at high RPM the cranks in these old engines have to be nitrided, have very straight crankpin and main journals, spot on bearing clearance and a decent dry sump system. The exhaust note on this car from the side pipes is really nice at 7500, (good if sound control is on the infield side of the track:)

I'll bet it sounds great. You must be getting some serious horsepower. When you mentioned 170 mph, I recalled that was the speed at which the D-types tended to go weightless in the rear, which was the inspiration for the vertical fin on the long-wheelbase model. I suppose you have some kind of spoiler to keep the rear on the ground?

Also, you're talking about a '67 E-type and it sounds like you were racing in the '80s. I remember a '67 that raced at Lime Rock Park sometime in the mid-'80s. IIRC, the guy had blond hair. The car was red or maroon. (I was a SCCA tech inspector in those days.)

Was that you, by any chance?

I ran at Lime Rock in the '80s but I don't have blond hair, the car is a red roadster though. There were a few others running E's at the time. I remember a black coupe at the Runoff's once. Eventually the 6 cylinder E type got moved into GT2 and was allowed a rear spoiler which seemed to make the car seem more stable under high speed braking at tracks with long straights like Summit Point. I ran nationals and did the runoff's at Mid Ohio couple of times in the late 90's in GT2. Mid Ohio is a wonderful track, perhaps second only to Bridgehampton, (I ran the last race at Bridgehampton before it closed).. Since then the car has been used a few times for local stuff, but other projects and dive trips have soaked up the time and money to run it in GT2. Tires at about $450 a corner, and race fuel up to $9 a gallon, $3 a gallon towing fuel kinda runs up the cost of a weekend. Amazing fun though..

Ok, I'll bet that was you, then. I only remember one red '67 E-type roadster that raced there at that time. I probably just misremember your head.

If that was you, I think I inspected your car once. I also inspected for CART, at the Meadowlands GP. Were you in the North Jersey SCCA chapter? Do you remember Bob Connell (ITC Fiesta)? After he T-boned an RX-7 with his first Fiesta (yellow, I think), I sold him one of my chassis and he raced that. It was red, if he didn't re-paint it. I also gave him an engine. You needed spare heads if you were going to race a Fiesta. They cracked. The US versions (it was basically a 125 New Kent) were very thin to meet US emissions standards.

The accounts of the LeMans D-type drivers, of having the rear end float around at the end of the Mulsanne Straight, at close to 200 mph, made me realize those drivers were made of some very unusual stuff.

I never got to Mid-Ohio. I did my novice races and a regional at Lime Rock (MG Midget 1275) and weekend races at an airport track in Michigan. I can't even remember where it was -- Walled Lake? -- until it got too expensive for me. That was 1969 - 1972.

But I do remember Bridgehampton, where I watched several races in the mid-'60s. I got to shake hands with Briggs Cunningham there. 'Never raced there, though.

.Tires at about $450 a corner, and race fuel up to $9 a gallon, $3 a

Ouch! I paid $2,365 for my Midget -- new. I put another $600 or so into a roll bar and harness, 1-1/4" SUs, a Racer Brown 3/4 cam, and a set of Goodyear Blue Streak Sports Car Specials. That was GP then. My rain tires were the Pirelli Cinturatos I used to drive the car to school and work. The Blue Streaks went into a big plastic bag between races, and they wore like iron. They sometimes cornered like they were made of iron, too.

You may not remember this, because things had changed substantially by the '80s, but that produced a fairly competitive car in '69. Two years later things changed suddenly in weekend racing. A new young crowd, many of them engineering students and engineers, came in with $5,000 engines and blew the rest of us away. I couldn't keep up with a 130 hp Midget. I had maybe 105 -

110 hp, guessing from performance.

In the early '80s I tried to re-start on the cheap, with an ITC Fiesta, but I was a diabetic by then and the regional medical doc, in Philadelphia, didn't want diabetics on the track. SCCA national tried to support me and encouraged me to appeal, but that, too, was getting expensive. And my wife wanted to have a baby. Everything combined to make me give it up. So I took up tech inspecting and had my fun vicariously.

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I was in Phila Region... funny you mentioned the Ford Fiestas. I had a first gen Fiesta not long after the Saab. Another car that was more than the sum of its parts, they ran a lot better than you would think a little pushrod four would. I think at the time they were a little quicker in stock form than the VW rabbit or any of the other small FWD cars.

When they ran as production sedans, before there was an Improved Touring class, they gave the Rabbits fits. Their only problem was tiny wheels and brakes -- they didn't stop. But they were able to use bigger wheels and brakes in ITC. I made those changes to my first Fiesta, and it was better that way as a road car, too. (ITC rules also allowed the use of a then-popular Weber downdraft carb, which I also had on my road car. It made for a very fast Fiesta -- until you had to go through emission testing.)

I liked the New Kent engines and knew them somewhat, from the time I worked on a 115E Kent in a Morgan 4/4. That engine would rev, and it had, or could fit, pretty big valves. It was a brilliant design, right from the original

105E -- the English equivalent of the Chevy Small Block, in terms of its racing versatility.

My old college roommate has a Lotus 7 Mk IV, one of the 50 that were brought into the US through Canada, gray market (it's now in Tyler, TX). On my (mistaken) recommendation, he had a Pinto version of the 125E engine put into it, instead of the Twin Cam that was recommended. I'd worked on a Lotus Twin Cam owned by another friend and figured he'd be in trouble without a mechanic around who knew the engine. Any Ford dealer would be able to service the Pinto. But the Pinto had radically different electrics and he had to re-wire most of the car.

I took a couple of laps at Lime Rock Park in a Lotus FF with the 115E Kent engine. In an open-wheeler, it felt like a real race engine -- crisp and responsive.