Comments on: Sesco Air and Oil Cooled Suzuki V8 Engines

By: Hank Nelson

Hank Nelson — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:34:22 +0000

The Suzuki V8 engine was originally designed to provide a cost-effective entry into open wheel midget powerplants. Ron Hoettle (sp) and Mel Kenyon teamed up to produce a complete racecar. Ron (Sesco Eng’g fame) designed and built the engine while Mel built the rolling chassis. I bought Mel’s famous Suzuki V8 racecar back in ‘87 and took it apart enough times to know how it works. The crankshaft, a beautiful affair, was carved from billet by Scat. I had spare cranks still in the box! The center of the crank had a gear hobbed into it. The crank gear meshed with another gear set into the block which rode on roller bearings. This gear was an assembly of 2 gears side by side; one meshed with the crank and the other provided the cam chain drive. Now if you look at the photo of the engine you’ll notice that both heads point towards each other. That would mean one would have to run backwards, right? Well, Ron had another gear to run the opposite bank’s cam chain. Reverse rotation of the cam drive chain was accomplished by having the first cam gear mesh with the second gear! Voila; reverse rotation. The crank allowed the 2 outer pistons and the 2 inner pistons to rise and fall with each other. The crank drove a Gilmer belt that spun a V8 Vertex mag. The block was cast aluminum and used 6 steel main bearing caps; one on each side of the center gear. I sold the car to a collector in Australia and sold the spare engines and parts to a motorcycle machine shop in the central US. BTW: I routinely spun the engine to 14,000! With no dampener or flywheel, she was snappy! Soft on torque but very long legs!

By: guitargeek

guitargeek — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:56:52 +0000

That’s a lovely thing up there, and it’s great to hear you’re going to finally do an article for Allen Millyard! Hey, how about the Drysdale V8 750, whatever happened to those?

By: aaron

aaron — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:35:57 +0000

Canzvt, here’s a few links to the rst-v8
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?f=57&t=160108
http://www.sevenbuilder.com/id/83/v8-caterham-rst-v8-in-a-seven/
http://www.evo.co.uk/carreviews/evocarreviews/49734/caterham.html

By: daddyc479

daddyc479 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:42:37 +0000

I spoke with Greg today he is a true credit to this hobby/sport, I will be sell some stuff to get one of the v4’s it is a work of beautiful engineering.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:57:36 +0000

any idea what kind of power this thing makes?