As mentioned in the progress report on Russell Sutton’s 9 cylinder radial engine, he’s already begun work on his next project. This one’s going to be a real beauty, a 14 cylinder radial in two rows of 7 cylinders each. The top ends for each cylinder will be from a Yamaha XV1700 Warrior. The complete engine will displace 11.7 liters, 835cc per cylinder.
We’ve seen some other engine projects that began as nothing more than an idea, Aniket’s Musket V-Twin and Allen Millyard’s big 5 liter “Flying Millyard,†and both required new engine cases to be designed and cast at the start. This engine starts in the same place and Russell, working with Ian Drysdale, drew up the cases in CAD and patterns were made which have been sent off to the foundry.
Here’s Russell:
There are two patterns and three castings. The case OD is 500 mm’s at deck height and the weight will be 90 kgs when cast. It will be done in A357, a 6000 series aluminum which will be tempered to T6. This will be strong with reasonable machining properties.
The engine will be supercharged with a Vortech centrifugal V3 SCi which is designed to have the throttle body upstream of the supercharger intake rather than inline before the plenum.
Compression will be reduced from 8.3:1 to 7:1 and 10 lbs of boost will be applied to keep the compression pressures no higher than 12:1.This will ensure that standard auto pump fuel can be used.
This boost should put the engine into the 500 plus HP range at 2500 Rpm with stomping amounts of torque. Careful design of the cam ring profiles will help to achieve this using Chevy roller lifters.
Both cylinders will be used from the XV Yamaha engine with the front cylinder being the front row and the rear cylinder being turned around to face the back of the engine. This allows the header pipes the come out of the cylinders in the same direction (i.e. to the left as viewed from the rear of the engine) and then be curled up and over the heads to join a single ring pipe over the center of the engine. This will keep the header pipes the same length.
The supercharging is necessary to make good power given the very low state of tune the XV twins have and to balance up air flow into the engine with the intake pipes being very different lengths and shapes front row to rear row.
The engine will have an ECU for fuel and spark. Not sure if an ECU even exists to do this.
Is this sinking in? Russell is building a supercharged, 2 row, 14 cylinder radial engine using 14 top ends from a Yamaha V-Twin, casting the cases, fabricating an enormous number of custom parts and expecting to make 500 horsepower or so, and doing this all in his less than luxurious garage.
Russell has promised to keep us updated, so take a good look at theses photos and remember how it all started. It will be a great reference when 14 cylinders are all firing and making those glorious radial sounds.
JP Kalishek says
ahem. excuse me a moment.
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*swoon*
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You may continue
Paulinator says
Stunning. I hope he bolts that beast onto a scale replica of a WWII fighter .
Scotduke says
Couldn’t agree more – it’d look great hung on the front of an airframe. But which WWII fighter to replicate? There are plenty of radial engined fighters to choose from such as: F4 Wildcat, F6 Hellcat, Vought Corsair, P47, A6 Mitsubishi, FW190.
Lost Boy says
I know NOTHING about this subject, but I feel like this engine may tear a WWII airframe apart.
Gildas says
Err, 500 hp is probably what the big WW2 radials did to simply idle!
Scotduke says
The big radials used in aircraft like the Corsair or P47 or the British Hawker Tempest produced up to 2200hp. Later radials got 3500hp with turbocharging, but they weren’t so reliable.
A 4/5 scale P47 with 500hp would offer a good power to weight ratio, not as hot as a real warbird but still good for 300mph or more most likely.
Lost Boy says
Ok. Good to know. I don’t understand why pump gas is the preferred fuel. If this is an aircraft application (which I’m not sure that it is, I think we’re guilty of making it so) why doesn’t he push for more power and a different fuel?
ThisOneGoesToEleven says
OMG! Massive respect due here- looking forward to progress reports and final result.
Wave says
This is absolutely fantastic!
deez says
wow
holy moly
and
wow
Gildas says
For my thesis project, i will have to have to cast some approx 10 cm diameter Al parts.
I can’t do rapid protos or fiber because of 20 000 Rpms and water…
But the problem it that in my UNI, wood in all its forms is banned from the machine workshop.
We can only use metals or plastics in the mills/lathes…
What would be a good wood substitute for pattern making?
Thanks.
CS says
A good wood substitute might be PVC since you can sand and carve it easily. Gluing it to itself is as easy as using PVC cement and some C-Clamps.
Just don’t let it get hot.
russell sutton says
There’s a few of you here including me,that like the idea of this engine going into a replica or scale modell WW2 fighter, and that is very nice.
Sadly I will have to tell you about the grim realities. The XV engine top ends are really good for making a radial except for one thing. Weight. The xv is a cruiser engine and bigger and more macho it looks the better.So the radial gets 500lbs of heads and barrels plonked onto its crankcase.And the finished engine will be in the 1000 to 1200 lb range probably.
The next problem is Hp. The XV makes 84Hp at 4400rpm.(tuned for torque)When my engine is flat out at 2500 rpm at full throttle these cylinders will be making 25 Hp each if I’m lucky. 350Hp from a 714cu in engine weighing over a thousand lbs is pretty dismal. Hence the desperate need to supercharge it.
This engine is a radial to be sure but it is not an aero engine.
Even supercharged it will propbably not exceed 0.5hp/lb
If it makes 500Hp and a useful 1000ftlbs of torque, that will turn a pretty hungry direct drive prop
The only reason it will be so much fun making this engine is because there’s really no good reason to be doing it! Just like the nine.
Just love radials. Thanks to all for the remarks.
Paul Crowe says
That’s one of the best reasons of all, especially because there are so many people who don’t understand.
Lost Boy says
My question has been answered, actually squished, ” If this is an aircraft application (which I’m not sure that it is, I think we’re guilty of making it so) why doesn’t he push for more power and a different fuel?”
russell sutton says
Why not go for more power?
I will firstly mention the internals. Remember that the crank and rods will be made for for this engine using billet material. This puts limits on how much power these parts can take. They do not benifit from the sophisticated OEM manufacturing pocesses.
Based on the XV’s output you could say that the radial would make 588Hp at 4400 Rpm naturally aspirated. And 700ftlbs torque but I will come to that.
This is to fast to turn a direct drive prop. So engine speed has to be in the 2000 to 2500 rpm range. And as I have said there is not a lot of Hp locked up in an XV 835cc cylinder at these engine speeds
To get some decent power from this great lump of engine it has to get some huff and puff as mentioned. But this boost has to be set to a value that keeps the engine in one peice. So 10lbs is what I am thinking to acheive this on pump gas. I do not have any thoughts of running it on more potent fuel brews that could damage the engine.
Torque is what we are after when it comes to turning big things slowly.
Lets say I could get 400Hp at 2000rpm. Thats 1054 ftlbs of torque. But I can get
500Hp at 2500rpm is 1054ftlbs torque and
600Hp at 3000rpm is 1054ftlbs torque
It is very easy to make Hp with rpm when you have so many cylinders.
The displacement is what makes the difference with the torque. More the better
So given that my radial has a very small diplacement for a fouteen cylinder engine,
you can see that I have to be realistic and build an engine that will stay together firstly produce 500Hp or more hopefully, to have some fun with in the rpm range necessary. The final ouput really depends on how much Hp the XV cylinders make on the bike at 2500 rpm to begin with. Someone may know of an engine gragh or dyno test on a standard engine
The engine should look good, The heads do look nice as mentioned be WOL and the big tubes should really set it off. And the sound……..
Russell Sutton says
What I should have said about the displacement is that it is small compared to an aero engine.
But 700 cubes is pretty healthy for an engine using automotive parts.
It’s the weight that lets the side down. But I do think I over estimated the weight in my previous notes and I would dare to say up to 900lbs.
This will make the power to weight ratio a little better. 055Hp/lb.
Not something one can get excitied about. But the engine still has to be built to be reliable so the weight has to take a back seat.
And I think that a 1000ft/lbs plus of torque ( which is really what we are chasing here) to turn a good size prop is pretty good.
Shepherd says
Agreed, If you have to explain the reason why you created this beauty, then they will never understand anyway. Awesome project.
tom says
well done. you did the right thing getting Ian Drysdale to design this motor and make the crankcases, he is very good. assume he will be making the crank as well. good move. my advice to you would have been to use Harley twin cam top ends as they are far more plentiful .
WOL says
As the owner of an MT01 (which has a mildly tuned version of the warrior engine) it makes me quiver to think of 7 of these engines bolted to the one crank and then supercharging it.
It will look fantastic because the heads are a nice piece of kit.
Keep up the good work…..
Tom Mason says
I don’t think he’s worried about power . Just the sound and impressing his mates.