Mercedes V10 F1 Engine - Picture Thread

[Hoffman900]

i think the late F1 V10 / V8 were from a mechanical point of view the most advanced and extreme piston engines ever made .

Extreme in what regard?

Drag race engines, while typically using archaic rule platforms are pretty insane, with piston speeds exceeding anything ever seen in F1 and flexing everything. Granted, short run times help with that, but again, they push it to the extreme.

Advanced? Modern sportbike engines have a lot of F1 DNA from that era. MotoGP engines, being still NA and pretty open rules are the ultimate NA powered race engines.

The grooves between the piston crown and top ring land were "detonation grooves". The idea is the little ribs would induce area change and break up the pressure wave before it hit the top ring land. You only see them now on Wiseco pistons that aren't updated designs. You do typically see an anti-detonation groove between the 1st and 2nd ring land, but on NA engines, the rings are packed so tight, there really isn't room for that stuff, especially when you factor in lateral gas ports on the top ring land.

Here is one with the groove between the 1st and 2nd ring land:

[63l8qrrfy6]

First off, thanks for posting these amazing photos. It's incredible to see all of the details captured so well.

To me this engine has a consistent and unique aesthetic, with way more flat / faceted surfaces than any other F1 engine I have seen. Specifically, the piston crowns, the conrods, and the way the crank counterweights are bobbed all seem unique to this engine. I can't imagine that there was an industrial designer involved that wanted things to look a certain way, so then something else drove these details. These forms are simpler to machine, but even that seems like not enough reason. Any thoughts on what the driver was?

Again, what a treat to see these parts!

Jon

The faceted diamond-like aspect of the piston crown is given by the compound valve angle which Ilmor adopted quite early on. Cosworth used a simple included valve angle until the V8. The CA piston crown is not too dissimilar to this one.

The counterweight assembly was quite common at the time but around the V8 era most manufacturers had switched to bolted on counterweights.

[Hoffman900]

one interesting thing i learned from a now published honda documentation about their f1 V10 engine development :
look at the ilmor crankshaft

https://www.directupload.net

do you see the rods inserted in the counterweights ? these are tungsten rods since its one of the highest density material , far more dense than steel and so they reached the needed counterweight mass from a physical much more smaller counterweight.

Cosworth developed an even more effective method of counterweighting by bolting the tungsted to the crank, allowing them to have the high density metal at a larger radius (distance from crank centreline) where it was more effective and as such achieve a lighter crank with the same % balance.

What's funny is that bolt on counterweights were a thing with the Ford Model T. Obviously Cosworth refined this greatly and had a better understanding of what they were doing, but nothing is new.

Bike guys have been doing this a long time as well.

[63l8qrrfy6]

What's funny is that bolt on counterweights were a thing with the Ford Model T. Obviously Cosworth refined this greatly and had a better understanding of what they were doing, but nothing is new.

Bike guys have been doing this a long time as well.

Well the challenge was to keep a tungsten weight attached at 22000 RPM with 2 bolts.
Bet they didn't have that problem back then

[63l8qrrfy6]

What piston speeds do they get in drag race engines anyway ?

[Hoffman900]

What piston speeds do they get in drag race engines anyway ?

The IHRA Pro Stock engines are the most extreme (815ci (13.35L), 4.750" (120.65mm) bores, 5.750" (146.05mm) stroke, 7.750" (196.85mm) rod length, 8100-8500rpm).

They're north of 13,015fpm (3967 meters per minute / 66.12 mps).

NHRA Pro Stock (500ci) and the ProMod (power adder (nitrous, turbo, etc.) aren't too far behind. NHRA Pro Stock was close before the rpm limit. Tractor pull guys tend to be a little more extreme as they aren't as rules limited as the drag race stuff.

There biggest problems with keeping them together are during the overlap period as the piston approaches TDC, as there is negative pressure above the crown.

[63l8qrrfy6]

What piston speeds do they get in drag race engines anyway ?

The IHRA Pro Stock engines are the most extreme (815ci (13.35L), 4.750" (120.65mm) bores, 5.750" (146.05mm) stroke, 7.750" (196.85mm) rod length, 8100-8500rpm).

They're north of 13,015fpm (3967 meters per minute / 66.12 mps).

NHRA Pro Stock (500ci) and the ProMod (power adder (nitrous, turbo, etc.) aren't too far behind. NHRA Pro Stock was close before the rpm limit. Tractor pull guys tend to be a little more extreme as they aren't as rules limited as the drag race stuff.

There biggest problems with keeping them together are during the overlap period as the piston approaches TDC, as there is negative pressure above the crown.

I see, however because it is a big engine at not such a high engine speed the piston acceleration is just above 6000g while for example the cosworth v8 piston at 19000 RPM saw around 10600g (at a peak piston speed of only 42.4 m/s)

Impressive nonetheless.

[ACRO]

Extreme in what regard?

extreme in engineering development of mechanical components and solutions involved to get the power out of such a small and light package without turbo/supercharging it .

drag race engines are impressive in power output due to massive charge boost / fuel used but i do not think the engineering development effort and costs are even close to the late V10 / V8

i agree the tungsten rods were even more optimized by other manufacturers and i guess every engine in the field used this in 2001 - i have to say i was not aware if this

[Tommy Cookers]

it seems the Alfa Romeo Montreal (a road car) had tungsten counterweights on its crankshaft
(engine design being flat-crank Tipo 33 racer modified to road-conventional crossplane so needing more counterweighting)

afaik tungsten c/weighting enabled the 1950s Coventry Climax F2 1.5 litre stroking contributing to 1.9 /2.2 litres for F1
and the last Greeves trials (production) motorcycle had 'heavy metal' ie THA flywheel ring for increased inertia

what's called tungsten really being a THA (tungsten heavy alloy - though strictly speaking they're not alloy ?)


the 5-in-1 Ilmor cylinder liners in saving 20 mm on crankshaft length presumably saved on bearing dia and power loss
(I wonder eg whether 3-in-1 'seperate-cylinder' engines eg 2500 Packards in WW2 PTs/MTBs had similar merges)

[Hoffman900]

What piston speeds do they get in drag race engines anyway ?

The IHRA Pro Stock engines are the most extreme (815ci (13.35L), 4.750" (120.65mm) bores, 5.750" (146.05mm) stroke, 7.750" (196.85mm) rod length, 8100-8500rpm).

They're north of 13,015fpm (3967 meters per minute / 66.12 mps).

NHRA Pro Stock (500ci) and the ProMod (power adder (nitrous, turbo, etc.) aren't too far behind. NHRA Pro Stock was close before the rpm limit. Tractor pull guys tend to be a little more extreme as they aren't as rules limited as the drag race stuff.

There biggest problems with keeping them together are during the overlap period as the piston approaches TDC, as there is negative pressure above the crown.

I see, however because it is a big engine at not such a high engine speed the piston acceleration is just above 6000g while for example the cosworth v8 piston at 19000 RPM saw around 10600g (at a peak piston speed of only 42.4 m/s)

Impressive nonetheless.

It's more impressive when you factor into the mass of the rods, pistons, and pins involved.

extreme in engineering development of mechanical components and solutions involved to get the power out of such a small and light package without turbo/supercharging it .

drag race engines are impressive in power output due to massive charge boost / fuel used but i do not think the engineering development effort and costs are even close to the late V10 / V8

I think MotoGP is more impressive as there are variables (rear tire grip and tractability) that F1 builders didn't have to consider as much. Illmor struggled with this some when they dabbled in MotoGP.

[e36jon]

Just to add some visuals, here is a Pro-Stock piston and a MotoGP piston and rod (Bottom images). In both cases I have no idea regarding what these parts really are, they're just Google Image finds...



I couldn't find a definitive rod image for Pro-Stock. Their rules define a minimum weight for for all of the moving engine components (And restrict exotic materials, although Ti valves are OK.), so they can run steel or aluminum rods. An article I found said that some of the builders are going with steel rods to limit stretch at max RPM, so they can run smaller piston-to-head clearances.



Cheers,

Jon

[63l8qrrfy6]

That oil drain hole running right below the pin boss rib on the first piston is very poor engineering!

[Hoffman900]

JE Pistons is a bit of an also ran in the piston circles. CP-Carrillo and Mahle have the lock (for the most part) in the professional NA series. The "P" in CP being Pankl for those who don't know.

You do see the drain back hole a lot at the strut position, but that's for applications that depend on pin oiling from the oil ring. Where they don't need it, it's not there.

Here is a current Mahle NASCAR piston:


The current WSBK / AMA - FIM MotoAmerica Superbike engines are making ~240bhp/L, and that includes everything stock below the piston, which is mightily impressive considering they're production engines. They look a lot like F1 engines of not too long ago.

[63l8qrrfy6]

That Mahle NASCAR piston has the drain holes out of the rib load path which is the correct way of doing it.

Just by looking at how nicely the ribs and skirt blend into the crown you can tell it's a much better engineered piston.

[ACRO]

great thread at all !

does somenody has a source for informarion/ detail pics about the renault RS21 ( 2001 engine ) ?