Worst Performance Engine of All TIme

In reply to Stefan :

ah.  Forgot about them.  Off to the googles to see if they still exist. 

Streetwiseguy said:

frenchyd said:

vwcorvette said:

Has anybody mentioned the smog hampered L48 from my 75 Corvette? 165hp stock. 

Yet people pulled 284 horsepower V12’s to put the Chevy motor in?  

Yes.  Yes, they did, because a running 165 horsepower will beat a broken 284 horsepower all day long.

Only to find out the problem wasn’t the motor which is incredibly well built. The problem was the wiring. And a Chevy motored V8 didn’t run any better until the wiring was fixed.  

The wiring affected not only the motor but everything. Heater Air conditioning radio seats windows etc.  Repairing  it usually consisted of tightening connections, often the grounds.  

Once that was repaired they still were trying to get a 4200 pound luxury car with a 2.88 final drive to perform with only 165 horsepower!  

nutherjrfan said:

In reply to Carbon :

what is 'EC'?  I tried googling but had no luck. 

No idea, just an old post from my dead friend. 

In reply to frenchyd :

Unless they spent $400 on the Chev and installed 400 hp instead.

And I've driven V12 Jags from the 70's and 80's.  260 Shetland ponies at best.

Can the engine in the Classic Mini be considered a performance engine? I know they have a long history of racing but that's more due to the amazing packaging of the car less on that dud of an engine that has only 3 main bearings and shares it's oil with the transmission, right? Am I a heretic? I love classic Mini's BTW and was the co-founder of a Mini Club but those engines just can't seem to make decent power without blowing to smitherines. Kinda reminds me of Classic Beetle engines, also pretty fragile as you approach the 100 hp/litre mark. (I have one of those, too and now realize I have a thing for really crappy performance cars)

The Audi V12 diesel they used to win LeMans- unless you want to define performance as fuel economy.

In reply to AnthonyGS :

That problem with the Iron duke argument is that it was never purported to be a performance engine, despite was these two guys have to say

loosecannon said:

Can the engine in the Classic Mini be considered a performance engine? I know they have a long history of racing but that's more due to the amazing packaging of the car less on that dud of an engine that has only 3 main bearings and shares it's oil with the transmission, right? Am I a heretic? I love classic Mini's BTW and was the co-founder of a Mini Club but those engines just can't seem to make decent power without blowing to smitherines. Kinda reminds me of Classic Beetle engines, also pretty fragile as you approach the 100 hp/litre mark. (I have one of those, too and now realize I have a thing for really crappy performance cars)

If you know the history of the Austin motor then you know it was a slow cheap development of an engine that originated in the 30’s as a low volume cheap motor.  

The performance extracted from that chunk of iron was remarkable, enhanced by the cars it was in.  Both the Mini and the Sprite/Midget  were brilliant solutions to cheap, affordable, fun. 

Give the British their due, they created a whole class of cars for people on a less than GRM budget. 

Streetwiseguy said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Unless they spent $400 on the Chev and installed 400 hp instead.

And I've driven V12 Jags from the 70's and 80's.  260 Shetland ponies at best.

The engine was originally intended to be in 4600 pound 4 door sedans filled with 4 fat old guys and their golf clubs.   It made 294 torques when the V8 was trying hard to just meet the smog laws 

The XKE V12 was a much lighter, massively faster car. I built a 1900 pound race car out of one and had I finished it before it was sold would have gone out and spanked the latest Corvettes. 

In fact they did. Winning the run offs against the best  Corvettes, Cobra’s in the country, 

Stefan said:

Streetwiseguy said:

frenchyd said:

vwcorvette said:

Has anybody mentioned the smog hampered L48 from my 75 Corvette? 165hp stock. 

Yet people pulled 284 horsepower V12’s to put the Chevy motor in?  

Yes.  Yes, they did, because a running 165 horsepower will beat a broken 284 horsepower all day long.

Also because fixing the smog strangling is actually as easy as changing parts to less smog strangled versions and upping the CR back to something reasonable.

Fixing the V12’s issues are less easy for those outside of the narrow field of those that know.  Even guys I’ve known that work on British sports cars, wouldn’t have a problem with swapping for another motor as they understand the challenges involved.

That is exactly why engine swaps occurred. A lot maybe most mechanics have little real knowledge of engines. So many mechanics are parts replacers and monkey see monkey do.  Something new? Replace it with something you’re familiar with.  

  I’ll grant the V12 was rare,  some years barely a 1000 were made for worldwide consumption. So how could they know that the early fuel injection system was basically  the VW rabbit system times 3.?  

Later fuel injection systems were much better but still rare.  They also predated the plug and play of modern computers.  Requiring real knowledge and skill to trouble shoot.  Only very late in the production of the V12 did total production here in America approach even a modestly successful annual run of a domestic car.  

Total world wide production of the V12 is about 155,000 which compared to Ferrari, Aston Martin Maserati etc is massive. It is still dwarfed by virtually any domestic production.  

As far as updating a Small block to make 400 net horsepower. Sure it can be done, was done. But not for $400. 

I raced a Corvette for one year. I had access to the best cast off stuff a factory supported racer had. To make 400 real net horsepower required a virtual replacement of everything in the engine starting at the crankshaft and going up.

Then the block really couldn’t survive. Requiring the strength of the 4 bolt block at a minimum.  

Loving the re-boot of this thread, and love the fact I appear to have been the person to call out the Triumph Stag V8 way back when.

A note to some calling out the BMC engines (both A and B series) and the Flat head Ford.  I think people are forgetting when, why, how and with what constraints those engines were designed.  They may have been woefully poor choices by the late 60's or early 70's for performance engines, in the case of the BMC engines, or by the late 50's for the Flat head, but if you look at their origins they were masterful for their intended purpose at the time and made very good performance engines, again, for their original time.

P.S. My wife gor a brand new 84 Fiero for her 16th Birthday and it performed perfectly for well over 100K miles until she sold it circa 92/93

BobOfTheFuture said:

MGB's engine- not too terrible, but it was designed orig as a tractor engine...

While it could be convicted of this based on circumstantial evidence, not actually true. Triumph engines did reside in a tractor, the MGB was probably not good enough for that task.

I think that the MGB B series' fault is that it was never designed for any particular task. Ultimate committee engine; a breeding mistake that the engineers were forced to deliver.

Edit for context:

In the distant dark dismal days of post war England, this was the only engine that made sense for the job. It had to be cheap to build, own ( hp based tax) and work in as many cars in as many countries  as possible.

No one has blasted the Mitsubishi 4G54B yet? Sure, it was one of the first fuel-injected, turbocharged engines from Japan. But it used a sketchy fuel injection that mounted 2 injectors behind the throttle body, causing less-than-optimal fuel distribution. It was only SOHC, with either 8 or 12 valves in a cylinder head that didn't flow particularly well. But at least the throttle body and intake manifold flowed poorly too. And despite it's 2.6L displacement, it only made 197hp, thanks to a too-small turbocharger. And they were prone to head gasket failure. The Starion/Conquest may be cool, but it's engine is distinctly not

Adrian_Thompson said:

Loving the re-boot of this thread, and love the fact I appear to have been the person to call out the Triumph Stag V8 way back when.

A note to some calling out the BMC engines (both A and B series) and the Flat head Ford.  I think people are forgetting when, why, how and with what constraints those engines were designed.  They may have been woefully poor choices by the late 60's or early 70's for performance engines, in the case of the BMC engines, or by the late 50's for the Flat head, but if you look at their origins they were masterful for their intended purpose at the time and made very good performance engines, again, for their original time.

 

P.S. My wife gor a brand new 84 Fiero for her 16th Birthday and it performed perfectly for well over 100K miles until she sold it circa 92/93

Well said!  Don’t forget that up to 1953 the 80 horsepower Ford Flathead was still in production and still sold.  The MG engine of the period  was either the 54 horsepower version or 63 horsepower and carried much less weight. 

frenchyd said:

Adrian_Thompson said:

Loving the re-boot of this thread, and love the fact I appear to have been the person to call out the Triumph Stag V8 way back when.

A note to some calling out the BMC engines (both A and B series) and the Flat head Ford.  I think people are forgetting when, why, how and with what constraints those engines were designed.  They may have been woefully poor choices by the late 60's or early 70's for performance engines, in the case of the BMC engines, or by the late 50's for the Flat head, but if you look at their origins they were masterful for their intended purpose at the time and made very good performance engines, again, for their original time.

 

P.S. My wife gor a brand new 84 Fiero for her 16th Birthday and it performed perfectly for well over 100K miles until she sold it circa 92/93

Well said!  Don’t forget that up to 1953 the 80 horsepower Ford Flathead was still in production and still sold.  The MG engine of the period  was either the 54 horsepower version or 63 horsepower and carried much less weight. 

Actually the Ford Flathead was in production into the 1980s. After World War II, we left a lot of equipment in France, and the French fell in love with the Ford Flathead V8 and continued producing and refining it into the 1980s. 

Adrian_Thompson said:

Loving the re-boot of this thread, and love the fact I appear to have been the person to call out the Triumph Stag V8 way back when.

A note to some calling out the BMC engines (both A and B series) and the Flat head Ford.  I think people are forgetting when, why, how and with what constraints those engines were designed.  They may have been woefully poor choices by the late 60's or early 70's for performance engines, in the case of the BMC engines, or by the late 50's for the Flat head, but if you look at their origins they were masterful for their intended purpose at the time and made very good performance engines, again, for their original time.

 

P.S. My wife gor a brand new 84 Fiero for her 16th Birthday and it performed perfectly for well over 100K miles until she sold it circa 92/93

What I don’t understand about the Triumph stag engine is why it was built at all?  Daimler  had that wonderful  2.5 Hemi V8 that Jaguar wouldn’t use because it was better than their 2.4 six.  

Why not take that instead.  It’s reported to have been designed for up to 3&1/2 liters. And was already well developed and reliable.  

I really feel sad that the 2.8 didn’t make the grade.  A proper 60 degree light little motor which when the Cadillac aluminum heads were put on really made that little V6 scream. 

In reply to frenchyd :

Politics, when BMC was being formed the management of Triumph was the strongest of the amalgamated companies so they got their way.  They didn't like the Rover/Buick V8 and thought they could do better.

Twenty years later it was the dead opposite.  The XJ40 Jag took so long to get the V12 as then Austin Rover group wanted to put the Rover V8 in the new Jag, so Jag designed a narrow engine bay and insisted that a V engine wouldn't fit.  Lot's of work later to make the V12 fit where the V8 was designed not to go.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

I’d heard that but given how narrow the V12 is, ( 21 inches to outside of valve covers which is about the width of the exhaust manifolds) I’d think anyplace they could fit a 6 in the V12 will go. 

Since the Rover is a 90 degree engine compared to the 60 of the V12 I doubt they could get it to fit anywhere as close to the same!  

Too late to out the Chevy 4 Cylinder Vega engine? Alloy block, steel head and the lifespan of a Mayfly.

In reply to NOHOME :

Not too late, but already been done twice earlier in the thread.

Anything diesel.

In reply to A 401 CJ :

The engines used by Navistar were in a different emissions tier as they were generally put into higher gross weight commercial trucks rather than consumer pickup trucks and didn't need all of the crap stuck to them that made that engine unreliable.  But that's a really deep rabbit hole to go down.

Ram50Ron said:

In reply to A 401 CJ :

The engines used by Navistar were in a different emissions tier as they were generally put into higher gross weight commercial trucks rather than consumer pickup trucks and didn't need all of the crap stuck to them that made that engine unreliable.  But that's a really deep rabbit hole to go down.

The VT365 version still had most of the same emissions stuff as the Ford version.  And some of the same failures.  But it wasn't pushed as hard power-wise and the owners were primarily fleets, so more likely to fix the issues when they happened and install the updated parts when available instead of throwing a hissy fit on the internet and writing the vehicle off as junk.  

NickD said:

No one has blasted the Mitsubishi 4G54B yet? Sure, it was one of the first fuel-injected, turbocharged engines from Japan. But it used a sketchy fuel injection that mounted 2 injectors behind the throttle body, causing less-than-optimal fuel distribution. It was only SOHC, with either 8 or 12 valves in a cylinder head that didn't flow particularly well. But at least the throttle body and intake manifold flowed poorly too. And despite it's 2.6L displacement, it only made 197hp, thanks to a too-small turbocharger. And they were prone to head gasket failure. The Starion/Conquest may be cool, but it's engine is distinctly not

Nowadays I use that engine as Exhibit A for why you shouldn't use a throttle body injection setup on a turbo build.

I'd also like to nominate the Ford 4.2 V8. This disaster had a two year run in Mustangs, from 1980 to 1981, and put out 120 hp. And you could only get it with a 3 speed automatic.

I'd like to nominate the Type IV VW engine that Porsche put into the 914.   Great little cars, with fantastic packaging, good (but quirky) styling, and great handling for the time. 

The shift linkage, and that powerless lump of an engine really let the rest of the car down.