Small engines in large cars

[VolvoT5]

Highly stressed engines with turbos and lots of other trick technology to keep the emissions down... surely these cars are going to be ticking time bombs when they are 5+ years old on the used small dealer market?

[Willy Nilly]

skyrover said:

As big as it needs to be without having to bolt crap onto it

You probably wont find a large displacement engine with worse throttle response than a turbo

I put it to the jury that throttle responses have been dulled to meet emissions regulations.

[Mr Gear]

Willy Nilly said:

skyrover said:

As big as it needs to be without having to bolt crap onto it

You probably wont find a large displacement engine with worse throttle response than a turbo

I put it to the jury that throttle responses have been dulled to meet emissions regulations.

You can get 100bhp easily from 600cc, normally aspirated, but it would make a ste engine for a car.

[skyrover]

Willy Nilly said:

skyrover said:

As big as it needs to be without having to bolt crap onto it

You probably wont find a large displacement engine with worse throttle response than a turbo

I put it to the jury that throttle responses have been dulled to meet emissions regulations.

yes this is probably true.

I have owned several volvo's all with the same engine.

When Volvo switched to electronic throttle in 2001, the response was numbed so badly I was convinced there was something wrong with the car. Turned out "they are all like that sir"

[Frankthered]

Speaking as an owner of a 1.2 Turbo Qashqai, I can report that it's fine. OK, it's no fireball, obviously, but the turbo gives it a decent bit of shove, low down.

Yes, it's possible to catch it off boost when it seems to take an age to get moving, but it's easy enough to drive around it once you get the hang of it. There's no doubt that the trend for small capacity turbos is driven by getting good figures on the mpg tests and a good CO2 emission figure because, yes, it doesn't get anywhere near the claimed 40-50 mpg.

We get 35-40, but that is mostly Mrs FTR driving around town and short journeys, so I guess it's not too bad.

It has managed acceptably with 4 and 5 people on board and also shifting some PA equipment around - from what I hear it's comparable to the old NA 1.6, but I've never driven one of those, so I can't really comment myself.

In the USA, they still sell the old model as the Rogue Select and that comes with a 2.5l NA 4 cylinder. Quoted mpg is 23 City and 28 highway (US), so high 20s to low 30s on a UK gallon - I seriously do wonder which would be better on fuel in the real world.

[cerb4.5lee]

poing said:

cerb4.5lee said:

Bernie_78 said:

I'm all for downsizing anyway but wonder where it will end.

In tears more than likely for the car enthusiast!

Quite the opposite I would say, tuning turbo cars is really easy! The tuners will have to take into account the new tech and turbos but I think in a few years once the cars get into the hands of younger drivers they are going to tune the hell out of them. There are plenty of upgrades available for them already.

The best car I have owned to date was my old 200sx and I loved it to bits and it was only stage 1 tuned so only a very mild tune and I tuned it with only 20k miles on it and sold it with 60k miles on the clock and to be fair it was absolutely fine when I had it...

The next owner sadly blew the turbo up within two weeks of owning it so that's a good example of when you modify a relatively small engine with a turbo it will only eventually end in tears, and for me its better to have a larger capacity/higher cylinder engine without a turbo that's up to the task in the first place rather than forcing an engine to be more capable than what its originally built for.

[funkyrobot]

Jimboka said:

Funny I'm sure ive seen this thread before - Groundhog Day ?

Did you make meaningless posts on that one too?

[Baryonyx]

Willy Nilly said:

I put it to the jury that throttle responses have been dulled to meet emissions regulations.

They have. Most throttles now smooth demand by restricting airflow on opening until the fuelling adjusts, giving that slow, mushy feeling engagement, and continue to feed in air on closing for a full burn. There are some good articles on rev hang, which if you don't know what it is, you will at least have felt if you've driven a modern car.

[aquasurf]

These graphs show what one major car manufacturer calls "non-linear throttle response" they now build in all their cars.
.

The picture was taken from my webpage explaining the rev hang:
Note: if the following link does not work, as it seems, please close the window showing the page was not found and copy the url directly in your browser. It will display then. I have no idea why the link does not work from this post.
http://www.revhang.altervista.org/

Edited by aquasurf on Saturday 7th March 13:35

[Sheepshanks]

aquasurf said:

I have no idea why the link does not work from this post.
[url=url]

Get rid of the =url:

http://www.revhang.altervista.org/

[aquasurf]

Formatting Help in formatting.html showed this:
[url = url]text[/url] .... hyperlink , so I followed it.
I now edited my post and fixed the link. Thanks for showing me the error of my ways.

Edited by aquasurf on Saturday 7th March 13:39

[PistonheadRob]

Small turbo engine cars should be fine, the problem is a large majority of car the car drivers do not know how to care for a turbo engine. For example allowing it to warm up and cool down, combine this with extra long service intervals and things are not great for the engine and turbo.
A lot of drivers dont even know the basics of how a turbo works, they have no interest they just turn the key and put their foot down, then trade in/hand back after 3 years for a brand new one.

[Dyl]

aquasurf said:

These graphs show what one major car manufacturer calls "non-linear throttle response" they now build in all their cars.
.

The picture was taken from my webpage explaining the rev hang:
Note: if the following link does not work, as it seems, please close the window showing the page was not found and copy the url directly in your browser. It will display then. I have no idea why the link does not work from this post.
http://www.revhang.altervista.org/

Edited by aquasurf on Saturday 7th March 13:35

Is it Ford by any chance? My new work van is a 15-plate Fiesta with the 1.5 TDCi engine and I've noticed this 'non-linearity', it's quite odd. Especially since my car is an MX-5 which has a very direct throttle response.

[ZX10R NIN]

A 1.0 on a mondeo sized saloon is to small an engine I understand why they build them but it's to much stress long term on the engine.

[Glade]

I had a 1.4TFSI octavia, and it has the same power as my 2.0 TDI Audi I had before.

Its not going to set your pants on fire, but it's certainly the equivalent of a larger engine from a few years ago.

I had no problem with it.

[Fattyfat]

PistonheadRob said:

Small turbo engine cars should be fine, the problem is a large majority of car the car drivers do not know how to care for a turbo engine. For example allowing it to warm up and cool down, combine this with extra long service intervals and things are not great for the engine and turbo.
A lot of drivers dont even know the basics of how a turbo works, they have no interest they just turn the key and put their foot down, then trade in/hand back after 3 years for a brand new one.

This. Which will make things much more risky for those who tend to buy cars at 3-4 years old or outside of warranty. For those buying new on PCP deals it won't really matter.

I did test drive an ecoboost Focus last year- the 100bhp version. It drove fine if you overlooked some of the engine characteristics, the salesman was pretty honest and reckoned that 40mpg was all it would do. Way off the claimed figures.

[J4CKO]

ZX10R NIN said:

A 1.0 on a mondeo sized saloon is to small an engine I understand why they build them but it's to much stress long term on the engine.

Why ?

Based on what ?

It is nothing to do with the cubic capacity, it is the power and torque figures, the power delivery, also, it only has three pistons, so less to go wrong !

[aquasurf]

Dyl said:

Is it Ford by any chance? ......

This approach was adopted by Toyota, but many other manufacturers use the same.

[Noesph]

Just my two cents on downsized turbo engines. I've had my twingo gt for nearly 2 years (1149 16v Sohc turbo - 100bhp, one of the first genertion of downsized engines).

To be fair it spends most of its life in South London suburbs. (But traffic isn't that bad. I start work at 7am, so its on the road at around 6:15 am and I finish at 15:30 so I miss rush hour both ways, so the 9 mile trip takes me about half an hour). And on weekend blasts down country B roads (It probably only sees a motorway 3 or 4 times a year).

Renault's info on the engine.

http://www.renault.co.uk/innovations/engines/tce_1...

Anyway, I knew it was way thirstier than what Renault said, so as an experiment I've been keeping a tab on it since Christmas.


http://www.fuelly.com/car/renault/twingo/2009/Noes...


So Renault said 47.8 mpg, I get 30.2mpg, the best was 37.5mpg, but I believe that was a false reading (the pump clicked off too early, and it was off the full mark within 5 miles). If I push it I can get it down to 25mpg.

[Willy Nilly]

Noesph said:

Just my two cents on downsized turbo engines. I've had my twingo gt for nearly 2 years (1149 16v Sohc turbo - 100bhp, one of the first genertion of downsized engines).

To be fair it spends most of its life in South London suburbs. (But traffic isn't that bad. I start work at 7am, so its on the road at around 6:15 am and I finish at 15:30 so I miss rush hour both ways, so the 9 mile trip takes me about half an hour). And on weekend blasts down country B roads (It probably only sees a motorway 3 or 4 times a year).

Renault's info on the engine.

http://www.renault.co.uk/innovations/engines/tce_1...

Anyway, I knew it was way thirstier than what Renault said, so as an experiment I've been keeping a tab on it since Christmas.


http://www.fuelly.com/car/renault/twingo/2009/Noes...


So Renault said 47.8 mpg, I get 30.2mpg, the best was 37.5mpg, but I believe that was a false reading (the pump clicked off too early, and it was off the full mark within 5 miles). If I push it I can get it down to 25mpg.

If you use 100hp, it will take 100hp worth of fuel, the size of the engine will become irrelevant. Where smaller engines score is that they have less parasitic losses so when they are not wide open they will use less fuel. They are also physically smaller and lighter so take up less room, should be a bit cheaper to make, have less fluids, so a bit cheaper to service.

All engines are getting more power extracted out of them now. Look at the big diesels. Not so long ago if you wanted 400hp, you'd need a 14-16 litre engine, now you can get the same power from 8-9 litres, it's all good and reliability is not an issue.

People seem to love their turbo diesels and it's now petrol engines turn to get some more wind. Bring it on I say.