Something to piss you off..perhaps.

[MD]

Owners of Porche, Subaru, Alfasud often refer to their engines as being "boxer" engines which they are not.

A true boxer engine has two pistons sharing one common combustion chamber, one spark plug and two or more crankshafts.

I realise this isn't going to change world thinking out there but I just thought you might like to be one of the few in the know..

See photos

[meizhak]

MD,

Was doing some work on some imported earthmoving equipment at a quarantine yard here in perth not long ago.

They had a private import Chieftan tank sitting in the corner. It runs a leyland/rolls royce l60 opposed piston diesel two stroke.

awesome bit of gear.Got a photo of the tank but not of the engine they had out of it for cleaning. Found the attached photos of the engine on the net.


meizhak

[Duk]

That is really cool!
I suppose a modern interpretation could be expected to do away with the old vane supercharger and replace it with a more modern twisted lobe or twin screw supercharger and an intercooler. Modern electronic control of fuel and ignition timing and new metals and materials to build it. But ultimately it would still suffer the bane of 2 stroke engines, lubricating oil getting burnt with the fuel and it's effect on emissions. Still, the RX8 can obviously pass emissions requirements, so Mazda must have gotten around the old emissions issue of the rotor motor.

[f1worldchamp]

Oh I geddit, so the pistons are 'punching' eachother like boxers.
Cool. 

[wankski]

MD, what have you been smoking lately my friend?    

i think u ought to look up the inventor - karl BENZ's patent on the issue. I tend to favour the idea that the guy who invents it can call it what they like! :p

The thing you've posted maybe more widely recognised as a 'opposed pistion' design...

as far as i can tell he came up with the first in the late 19th C...

[Alan Hopla]

Hmmm.
What is the purpose of "more"?

Have a look at this web site. http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/Tomlinson.htm
It shows a home made model of a Napier Deltec diesel as used in British boats and trains.

It has 3 crankshafts, with each one at the apex of a triangle, with a pair of opposed pistons between each crankshaft.
Either 3 or 6 sets of these in the engine.
Again a 2 stroke diesel design.

The 18 cylinder version had an effective swept volume of about 87 liters, and produced a peak of 2500 HP.
Strangely one of the crankshafts counter rotates to reduce vibration.

This engine has also featured in the series Great British Machines.

Alan.

[MD]

Excellent. Happy to see you guys using the bean bag and nutting a few things out for yourselves.

BTW f1worldchamp , you got it in one.

Makes for an interesting debate. Horizontally opposed pistons share the same crankshaft and compress in the opposite direction. They do not box the compression together which is why pistons exist in the first place.

Don't care what Karl called it.

[branko.gt]

Hey MD, better hurry up and fix Wikipaedia becasue it says : "Typically, layout has cylinders arranged in two banks on either side of a single crankshaft and is generally known as the boxer, or horizontally-opposed engine—not to be confused with opposed-piston engines,"
Now, I know that not all you read on the interweb is correct ( yes kiddies, that is true, and BTW there is no Santa), but most of the information on Wikipaedia is under a lot of scrutiny and if it does get it wrong someone will fix it quickly.

[MD]

Yeah Branko. Doens't change a thing. It's part of the misnomer problem.

[Evan Bottcher]

[branko.gt]

Yeah Branko. Doens't change a thing. It's part of the misnomer problem.

I admire your strength of character to stand up against the tide of ignorance but your job is not complete until you fix up the wikipaedia (or should it be vickedpaedia when it spreads such blatant misinformation)

[wankski]

emm MD, Karl invented engines just about... and definately invented what we now know as a boxer... (first in 2 then more cylinders) and his first contra design was late 19th C...

what you're talking about didn't appear in patents until about 1910-20 or something like that...

I'm totally up for accepting what your saying as a 'true' boxer, but that doesn't make particularly porsche owners wrong... its def not just a 'flat' as you can of course have inline horizontal flats (some a/c engines in ww2 were made like that!) likewise you can have vertical opposed cylinder designs (ship engines etc)

All that makes it a boxer is the 'contra design' - the patent design - which means the opposing punching motion of the pistons naturally balance each other out, phasing out the need for balancing shafts and making a smoother engine out of only 2 cylinders or so...

You may choose to call the in-ward punching pistons a 'boxer' cos it makes sense, but that doesn't change history and common parlance.

Fudging a wiki entry ain't gunna change that.

[MD]

Stimulation of general discussion on a forum is always a good thing. Keeps things alive and interesting. I may be right or not so right but to me that is not paramount. I hope you got something out of researching the nature of boxer engines as a result in an effort to see if MD is full of crap. ( I hope you will be kind regarding the amount)

Thanks for keeping it friendly.. and Evan, I thought your little cartoon was great.( I was waiting to see how long it would take you to chime in)

[aggie57]

Well, it may or may not be a boxer engine but seems we have a light hearted boxer forum!!!

[wankski]

eh,?? what kind of sad git is gunna take the topic personally??   

not like this is a Porker forum... try throwing that incendiary there, see how that goes 

not like i'm gunna take up that cross... pfft, any engine that's not an alfa 6 (or is dead to me... 

personally i like ur point - it may well be more logical, but i think u'll have a hard time convincing Mercedes they didn't invent it, is all...

(but i agree this forum is too nice... where is good old ben and bazza to spice things up... jeez that kid ben could go right off.... miss sparking him.....haha)