Two engines?

[Javarod]

Ok, poking around in here reminded me of something I read in a 70s car mag. Guy had fitted a Ford Granada with 2 V4 motors in an arrangement much like a hybrid. Both motors would create effectively a V8 for acceleration, but one engine would shut down when cruising, much like how a hybrid works. Not sure how he made it work back in the pre-electronic days (or at least cruder electronics). Has anyone considered something like this, maybe two 2 cylinder motors in a car?

[civic94]

sounds like an idea, but a 2 cylinder engine will be very shaky when idleing and cruising compared to a 4,6,8 cylinder engine.

[kamesama980]

syncing two engines is kinda hard. i suppose you could put a motercycle engine of either axle but at that oiunt youve spent how much on that and its only gonna get marginally better than a metros fe bc the cruise engines working that much harder. if you can get it built and tuned you might see better fe but at whst cost? not to mention repair parts

[Javarod]

I'm wondering ifn he used some kind of shared camshaft (crankshaft, don't know engines real well) with a clutch between them, basically the front engine can be turned off and completely freed from the drivetrain when not needed.

The 2 cylinder idea was simply because in these modern days, that'd be about all that'd be needed.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Guess you could try rigging up 2 geo 3-bangers in a compact truck for a 6-3, inline or vee.

[usedgeo]

I have thought of leaving the car stock and then using a small Briggs and Stratton driving a separate wheel set up like a single wheel pusher trailer. I have already purchased an 8 hp Briggs and a 14 inch motorcycle wheel. This would be my version of displacement on demand. I think the 8 hp engine could sustain a little over 45 mph on the level. My car glides very well. A little push could really extend the glides.

I started thinking along this line because I was wondering how much fuel 100 amps at 72 volts could replace in a 30 mile round trip commute. The engine would just be a test mule to prove the concept before I dropped the big money for the motor, controller, and batteries.

Realistically I have enough engineering to know that pay back might never occur even for the cheap version. It was just a thought experiment but when I was buying a 2 hp engine for a bike trailer I came across an 8 hp engine. I got a 15 year old engine that had never been started for what I thought was a very reasonable price.

Ernie

[GasSavers_Ryland]

I've seen a Rabbit Pickup truck that had the standard front wheel drive, and another engine that drove the rear axle, can't remember what it had in the back, and they had a whole box of CV axle joints that had been snaped while trying to drive both sets of wheels at the same time, however some vehicles used in auto cross racing use a simaler idea, altho I suspect that they use a freewheel set up simaler to how a 2 wheel drive motorcycle works, one axle coasts, a set up could be done on a small 4 wheel drive vehicle like a Honda WagoVan, or Subaru Justy.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

I want to pick up an AWD protege rear and an AWD caravan/voyager rear end to have around to play with for such things for my Escort and Minivan.

[Javarod]

I've always wondered how they got through the road hybrids to work, you'd think there'd be problems syncing, much as with the one P/U mentioned with 2 gas motors. This design was clever as the front engine could fire up and add its power, but one would expect that it'd be fairly easy using some manner of clutch, possibly a fluid one to mitigate one engine driving faster than the other. Hmmm, possibly a small vehicle, maybe an 80's Dodge Charger or something like that, they had quite a large engine compartment, fit it with say a pair of 2 cylinder motorcycle engines?

[kamesama980]

Hybrids with wheel motors use encoders and computers (like ABS sensors...in fact they probably use the same sensors on those cars) to synchronize the motors. the computer juts counts degrees of rotation for each wheel and if one doesn't match, it adjusts output to bring it in line.

vehicles like the jeep hurricane use automatic transmissions so any imbalance is accounted for in the torque converter. with the idea of using multiple engines, if either one used an automatic transmission, that would deal with driveline stresses to a large extent but I can't imagine trying to shift that beast. better to do dual auto trannies or a dog-shift trans on the manual one so you don't have to worry as much. still gonna be jerky as heck tho