Radial Engined Car

"PowderHound" (PowderHound) 09/22/2013 at 16:54 • Filed to: None

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You’re looking at the most insane car ever built. It’s a 1935 Monaco Trossi racer with an air-cooled, two-stroke 16-cylinder radial engine driving the front wheels. Just picture it howling down the straight at Monza at 150 miles per hour, looking like a lit cigar on wheels, engine roaring, headers glowing.

It was the brainchild of technician Augusto Monico. It was built on an aircraft-style space frame and rocked independent suspension all around. It also had hydraulic brakes, a rarity for the time. Unfortunately, the car had 75/25 front/rear weight distribution and suffered from uncontrollable oversteer. It never actually raced and was only driven a few times during the testing phase. Today it’s locked up in the Museo dell’Automobile in Turin, its version of Arkham Asylum. Will the batshit car ever escape and get a chance to vaporize its front tires and kill race car drivers? One can hope.

SPNKiX > PowderHound 09/22/2013 at 17:01

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looks suspiciously like an 8. is there another bank of cylinders?

pdthedeuce > SPNKiX 09/22/2013 at 17:04

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I agree...count the spark plug leads coming out of the cowl .

Illgotohell > PowderHound 09/22/2013 at 17:05

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Front wheel drive?

McMike > SPNKiX 09/22/2013 at 17:11

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Four stroke radials have to be even numbered. If that has 8, then it's a two-stroke.

Edit - I can't figure out where the other spark leads are. Other photos suggest that it's a 16 cylinder, but I count only 8 plugs.

It looks like there are eight banks of two in this photo. If two cylinders share a plug, then WTF?

I'm confused.

McMike > PowderHound 09/22/2013 at 17:19

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Hearing that there were 16 cylinders in that thing confused me, so I have no choice but to post fiveminutephotoshops of radial engined cars.

KillerRaccoon - Group J's Sébastien Loeb > McMike 09/22/2013 at 17:26

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16 valve maybe?

TheOnelectronic > PowderHound 09/22/2013 at 17:46

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That don't look like no Radial engine I ever seen!

#trollin

95HondaV6 > PowderHound 09/22/2013 at 18:17

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Supercharged answer here :
The air cooled, 16-cylinder, two-stroke radial engine was mounted at the very front of the car. With a 65 mm (2.56 in) bore and 75 mm (2.96 in) stroke, the engine displaced 3982 cc (243 cu in). The cylinders were arranged in two rows of eight with each front row cylinder and rear row cylinder paired together. While having two cylinders and two pistons, each cylinder pair had a common combustion chamber and spark plug. The eight two-cylinder pairs were positioned around the crankcase. Being a two-stroke engine, there were no intake or exhaust valves. The inlet ports were in the rear cylinders and exhaust ports were in the front cylinders. The crankshaft was a three-piece design and the crankcase was made of "duralumin". For both cylinder rows, the connecting rods were of the normal radial engine type with one master rod connected to the crankshaft and the seven articulating rods connected to the master rod.

95HondaV6 > 95HondaV6 09/22/2013 at 18:46

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A rather simple answer to their severe under-steer problem: They should have built two of these bad-boys, then cut them in half and connected both driven ends together.

NOW, you have 32 cylinders of brute force that would have made an unbelievable sound AND you also have 4-wheel steering with nearly 50-50 weight distribution.

Why was I not born sooner?

Oh yeah, you could have coupled the two undriven halves together and created a very nice trailer to carry your staff of ladies, as well as your spare parts.

Lets Just Drive > TheOnelectronic 09/22/2013 at 18:50

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Oh my god, I hate you.

This is my second draft. My first, deleted, was entirely trolled. I completely failed to catch the #trollin tag.

Fuck you and also, I lol'd.

TheOnelectronic > Lets Just Drive 09/22/2013 at 18:53

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I'm very happy with how well that tag got hidden by the timestamp.

desertdog5051 > McMike 09/22/2013 at 18:55

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I though 4 stroke radials were odd numbered. Typo?

tapzz > 95HondaV6 09/22/2013 at 19:10

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While having two cylinders and two pistons, each cylinder pair had a common combustion chamber and spark plug.

Dafuq!?

I've tinkered with 2 strokes in the past, and I had a really hard time wrapping my head around this. I think it is, to all intents and purposes, an eight cylinder, it's just that the cylinder has been split in two since they couldn't find any other way of fitting 4 liters of capacity in a radial engine of that circumference. In a plane, you'd just make the whole thing bigger, but that's just not an option here.

Still, a four liter two stroke 18 cylinder radial engine with two superchargers. All the way out front in a 750 kg car. You couldn't pay me to go anywhere near the driver seat, but it's a crying shame that it wasn't developed further.

McMike > desertdog5051 09/22/2013 at 19:22

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Ooops, yeah it was a typo. I meant "odd."

Lets Just Drive > TheOnelectronic 09/22/2013 at 21:12

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Okay, so maybe I hate Kinja, but you're culpable as well!

LOL'd

MrBillG59 > TheOnelectronic 09/22/2013 at 22:13

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The engine you have pictured is more properly called a Wankel engine.

The engine in this race care is definitely a radial engine. If you check radial engines powered many of the fighter and bomber airplanes from the beginning of flight to the mid-1950's. Check the engine in the front of a P-47 lightning, the front of that plane looks almost exactly like the first photo of this car.

There is also something used in airplanes called a rotary engine (why your Wanel is not really properly called a rotary engine) where the propeller is bolted to the cylinder block and the crankshaft is attached to the airplane. When the propeller is spinning, the whole bank of cylinders is spinning too. They didn't last long, good for air cooling bad for turning (due to centrifugal force) and maintenance.

MrBillG59 > McMike 09/22/2013 at 22:19

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When radial engines were used in most US airplanes, each bank of cylinders usually had an odd number of cylingers (usuall 7 or 9). To get more power they would add banks of cylinders. When there were an even number of banks, you got an even number of cylinders, but if there were only one bank, you definitely got an odd number of cylinders. ..and yes, they were 4-stroke. Pretty much the biggest one made was the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major, it had 28 radial cylinders, 4 banks of 9. It powered such aircraft as the B-50 and B-36.

McMike > MrBillG59 09/22/2013 at 22:28

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I screwed up and meant to say "odd" instead of "even." You can't have a even numbered four-stroke radial. Two-stroke? Yes.

I'm talking about single banks only.

TheOnelectronic > MrBillG59 09/23/2013 at 02:06

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While you missed my cleverly hidden "#trollin" tag at the end, that's an interesting post about "true" rotary engines. I was aware that something like that existed, but it's cool to have more info on them. I hadn't even considered that the gyroscopic effects would make turning difficult, though it does make sense.

Straightsix9904 > McMike 09/23/2013 at 08:15

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Just sifting through Oppo. This car was a Radial 16 and yes it did have 8 spark plugs. They had 16 pistons, but the pistons, paired together in each bank, shared a combustion chamber.

It was also supercharged, throwing down 250 HP to the front and it was never raced. Probably has something to do with 250HP to the front and NOTHING in the rear.

McMike > Straightsix9904 09/23/2013 at 08:27

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OK, thanks for that. The cylinders were oval enough to house two pistons, but I didn't see any other exhaust/intake manifolds, nor the other set of plugs.

Were there three main bearings, or did all 16 rods share the same crankpin?

Wildstar > PowderHound 09/23/2013 at 17:28

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Probably would have worked better with a torque tube feeding a rear transaxle. Still bat shit crazy, but the weight distribution would have been much better...