The 2009 Lincoln MKS a new fuel-efficient 3.7-liter V-6 engine. (Photo courtesy of Ford)
Posted on 01/09/2008 9:50:29 AM PST by Incorrigible
The 2009 Lincoln MKS a new fuel-efficient 3.7-liter V-6 engine. (Photo courtesy of Ford) |
|
Derrick Kuzak's vision of the future could scare some gearheads.
Big pickups would use four-cylinder engines, luxury sedans would come with V-6s instead of V-8s. The venerable V-8 engine would be found only on big commercial trucks.
Ford Motor Co.'s vice president of global product design sees engine downsizing as the clearest way to meet new federal fuel economy standards. The trick will be doing it without slashing power.
"We know our customers want better fuel economy," Kuzak said. "We know how to deliver that near-term."
Starting with the launch of the 2009 Lincoln MKS sedan later this year, Ford will begin a multiyear push to cut the size of its engines.
The MKS will replace the Lincoln Town Car as the flagship of Ford's luxury lineup. Unlike the V8-powered Town Car, the MKS will use a six-cylinder engine.
To make up for its size, the new engine swipes two technologies from the hot-rod world — turbo-charging and direct fuel injection.
The result is a V-6 that provides 13 percent more horsepower than the Town Car's V-8 and increases fuel economy.
Work on the MKS' engine has already begun at Ford's plant in Lima, Ohio. The MKS uses a modified version of the 3.5-liter V-6 built there. Later this year, 3.5-liter work will start up at Ford's Brook Park, Ohio, campus.
Despite big power numbers, convincing buyers that a six-cylinder engine can do the work of a V-8 will be a tough sell.
"After decades of selling power, and power being defined as having more cylinders or bigger displacement, you have to completely redefine" engine marketing, said Brett Smith, assistant director of the manufacturing, engineering and technology group at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Car buyers may say they want more fuel-efficient vehicles, but Smith said brawny consistently outsells thrifty.
That's why whenever an automaker releases a redesigned car or truck, it tends to be more powerful than the one it replaces.
The 2007 Toyota Camry? Even the 158-horsepower four-cylinder model is 26.4 percent beefier than it was in 1996. The V-6 gained 42.6 percent on its climb to 268 horses.
In 2004, General Motors released the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon small trucks, powered by either a four-cylinder or a five-cylinder engine.
Smith said Ford dealers responded by telling potential buyers that the Colorado was a cylinder short, even though its power numbers were higher than the V- 6 available on Ford's Ranger.
It's a marketing strategy that can't survive new federal mandates of 35 mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency by 2020.
"Everyone's in this together. One company isn't going to be able to sell a bunch of V-8s in a segment where others are selling V-6s. It just won't be possible with these new rules," Smith said.
He added that Ford's chosen technologies, turbo-charging and direct injection, could make small engines powerful enough to allow the company to cut sizes.
Turbo-charging is the practice of forcing more air into an engine cylinder, boosting the power briefly when needed.
Direct injection means injecting fuel directly into those engine cylinders instead of in a port or manifold. The fuel used burns more completely, creating more power with lower emissions. But it's a complex system that requires lots of computer controls.
Combined, the technologies can add thousands to the price of an engine, a cost that Ford's Kuzak said can be reclaimed in less than three years from lower gasoline bills.
There are a handful of cars on the road today that use both technologies, but they tend to be specialty, hot-rod models.
Mazda uses the system in its Speed6. It gets 270 horsepower, 27 percent more than the V-6 Mazda 6 sedan and it costs nearly $7,000 more.
General Motors uses turbo-direct-injection in hot-rod versions of the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice two-door roadsters.
The Saturn Sky Redline uses a 2-liter, four-cylinder engine that gets 50 percent more power than the standard version of the car with a 2.4-liter engine. And it gets 28 miles per gallon on the highway, up from 25 miles on the base Sky.
"These technologies are still marketed as performance add-ons," Smith said. "It's not looked on as a fuel-economy enhancement."
He added that all major automakers are looking at turbo-direct-injection to aid fuel economy, but none has yet mastered it.
Even Ford, the biggest proponent of the technology, plans only 500,000 units by 2012 or about 100,000 engines per year — about 5 percent of its vehicle output.
Kuzak said after 2012, nearly all of Ford's new vehicles will use either that technology or diesel engines.
"I cannot say that we have all of our plans (to get to 35 miles per gallon) buttoned up to 2020. We have our plans through 2012," Kuzak said.
(Robert Schoenberger is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He can be contacted at rschoenb(at)plaind.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Isn’t that Dolemite’s Caddy?
Two words - Bluetooth headset. Which, if you are operating a vehicle, you should be using.
Yea but I don't look like a dork in my Vette!
(nothing personal...)
A friends dad had an old British car, I can’t remember which one it was now, that snapped the timing belt not long after he rebuilt the engine. He put it up for sale the next day, decided he didn’t want to put that much love into something that would destroy itself every time a piece of rubber and cord broke.
Yes some american cars have combined belts and interference, but the vast majority do not. Its a rarity to find an american car (other than generally cheaper entry level stuff from the 80s and early 90s) that are US left on the roads with interference design and timing belts.
Most that have belts and US brands are non interference.
Planning owners to have to engage in a $400-$700 replacement cost at 60k just because you decided to be cheap on your engine design is piss poor engineering. And to top it off, since you are opening the whole thing up anyway, replacement of the water pump, whether needed or not is usually recommended to save you the cost on labor if it does go out between next belt change, makes for a rather costly $500-$1000 repair for no reason other than CHEAP production decisions.
Nissan is not the only one moving away from belts, if you use an inteference engine you sure as hell should have a chain... if you have a belt, better make sure the design is non-interference.
I don’t argue you have NEVER seen or heard of a belt fail personally, but I can assure there are owners out there that can testify that their timing belts have not lasted to their recommended change mileage.
Timing belt and inteference engine design are trademarks of simply cheap engine design. Manufacturers trying to eek out more horsepower out of smaller engine without investing in proper parts to do so.
No, I think you will have to move up to a 3/4 ton to get around the new mpg requirements. Look for the 1/2 ton to become a low volume seller and 3/4 to pick up the slack.
“And, it’s built by Toyota, so it’ll run forever.”
...long after the body panels rust away prematurely.
I had an offer to buy my truck from a neighbor so he could soup up the engine. I don’t know much about it, but he said you could add a huge nitros system to the engine in about 20 minutes, double the horsepower and the truck would not notice the extra stress.
I sold the truck a year later because I was tired of putting brakes on it and the master cylinder had seen better days. I was also promoted and got a company truck (a newer F150, 4.6 V-8).
When I advertised for the truck, I did get a call from two people who just wanted the motor. They didn’t even talk about the price. I asked why they just didn’t buy the truck and take the engine out themselves. Still baffles me.
Yep, a failure of a piece of rubber and chord should not total an engine, but that’s exactly what you have if you have an interference engine with a drive belt. If that belt fails or just slips for any reason, you can definately kiss your valves goodbye and likely your pistons as well.
I’ve owned one Caddy — a ‘79 Sedan De Ville with a 7 liter plant. Great car. Probably saved my life too. Some ice-scraper truck traveling far faster than it should’ve been slid into my lane on ice and we had a nasty head-on collision, totaling the Caddy. But I came away relatively unscathed. I were driving one of the little Japanese high-mpg cars so popular at the time I’d have been squashed like a bug.
Good point . . . but the end result is that we'll have more and more accidents involving 25 Mexicans packed into an old pickup truck or cargo van.
Torque is a function of RPM and displacement.
Your 5.7L V-* runs down the road at 2200 RPM to give it enough torque to turn the gear and enough RPM to make it smooth. Change the gear, you change the RPM downward (1500 RPM) would make the driveline work harder to maintain a specific speed.
To do this would change the drive-ability of your truck. To create an engine that burns gasoline, and make lots of torque at low RPM’s you give up lots of higher RPM power.
Considering how our reliance on foreign oil is a national security issue, then Congress is well-within its bounds to mandate "less fun."
“Timing belt and inteference engine design are trademarks of simply cheap engine design. Manufacturers trying to eek out more horsepower out of smaller engine without investing in proper parts to do so.”
I don’t know that I’d agree with that. Designing an engine involved a series of trade-offs, and there may be good reasons why an engine was designed with a timing belt and an interference design.
I will say that I am not a fan of such designs. My old Volvo had a belt, but was non-interference. My current (4-cyl) Honda Accord has a chain. The current Honda V6 has belts, and I don’t know if it’s interference or not.
My old Volvo used to eat belts regularly, well before the suggested replacement interval, because there was a minor oil leak into the area behind the timing belt cover. Fortunately this “only” resulted in a completely dead car on the side of the road.
Anyway, it is something you should know about a car before buying it - and plan on replacing the belt (and maybe water pump, too) at the suggested intervals. It doesn’t have to be such an expensive job if the engine and car are well designed for maintenance - replacing the one on my Volvo only cost a couple hundred dollars, but was easy to get at.
I've got essentially the same engine without turbo, and well over 200k miles. But, let's face it - the 3 liter Nissan wasn't your average engine.
A “turbo” driven by the crankshaft or any other mechanical means is called a supercharger. They provide much more rapid power response and have existed since the early 1900’s.
I’d like some proof of your assertion. None of the three dealers I called have ever heard of it happening on the VG30-series engine.
On the VG30, it’s not cheap engine design but a desire for a quieter, more refined sounding engine, which was something the Japanese had to do to get market share in the US. Horsepower has nothing to do with it. Higher horsepower engines these days use chains, especially blower cars.
Back when Nissan was designing the VG30, you couldn’t get a reliable quiet chain drive, so they went with belts. There are new “silent” chain drives that are much improved, so Nissan can use those with no penalty.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.