My cousin is convinced the new viper will have a V18 engine. He doesn’t believe me when i tell him he’s wrong. Could someone say why this is impossible in layman’s terms?
Not Impossible, just Highly Unlikely.
This page mentions an example of a 7,600 horsepower V-18 engine in a British generating plant.
BCE
but would that thing be able to fit in a road-legal car? I doubt it.
Well, it’s not a physical impossibility, if that’s what you’re asking.
Cadillac had a V-12 and a V-16 in the early thirties, Lamborghini has had a V-12 in production cars since the late sixties, and the current Viper engine is, of course, a V-10.
About ten or twelve years ago, a fellow featured in a hot-rod type car magazine showed off a V-16 that he had made by “sequentially furnace brazing” two small-block Chevy V-8 blocks together, as well as four cylinder heads, and all the ancillaries, like an intake, valve covers and an oil pan.
The work was seamless and looked factory-stock. He had a distributor made to carry sixteen contacts, ran it on a pair of four-barrels, and dynoed it at something like 700 horsepower.
Realistically, that’s another question. Chrysler/Dodge is unlikely to tool up a brand-new engine like that, simply for the limited-number Viper production. Modelling and tooling for something like that is horrendously expensive; from molds and casting systems, machining, rewriting engine-control software, dyno testing, materials costs…
The only reason the Viper got its V-10 in the first place is because head management at Chrysler justified it as a gas bigblock for the truck line, to compete with GM’s 502 and Ford’s 427.
They would NOT have tooled it up just for the Viper, without that. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll tool up yet again for another like that.
Perhaps your cousin saw the Cadillac V-16 shown at the recent auto show, and confused it with a Chrysler product.
Well, 9 cylinders is a common configuarion for radial airplane engines, and there are dual bank rotarys
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1945/naca-report-822/
maybe he is talking about this:
http://www.autoweb.com.au/start_110/showall_/id_VWN/doc_vwg9810083/cms/news/newsarticle.html
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Downs/9323/bugatti.htm
(pic of engine)
Brian
Doc-
That magazine was Popular Hot Rodding from around September '98.
My first guess is that it wouldn’t fit into a standard-sized car. Think of the size of a normal V-8 and then double it’s length. My recollection is that the Viper will continue to be a V-10.
Ferrari has several different models with V-12s in them, but even that is only 66% of a V-18.
A main reason why you don’t see V-16 engines is vibration/stress. A V-16 would have a very long crankshaft, camshafts, etc. For the same reason, you don’t often see inline-8 engines.
You can pack in more cylinders in a ‘W’ configuraton wth three banks. A W-18 would be possible.
I would say a W-18 is possible, considering one exists (see my links above)
The R-4360-61 had 28 cylinders, and probably the most for any vehicle engine that was made in quantity (tho there might be ship engines with more)
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/engines/eng34a.htm
Link to 24 cylinder rumor
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Speedway/5350/maybach.htm
Brian
The Cadillac Sixteen already features a V16 engine… Would it really be all that unbelievable for a V18 to be next, albeit unpracticle and unlikely?
http://www.cardesignnews.com/autoshows/2003/detroit/highlights/h06-cadillac-sixteen.html
This one?
Sorry couldn’t resist. It’s in the museum across the street.
bugatti veyron has W16. ( bugatti, and audi are owned by VW, and VW thats where they get their W engines from ).
but you can NOT have a W18 engine, cuz 18 does not divide into 4.
anything with a V has to divide in to 2, anything with a W into 4.
now Viper uses the egine straight off of dodge trucks, just tuned differently. its a 8 liter 10 cylinder. maybe he got 8 and 10 lumped together in his mind ? the new viper is also going to have the same engine, just tuned to higher horsepower.
somehow i dont see Dodge Ram pickup with 18 cylinders 
That’s the one PMH. Museum? I wonder why nobody’s put it in a street rod? I’d kill to see that badboy with eight Weber DCOEs in a stretched-nose steel-body '32 repro. 
vasyachkin- I’m not sure what you mean by “divide into four”. A “W”-18 would have three banks of six cylinders, a “V”-18 would have two banks of nine.
Unless you mean the crank throws, where a standard V-8 usually has four throws oriented 90° apart. This is indeed a valid point, but probably not insurmountable- the Viper V-10, for example, has five throws oriented 72° apart, though it has to use a counterbalance shaft to suppress the secondary vibration.
GM was working on a late-model V-10 a few years back, if only for research purposes. This had pairs of throws at 72 degrees, but each pair was offset, like the old even-fire Buick V-6s. So instead of five individual throws like on the Dodge, the GM had five pairs of throws, where the two rods were on one journal, but the journal was offset to itself by a few degrees.
This and a little thought into the ignition timing, would produce a nice, smooth 90-degree firing order.
I can’t even guess how a V-18 crank would look- nine throws at 40°?- but I doubt it’s impossible (though it might vibrate something awful.) A W-18 would use 60-degree throws.
Oh yeah- how about a “Triple-Vee-Forty-eight”?
Gah! What is that monstrosity! Does it even work?
Looks like BS to me; look at the tiny tires, hardly even deflected. My guess would be a phony shell over a fairly conventional bike engine.
The Cizeta Moroder ( http://www.giorgiomorodergallery.com/moroder/cizeta.html ) had a V16 engine with a displacement of 5995cc- easy enough to fit into a supercar engine bay, or a larger luxury car… the Mercedes S-Class, for examply.
The caveat is it has to be mounted transversely in a mid-engined vehicle, which means the car is going to be extremely wide (ie. previous generation Corvette ZR-1)
Incidentally, existing W-xx engines are composed of four banks of cylinders, hence the “W” designation- vasyachin is correct.
You could theoretically build an uneven W, though, with, say, two banks of five and two outside banks of four, to produce a W-18. Whether or not this would realistically work depends on much you’re willing to spend on balancer shafts and heavily adjustable valve timing, I imagine.
Once again, I will pint out that IS a W-18 engine
http://www.autoweb.com.au/start_110/showall_/id_VWN/doc_vwg9810083/cms/news/newsarticle.html
quote:
The model name EB 118 is taken from the first 18 cylinder engine to be used in a passenger vehicle. This engine, which was developed at Volkswagen and has a deliberately compact construction, has three banks of 6 cylinders joined together in a “W” formation. This promises the lowest possible levels of engine noise
The geocities link above has a picture of the engine (the site is currently overloaded) the 3 banks are look =sort of like this:
|/ or |/_
Brian
Brian
More info on the W engines. http://autozine.kyul.net/technical_school/engine/tech_engine_packaging.htm
Note how the W-18 is not similar to the W-12 & W-16. The W18 has 3 banks of 6 while the W12 & W16 have 4 banks of 3 or 4.
And that is yet one more example of GM playing bait and switch with car buyers. There have never been even semi-serious plans for Cadillac to bring the car to production, no matter how much people beg and plead. It’s just something for Cadillac to throw together so they can distract domestic car owners from the fact that their cars are still shodily made with more attention paid to pointless bells and whistles then quality,durability and craftsmanship.