Gav

I was just thinking the other day why ferrari who pride themselves on F1 technology in their road cars would put a V12 in their flagship car? With F1 cars at the time having V10 engines it made me wonder why they wouldnt use one of those instead

What are the advantages of a V12 over a V10??

Gav..

Pumpkin

2 extra cylinders therefore power is spread over more cylinders.
better balanced and hence smoother.

Brendan Hughes

Not an expert in the slightest, but maybe the question works better the other way round - why are they limited to a V10 in F1?

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

V8 now though!

Trying to slow the cars down I think?

NotoriousREV

They're not, they're limited to V8 (unless heavily restricted)

scoobysnacks

But they still produce over 700 bhp at around 19000 revs! Wonder how many years it will be before a road car comes close to this kind of power per litre with a normally aspirated engine (over 290bhp per litre from their 2.4 v8's)?

Gav

Thats what confused me, with them going to V8's i would have thought they would have used all the technology they have gathered from the V10 and put that in an Enzo instead?!!!

The V8 in the F430 is a masterpiece though

R1916v

Isn't it something liek the best balanced engines are in multiples of 6? So could have been done for that.

Plus whilst owning an Enzo isn't exactly going to be cheap, F1 engines must need rebuilding/replacing a lot which isn't ideal for a road car, so giving it a V12 might be less stressful on everything?

I could be talking bs though so ignore me!

Brendan Hughes

About as long as it takes for people to want to pay for them to be rebuilt by factory mechanics every day

Reffro

V12's have primary balance, V10's don't, so you don't need to use counterweights to keep the engine from shredding itself.

But the most logical reason that Ferrari use the V12 is that's what there fast cars have always had. The first Ferrari was 2.0 litre V12, and they have continued to build 12 cylinder engines to this day for use in there fastest road cars. When the F1 cars used boxer 12, they built a boxer 12 for the road. The only exception being the V8 turbo developed for the group B regs that went on to feature in 288GTO and F40.

As to why they didn't use a V10 in road cars, you have to know why they were built for F1 in the first place. Renault built the first one to be used, as they wanted a combination of the V8 torque and V12 power, so they put 8 and 12 together and got 10. Ferrari continued for years after the V10 first came out to use the V12, because they are Ferrari and they must have a V12. The change to 3 litre engines from the previous 3.5 engines after Senna's crash meant that a V12 engine became uncompetitive. It could make the power but didn't have the torque, so Ferrari were forced to take the pragmatic decision to go to V10. They didn't do it out of choice, and they needed help in designing a V10 to work properly, rumour was that Honda was in the background helping them after their own exit from F1 in 1992.

So a V10 was never going to be built by Ferrari out of choice.

scoobysnacks

I know they are rebuilt/replaced after two race weekends, (if they survive that long...) but as engineering knowledge progresses you may one day be able to reproduce this kind of power per litre in a engine that can go on reliably for thousands of miles before a rebuild. 50 years ago (for example) we probably couldn't even imagine the power we can get form engines today so where will we be in another 50 years?
Anyone got the stats for race engines from 50 years ago, to see how today's best road car engines match up?

Brendan Hughes

Sorry, you're absolutely right, I missed the word "years"

slim_boy_fat

Number of cylinders doesnt have a bearing on torque, the amount of air and fuel you burn does!!! i.e. engine capacity. Generally the more cylinders the her the revs the more power.

The V10 was used because its more compact, shorter by 2 cylinders therfore lighter and better aerodynamics.

CrisPDuk

In F1 The V10 was first introduced, then enforced (ask toyota about their stillborn F1 V12) because apparently a 300cc bore/stroke combination is about the best compromise between power obtainable and friction losses.

Road cars are different, lets face it, if you've just paid half a million quid for your new Ferrari supercar, and it has 2 less cylinders than the Pagani/Lamborghini/McLaren equivalent, you're always going to be left with the feeling of 'if it's this good with ten, what would it be like with twelve'

Plus everybody knows that nothing manmade makes a better noise than an angry V12 on full noise Merlin/Griffon anyone


PS Anyone who brings up the Carrera GTs V10 is obviously not aware that the people at Zuffenhausen have always ploughed their own furrow

carl

IIRC they recruited Osamu Goto from Honda to design the first Ferrari V10. Then he went on to design the 3-pot in the Foggy Petronas superbike (it's essentially 30% of a Ferrari V10).

carl

Agreed. I keep getting tempted to buy an old XJS or BMW 750i to get a cheap V12 fix.

Carl2

Better still at night running water meths

Lmfracing

Why not in a Skyline ?

Skyline-V12

Gav

Bloody hell this is a blast from the past

And that skyline is

craigdmcd

iTrader: (2)

Does the comparison of a V12 to a V10 stack up like a straight 6 to a straight 5 where a 5 does not have an opposite cylinder at BDC when on it's firing stroke to use up energy to push it past this point. Is this not another favoured point of V10's (two 5's put together)?

Pumpkin

when people are happy to have a car with engine life expectancy of around 12 hours if your're very very lucky.

scoobysmiff

iTrader: (2)

they prob went with the V12 cos they have had lots of experience with them over the years, if F1 was still aloud to use V12's then they ALL would, they went to V10's and grooved tyres in an effort to reduce lap times, speeds and to increase the potential to overtake, didn't work very well though as the engineers just came up with better and better solutions to get around the lack (relative) of power and delivery.
IIrc, Toyota when first dipped their toes in the F1 circus, had developed a V12 which was reputed to be the most powerfull of them all, but, when they signed on the dotted line and commited themselves to race, the rules were changed and V10's became the order of the day!
V12's for Ferrari are old news and thus would prob have been the safe bet for them, no need for development as most had been done?

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Its cos two litre pintos are in very short supply these days.

CrisPDuk

The rule change actually occurred before Toyota announced their intention to enter F1, it was really more a case of the Japanese not reading the latest version of the fine print properly. Not for the first time either - see the convoluted history of Honda's NR750 superbike

Ferrari stopped making a V12 F1 engine solely because they couldn't make one that was competitive against everybody else's V10s.
They only signed up to the V10 only rule change after they'd ensured their own V10 was viable, and knowing the Italians, they only did it to prevent anyone else succeeding where they had failed (see Toyota).

CrisPDuk

What's that then, two Skyline heads on a common block?

Dracoro

In a road car, I think you have to look at Honda. THe S2000 has 120bhp per litre. No doubt Honda will have a sports car (new s2000 or nsx etc.) with 150bhp per litre. 450bhp 3 litre yum.

The difference is that to have the high revs in a road car you also need drivability at low revs so you'll always have vtec type setups that give you both. A racar doesn't need the 'drivability' at low revs as it's always high in the range which is unsuitable for a road car. Look at the F1 when they show you the revs/gear/speed images, they hardly ever go below 8/9000 rpm.