BMW 1986 turbo F1 engine information

[Igor]

The machinist at my office is building a dragster bike and isn't pleased with the 700hp his 1400cc engine is making. He is convinced there must be some helpfull ideas in the BMW engine as it made ridiculous power.
Does anyone know whether this engine is decribed properly in a book somewhere?

Igor
(who is really proud Delft just pulled a hat-trick at the World Solar Challenge. It must be due to all the ex Formula Student guys on the team :-)

[romkasponka]

http://www.gurneyflap.com/bmwturbof1engine.html

[Igor]

Ooh, excellent. Thanks

[Denny Trimble]

Don't forget, if you're going to run 73psi boost, you might want to look into toluene/heptane fuel:

http://patriot.net/~jonroq/Tech/octane2.html

Q: Can I just dump in 100% toluene into the tank like the F1 racers? vroom vroom vroom

A: First of all, the F1 racers did not use 100% toluene, but 84%. The other 16% in their brew is n-heptane, which has an octane rating of zero. The reason for this strange combination is because the F1 rocket fuel was limited to the rules to being of 102 RON octane. The n-heptane is "filler" to make the fuel comply with the rules.

Because toluene is such an effective anti knock fuel it also means that it is more difficult to ignite at low temperatures. The Formula 1 cars that ran on 84% toluene needed to have hot radiator air diverted to heat its fuel tank to 70C to assist its vaporization. Thus too strong a concentration of toluene will lead to poor cold start and running characteristics. I recommend that the concentration of toluene used to not exceed what the engine is capable of utilizing. i.e. Experiment with small increases in concentration until you can no longer detect an improvement.

[raska]

Some beautiful pictures in that link romkasponka posted. I love that carbon fiber compressor housing.

It's interesting too, they ran the same throttle body configuration as we are required to. I wonder how they stood up to oil leaking through the seals.

I wish by now more information about those turbo engines was available, from any kind of engine management to all specs about it and some detailed teardown pictures too.

[rjwoods77]

Take a look at the audi fsi turbo engine. Has a restricot cone on the inducer of the turbo. Looks like one of ours. Also what is neat is the exhaust right at the port. Like a mini collector comming out of the head. I am assuming that the heads have individual exhaust ports for each valve. Is this typical of the higher end race engines?

[Mike Claffey]

http://members.iinet.net.au/~rceng/Images/f1-2001-exhaust-ports.jpg

Close up of the exhaust valves of the 049 Ferrari V10 ~2001 I think. I've seen these 'port collectors' in a few other engines as well. I don't know if it's still done though.

Regards,

Mike
UWA Motorsport

[John Bucknell]

If it's a drag bike, nitromethane is just as/if not more ridiculous than running huge boost http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

But yeah, 1000 bhp/litre is nuts. Problem was the transmission popped in 3 laps, the half shafts twisted through 360 deg in the same period, the turbo got hot enough to ignite the body, etc. That's why they turned it down to only 600 bhp/litre in race trim - to make the rest of the car last.

A good book (albiet with WAY low power estimates for the turbos) is Sal Incadela's "The Anatomy & Development of Formula One Racecar from 1975", 1990 Haynes Publications, ISBN 0-85429-714-6. It has pics of the engine and installation (somewhere on here is a FSAE reading list that includes this). A recent isssue of Motorsport has an interview with Paul Roche of BMW who created that engine (and later the V12 in the McLaren F1 road car). The cover is green, and is titled "When Turbos Ruled the Earth" http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Igor]

Originally posted by John Bucknell:
If it's a drag bike, nitromethane is just as/if not more ridiculous than running huge boost http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif


Another one of the mechanics here already runs a top fuel bike, but he did a 6.07s run last weekend so he's a bit hard to catch up with.....
Better to try another class, it's cheaper too http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Igor

[benjabulle]

Hi there, I'm coming here sometimes, happy to see that you like my site gurneyflap.com. If you're looking for informations about F1 turbo engines, there's one book to buy, "The 1000 bhp grand prix cars" by Bamsey. In my "PROST" section, http://www.gurneyflap.com/prostap04photost.html , you'll find former technical drawings and setup datas of the last PROST F1 Grand prix car, that could help you.