coomsey:
ERF:
coomsey:
I need some help with this please. Is it industry normal to design the engine, make one then see if it works? Cheers PaulYes Paul, at least it was in the 1960’s, especially so with a clean sheet design.
The stages of development for the AEC V8 should have been…
Concept
Design Drawings
Materials Selection and Testing
Prototype Working Drawings
Prototype Casting and Machining
Prototype Engine Assembly and Testing
Development Review (back to step 2 if required)
More Prototype Engine Testing
Another Development Review
Production Drawings
Production Tooling
Engine into ProductionAEC went from step 6 straight to step 10 with the V8.
Aah! The 6 to 10 thing I get the reasons behind it. So when the V8 was on the drawing board was there anything that should have been a definite no no or was it a ■■■■ it n see thing? I ask these simple questions of you to try n make a bit more sense of this thread. Thanks Paul
Well, Carryfast will no doubt bombard you as he continually has everyone else with his opinion on the stroke dimension, but for reasons he chooses to ignore, it was decided on, it was there, and that was that. It played no significant part in the mechanical failings of this engine I can assure you, but our resident engine design guru will disagree.
Should the engineers have seen it’s actual shortcomings at the Design Drawing stage?. No. These were highly experienced and regarded engine designers, and this was the very first automotive V8 Diesel engine to be designed and built in Great Britain, so the AEC engineers had absolutely no relevant previous data to work with. Cooling any V8 evenly is notoriously difficult by it’s nature, and many lessons that are still relevant today were learned from the AEC V8.
The fact that AEC produced a very compact and powerful engine that not only ran, but was actually capable of any service life - even with the regular intensive maintenance it relied on - at literally the very first attempt is an amazing achievement. We can only speculate as to how good this engine would have been with proper development. The AEC engineers should be celebrated for it, not that they ever will be on here… 