Worst Performance Engine of All TIme

porschenut said:

I vote for vega. Went to General Motors Institute in the 70's and the design failures were discussed in many classes. Poor manufacturing processes and bad design killed that car before one hit the showroom. Mine had the wonderful habit of locking into reverse at random. It would go into reverse but wouldn't come out. Had to pick my parking spaces VERY carefully. Sold it with less than 20K miles, just before the engine went.

Note on the 924. They were very tough engines, but had the weirdest combustion chamber design around. Head was dead flat, chamber was in the piston. To increase compression you had to change pistons or mill the block. Getting horsepower out of one with the stock CR was a waste of time. I tried webers, cams, headers and nothing really worked.

That design was called the heron head( Flathead, combustion chamber in the pistons)  developed in England for Formula 2 

The advantage was massive air flow!  No shrouding of the valves like a normal head has. When the intake valve was opening it exposed the whole cylinder to air/fuel to flow into the engine. Unshrouded  unlike a normal combustion chamber which only offered a portion for free flow to the mixture, the rest had to curve around the valve and however recessed the combustion chamber  forced the air to curve around.  

The recess in the piston was Hemi shaped since flame from ignition  burns in a ball.  

 Easy to reshape combustion chamber as more efficient chambers are developed.

Low emission since fuel entered the cylinder atomized unlike a regular head which will have some fuel still in liquid form caused by solidifying upon contact with the edge of the chamber. 

The weakness of any Hemi chamber is it responds best at extremely elevated RPM.  

aussiesmg said:

Seriously guys if the engine ran at 100K it was better than the Stag V8, most failed before 50K, very few made it past 75K.

I have 4, the lowest mileage is 27K the highest 64K, they are all 73 models and none has run in many years.

Made 180hp, it's only redeeming feature is that is the sweetest sound V8 sound ever.

The SS454 had no power but they are still running, puts it way ahead of the pitiful Triumph effort at a V8, it was so bad they dumped it and used the aforementioned 3.5 in the TR8.

The 454 made lousy power in the 1980’s and into the 1990’s mercruiser sold 300 horsepower 350’s and 310 horsepower 454’s 

Looked back on some of the older posts in this Lazarus thread and agree that the Iron Puke (so named for what the bottom ends often did) were among the worst of the day.  Poor breathing, low red line and some factory dim bulb arranged to combine a standing fit oil filter with dodgy anti-drain back valve with a ECM program that resulted in an instant 3,000 fast idle the second the engine fired - which was often 10 seconds before oil hit the bearings.  No surprise that it puked the innards after repeated abuse like that.

We spent a lot of time on the Fiero forums telling people that wanted coax more power out of them that the sensible move was to stick in the V6 also available for the car.

An output of 42 bhp per liter was only slightly below the other over-rated 'performance' engine, the first generation Viper, which managed a lofty 50 bhp/liter (pathetic by any standards but if you make the engine twice as big as most others the 400 bhp output looked respectable).even though it peaked at 4600 rpm.  The specific output was lower than the siamesed port MGB engine.

For comparison, the Austin Healey 100 had a 2660 cc 4 banger that put out 90 bhp (old style) and red lined at 4800. And it was a prewar engine with tax formula determined bore to stroke ratio affected all engines - you got small bore sizes, long strokes and poor breathing - they abandoned it in 1947.

Footnote on the Triumph Stag V8 - yes, it was a dud, and it was ironic that the only reason management went that way was that when BMC merged with Leyland (Triumph) in 1968, , the upper management came from the Triumph side and even though it made little sense, because BMC had a very useful small, light all alloy V8 in the BOP derived 3.5, then used in the Rovers, they decided to make a new V8 of their own and managed to lay an egg.

The problems with that engine are enumerated here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_Stag

I always thought it was a fairy attractive looking car and ironically, although management alleged at the time that the Rover V8 wouldn't fit, it does and at a 100 lb. weight saving and with the potential of more power as well.

frenchyd said:

The 454 made lousy power in the 1980’s and into the 1990’s mercruiser sold 300 horsepower 350’s and 310 horsepower 454’s 

Most of the 80s and early 90s Mercruiser 454s were 330 or 340hp (depending on which version you bought).  My parents have a pair of the 454/340hp Mercruisers in their 86 Chris Craft.  The Mercruiser "high performance" version of the 454 was 360 - 370hp from the late 80s on up. 

In reply to rslifkin : the 1994 version I looked at to replace my 1979 Sea Ray said 300-310.   300 was a 350 and 310 was the 454  but the 454 weighed something like 280 pounds more ( I can look it up, I still have literature from  that search) 

but by then all the teak was gone. One of the reasons I selected the Sea Ray over my beloved Chris Craft was all that beautiful teak.  

To me the Chris Craft looked too plastic where my Sea Ray looked like the old woodies I’d grown up on and loved. B it by 1994 so did the Sea Ray.  

Which is why I still own that Sea Ray.  That and the fact that it’s given me nearly 4 decades of fun with a minimum of maintenance. 

Yeah this thread.  So far SBC, 454, Toyota 22R, Honda D16A, Chrysler T1. Am I on the right forum, this is GRM right?

In reply to 8valve :

Yeah, I'm not putting much stock in those responses. And as much as I want to agree with Loosecannon's vote for the flathead ford, fact is that engine was a literal outgrowth of a tractor motor that was built to be cheap and easy to service at it's core. The number of aftermarket parts and support to this day is merely because they are STILL available cheaply, since ford couldn't (and still cant) allow something to die with dignity.

As for my vote- the Cadillac Northstar. Only one person- Raze- brought the damn thing up, which shows that the hard lessons it taught are rapidly being forgotten. Think of any *bad* thing that can happen to a vehicle's engine- anything- and somewhere in an american scrapyard there is a yanked Northstar on the dirt, sidelined for that very reason. Warped headgaskets? Of course! Crankshaft bearing failure? Yep! Engine block cracking in half like an egg? Hey, if you're gonna miss heaven, WHY MISS IT BY INCHES EH? GM! MARK OF EXCELLENCE!

The final thing to note about the eponymous lump of hate and failed promises- there was no reason for it. When you could buy a Cadillac in 2004 with a Northstar, GM had already been putting the LS and it's derivatives into anything and everything that could accept it, and even in stock trim they both are exceedingly similar in power, revs and torque. That to me is the final cincher, the cherry on top of this lump of berkeley- there was just no need for it, bouyed by a company fat on market overestimation. I have no doubt there exists a pie chart deep within GM that shows how much of the needed 2008 bailouts was just due to Cadillac.

VWs W8 strikes me as an example of a terrible engine.  Overly complicated, in sufficiently developed, underpowered, prone to failure, then abandoned by the manufacturer.

Dodge 2.2 “Turbo 2” engines.  Crappy packaging, lack of an intercooler, heat soak, miserable lumps.

Has anybody mentioned the smog hampered L48 from my 75 Corvette? 165hp stock. 

Ford's version of the Navistar VT 365.  AKA the 6.0 Powerstroke would get my vote.  Almost single handily responsible for keeping the archaic 7.3 in high demand even today.

amazingly Navistar somehow avoided most of the issues in their implementation.

In reply to wspohn : I understand the Daimler 2.5 “Hemi” went by the way to keep from competing with Jaguar’s 2.4 six.  But why couldn’t it have powered the Triumph’s?  

From everything I’ve read it was a good engine.

KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:

VWs W8 strikes me as an example of a terrible engine.  Overly complicated, in sufficiently developed, underpowered, prone to failure, then abandoned by the manufacturer.

Dodge 2.2 “Turbo 2” engines.  Crappy packaging, lack of an intercooler, heat soak, miserable lumps.

 

Um, Turbo II/III/IV were all intercooled.  Packaging compared to similar engines of the time period were pretty good.  You just had to not come at them like a knuckle dragger and think critically about repairing them.

TurboI weren’t intercooled and the 84-87 versions were pretty terrible in their implementation.  88-95 the TurboI was packaged better and easier to intercool, but they also upped the displacement from 2.2 to 2.5 from 89-on along with a ton of other improvements.

vwcorvette said:

Has anybody mentioned the smog hampered L48 from my 75 Corvette? 165hp stock. 

Yet people pulled 284 horsepower V12’s to put the Chevy motor in?  

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

Other way around.  The Flathead V8 was developed from the Ford Model A which was a updated Ford Model T. 

Yes the model A engine later went into Ford tractors but it was a car engine first!  

The Flathead V8 was THE engine of the 1930’s 40’s and early 50’s   It was sold to the French who updated the block castings and used it through the 1970’s in their military vehicles. It is still highly prized by collectors. 

frenchyd said:

vwcorvette said:

Has anybody mentioned the smog hampered L48 from my 75 Corvette? 165hp stock. 

Yet people pulled 284 horsepower V12’s to put the Chevy motor in?  

Yes.  Yes, they did, because a running 165 horsepower will beat a broken 284 horsepower all day long.

Streetwiseguy said:

frenchyd said:

vwcorvette said:

Has anybody mentioned the smog hampered L48 from my 75 Corvette? 165hp stock. 

Yet people pulled 284 horsepower V12’s to put the Chevy motor in?  

Yes.  Yes, they did, because a running 165 horsepower will beat a broken 284 horsepower all day long.

Also because fixing the smog strangling is actually as easy as changing parts to less smog strangled versions and upping the CR back to something reasonable.

Fixing the V12’s issues are less easy for those outside of the narrow field of those that know.  Even guys I’ve known that work on British sports cars, wouldn’t have a problem with swapping for another motor as they understand the challenges involved.

Kind of surprised I found this old motorcycle article on the interwebs but I remember being amused by it when I first read it.

edit.  Just realized the link didn't take first time around. 

Honda NR500.

Streetwiseguy said:

frenchyd said:

vwcorvette said:

Has anybody mentioned the smog hampered L48 from my 75 Corvette? 165hp stock. 

Yet people pulled 284 horsepower V12’s to put the Chevy motor in?  

Yes.  Yes, they did, because a running 165 horsepower will beat a broken 284 horsepower all day long.

No matter your thoughts on it, having a business thats been around for many years called Jags That Run is hilarious. Really too, the SBC is probably the cheapest engine out there to hop up and there are parts everywhere.

There are fans of every engine out there somewhere, i doubt there is a engine that everyone hates.

This thread revival brought back a post from m030, I didn't realize it was an old post and started at the beginning. Man I miss my friend. Made me happy to see his avatar. 

M030 said:

It was EC back when they were good (1996). They eventually got 150hp out of the 924 engine with a hotter cam, ported head and side draft Webers. The intake manifold was the 'bottleneck' and it was the side draft carbs that freed up the hp.

All that being said, I agree, the 924 2.0 engine sucked.

Miss you buddy!

There's good reason why if you go to a local race track that the majority of cars, and in some cases, ALL the cars will be small block Chev powered.

Suprf1y said:

There's good reason why if you go to a local race track that the majority of cars, and in some cases, ALL the cars will be small block Chev powered.

I fully support the right to run an alternate engine. Watching Mopar guys try to make a 360 live can be fun.  Fast but fussy.  We even have a guy with a Cleveland.  Fast, but expensive.

No question a small block Chev is the intelligent choice, but variety is fun, if only by giving us an excuse to tease people.

In reply to Carbon :

what is 'EC'?  I tried googling but had no luck. 

nutherjrfan said:

In reply to Carbon :

what is 'EC'?  I tried googling but had no luck. 

European Car Magazine, specifically the May and June 1996 issues:

http://eturbo924.webstarts.com/uploads/924_Bolt_on_Bonanza_1.htm

http://eturbo924.webstarts.com/uploads/924_Bolt_on_Bonanza_2.htm