By Colin Wood
Mar 31, 2022
Is the Bentley W12 really just two VR6 engines stuck together?
At any rate, watching the formidable engine get built and tested is almost like watching an automotive ASMR video.
3/31/22 6:13 p.m.
Egads, that looks complicated.
3/31/22 11:38 p.m.
I just want to say that the shot of the bare block is nuts. It's like the engineers sweated the tiniest detail and then let an intern who had never seen an engine do the cylinder layout.
I like the guides on the rods, that's a neat trick.
3/31/22 11:45 p.m.
At 4:30, was that a compression check?
4/1/22 6:19 p.m.
I'm confused, how do the cylinder bores line up with the crank centerline? It doesn't seem as if all of them can be lined up at the same time, (maybe none of them?) or doesn't that matter anymore?
4/1/22 7:05 p.m.
It is a VR6 based engine, the cylinders are at a 15 degree angle to each other, and they are staggered like that so the bottoms clear each other. It is odd but nothing new, Lancia did something like that over fifty years ago.
The decks in the heads are flat, the cylinders are not perpendicular to the deck, combustion chamber is in the piston. Just like a 348/409
VW is nothing if not pragmatic. They develop ONE engine and then add cylinders or banks as necessary to change the displacement. Inline four begat inline fives and inline sixes and then V6s and V8s off the same basic architecture, the new inline five architecture (which shared a lot with the old) begat a V10 and V8 and in some ways a new I4. VR6 begat VR5 and W8 and W12. And they ALL share a lot of cylinder head components.
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