Earliest Possible Inline Five and V-10 Engines?

Delta Force

Banned
I'm spinning this off from this thread here, where the issue of inline five and V-10 engines came up. My understanding is that such engines, or at least an inline five, would require a carburetor for each cylinder to avoid uneven fuel flow, and thus only became feasible with the development of fuel injection. However, there's some suggestion that it might be possible to compensate for the uneven fuel flow in a carbureted engine by varying bore spacing. Wikipedia claims that an inline five engine was used as early as the 1930s by Lancia for a series of trucks, and was under development for Ford for use in a passenger car, but they didn't start being commonly used for diesel and gasoline cars until the 1970s and 1980s. V-10 engines seem to be even more recent.

I'm wondering how early inline five and V-10 engines might have been technically feasible (and perhaps commercially feasible) for general use, especially for gasoline engines. If fuel injection is a major development required for the configuration this is an important distinction, as diesel engines began using fuel injection decades before gasoline engines.
 
I'm spinning this off from this thread here, where the issue of inline five and V-10 engines came up. My understanding is that such engines, or at least an inline five, would require a carburetor for each cylinder to avoid uneven fuel flow, and thus only became feasible with the development of fuel injection. However, there's some suggestion that it might be possible to compensate for the uneven fuel flow in a carbureted engine by varying bore spacing. Wikipedia claims that an inline five engine was used as early as the 1930s by Lancia for a series of trucks, and was under development for Ford for use in a passenger car, but they didn't start being commonly used for diesel and gasoline cars until the 1970s and 1980s. V-10 engines seem to be even more recent.

I'm wondering how early inline five and V-10 engines might have been technically feasible (and perhaps commercially feasible) for general use, especially for gasoline engines. If fuel injection is a major development required for the configuration this is an important distinction, as diesel engines began using fuel injection decades before gasoline engines.

I mentioned this before why would a in line 5 be harder to build with a carburetor when an in line 6 didn't have a problem. I noticed in line auto makers in the US tended to like even numbers I think they run smoother easier.
 
I think manifolding is a non issue, many long 6s had 4 barrel carbs and others had 2 single barrels, still others had a 'log' manifold with 2 or more carbs feeding into a log plenum chamber and then into the runners for the cylinders.

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A 5 cylinder could just use a pair of carbs like SUs on a log manifold.
 
Henry Ford is supposed to of had a fixation with five cylinder engines. Numerous prototypes were built but nothing ever came near production. One thing with a five is you always have one rotation of the crankshaft that is short on power stroke. A V-10 with a 90° angle between as in the Dodge Viper also suffers from uneven firing impulses. In terms of power,smoothness, mechanical reliability, economy of manufacture the "normal" inline fours, sixes and v types along with the opposed types are the best best.
 
Henry Ford is supposed to of had a fixation with five cylinder engines. Numerous prototypes were built but nothing ever came near production. One thing with a five is you always have one rotation of the crankshaft that is short on power stroke. A V-10 with a 90° angle between as in the Dodge Viper also suffers from uneven firing impulses. In terms of power,smoothness, mechanical reliability, economy of manufacture the "normal" inline fours, sixes and v types along with the opposed types are the best best.

Even without the energy crisis would the muscle cars go above 8 cylinders? The horsepower they are getting out of the turbo eco-boost on a v8 why go bigger. Yes cars like the Viper and Corvette might but nothing else really needs it.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Henry Ford is supposed to of had a fixation with five cylinder engines. Numerous prototypes were built but nothing ever came near production. One thing with a five is you always have one rotation of the crankshaft that is short on power stroke. A V-10 with a 90° angle between as in the Dodge Viper also suffers from uneven firing impulses. In terms of power,smoothness, mechanical reliability, economy of manufacture the "normal" inline fours, sixes and v types along with the opposed types are the best best.

How much of an issue would the instability have been when Ford was developing inline five engines? From what I've read even the crossplane V8 crankshaft was challenging to develop, and four cylinder arrangements have more stability than one, two, three, or five cylinders.

Even without the energy crisis would the muscle cars go above 8 cylinders? The horsepower they are getting out of the turbo eco-boost on a v8 why go bigger. Yes cars like the Viper and Corvette might but nothing else really needs it.

Historically the V10 has only found application on trucks, the Dodge Viper, and a few recent race and luxury/sports cars. Even then the V10 is mostly a compromise design, allowing for smaller cylinders and more responsiveness than a V8, while being shorter than a V12.

The inline five seems to have more going for it than the V10, as it is designed to allow transverse vehicles to have more power without the length issues of an inline six or the complexity and lower smoothness of a V6.
 
Carburation was never an issue with inline 5's. There have been numerous inline sixes built with single barrel carburation. True they may not have had ideal mixture control but they did yoeman service in millions of passenger cars and light trucks. I think for the I5 to be acceptable for general use it really came down to when computers became sufficently powerful to aid in the design process and electronic engine management systems became available.

The flat plane crank can be thought of as two I4's on a common crankshaft. Their primary and secondary forces are out of sync and at right angles to each other. They make great power but run but run rough. A classic example is the Cosworth DFV. One reason I think the flat crank was used was it was cheaper and easier to forge the crank that way in he limited number of engines being built. As an aside modern V-6 cranks are forged in a flat orelientation and then twisted as a final step in order to get the crankpins offset by 120°s from the center pin or set of pins. The 60° V-6 is kind of a bastard child. Ideally a V-6 should be with the banks at 120° but for packaging reasons is usually 60°s. Unless it is one of VW's VR6's which are v-type engines its just that the v angle is 15°s. This allows the use of a single cylinder head and a six cylinder that fits in a space about as long as an I4 and not much wider. And VW didn't dream them up. IIRC Lacia had a V-4 or 6 in the 60s built that way. Goes back farther than I thought and lasted longer too. The big problem imo withese narrow angle engines is the exhuast porting of the cylinders on the "intake" side of the engine. The Lancia was just weird. VW uses the top of the cylinder to form the cumbustion chamber. Lancia not only did that but used a semi hemispherical head as well
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...sFNMmUSt6F0qxfXYQ&sig2=0ylNGEhIvIOyva8ZsPDxTQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhCTVxlgRHc
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...9DDQZHYvRYYWIbHgQ&sig2=fAlWvSDL4rLvPLGLAfJggA
 
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