- This topic has 29 replies, 19 voices, and was last updated 7 years ago by nedrapier.
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2, 3, 4, 5, or 6… Which is best?
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rkk01Free MemberPosted 7 years ago
Cylinders of course 🙂
(ignoring the 8, 10, 12 cyl exotica)
So, in motorcycletrackworld, 2 & 3 are revered by many for their sound, 4 is vanilla – but hugely capable, 5 an oddity / race exotica and 6 for big cruisers / tourers
Whereas in cars, 4 also dominates, but 2 and 3 becoming more common, with a significant emissions driven shift to fewer. Shockingly, even Porsche have now switched from 6 to 4 for the Cayman.
I’d love a twin or triple in a bike, and after having test driven a 20v Fiat many years ago, I’d love to try a 5cyl car again – but don’t know that there are any still on the market (new anyway)
mikewsmithFree MemberPosted 7 years agonothing at all wrong with 4 but hopefully 0 at some point soon. With maybe a mp3 of the sound you want to hear
scotroutesFull MemberPosted 7 years agoIIRC there were some studies indicating that 300-350cc was the optimum size of cylinder for a naturally aspirated 4 stroke engine, so multiples of 325cc would be “best”.
650 twins, 1,000 triples etc
tomhowardFull MemberPosted 7 years agoOther than the Morgan 3 wheeler, not sure there are any 2cyl cars?
And 6, obviously.
rkk01Free MemberPosted 7 years agoYes, I deliberately pitched at 20th Century tech…
Tried a BMW i3 a while back – hugely impressive, but it’s too small for our current needs and the pricing really doesn’t work at the mo.
rkk01Free MemberPosted 7 years agoTwins are getting more common in cars – Mrs rkk01’s Fiat has their turbocharged twinair engine
nickjbFree MemberPosted 7 years agoWith maybe a mp3 of the sound you want to hear
Played inside the helmet so we don’t have to listen to the awful racket the bikers seem to think is acceptable
twistyFull MemberPosted 7 years ago2 Well I had a 2 pot Wankel which was awesome, would spit flames out of the exhaust when changing gear above 9,000RPM but I guess that doesn’t count.
3 Sounded badass in a very muffled way even though I knew it had no power, only good thing about that bloody corsa
4 Had Suzuki G13B which I was rather attached to just something about the way they pull which is really nice.
5 never tried
6 Had a V6 – Sounds really awesome, biggest problem is they encourage you to lead foot it just to hear it roar.hammyukFree MemberPosted 7 years agonickjb – Member
With maybe a mp3 of the sound you want to hear
Played inside the helmet so we don’t have to listen to the awful racket the bikers seem to think is acceptableYour rock is over there…
On the left….
Behind the professionally offended…
Off you go….
mikewsmithFree MemberPosted 7 years agoAh quick to spot the bikers, your road is over there, just pick up the silencer on the way
hammyukFree MemberPosted 7 years agoOh look – the forum’s number one offended professional is up and out of bed..
CoyoteFree MemberPosted 7 years agoHad a 3 cylinder Polo. Biggest pile of crap I’ve ever had the misfortune to drive. Put me off VW for life.
sockpuppetFull MemberPosted 7 years agoSo they made one small car you didn’t like: obviously means everything they’ll ever make again at any size of car or engine sucks. Well done.
andehFull MemberPosted 7 years agoThe bigger Volvo diesel engines (D5, D4?) are 5 cylinder…..but I don’t know if diesel counts in this case?
Our 2.4 5c is quite growly and guttural, a bit unrefined, maybe? It is a diesel, after all.
NorthwindFull MemberPosted 7 years agoscotroutes – Member
IIRC there were some studies indicating that 300-350cc was the optimum size of cylinder for a naturally aspirated 4 stroke engine, so multiples of 325cc would be “best”.
Sounds like legit science to me (and not just because I have a 650 twin)
Cars, with a few noble exceptions unless it’s a V8, it just doesn’t matter. Whatever fills the space and makes the car go.
twistyFull MemberPosted 7 years agoIIRC there were some studies indicating that 300-350cc was the optimum size of cylinder for a naturally aspirated 4 stroke engine, so multiples of 325cc would be “best”.
But quite a few awesome motors break this rule.
[video]https://youtu.be/OnEA-m8cVcE[/video]
mboyFree MemberPosted 7 years ago4 is vanilla – but hugely capable
When arranged inline, maybe… Arranged in a V formation however, I can assure you that something truly wonderful results!
CoyoteFree MemberPosted 7 years agoSo they made one small car you didn’t like: obviously means everything they’ll ever make again at any size of car or engine sucks. Well done.
VW fanboi are we. Here have a peanut.
tonyg2003Full MemberPosted 7 years agoI do have a bit of thing for 6’s. In line BMW or Nissan, Vee Alfa please 🙂 and flat sixes of Porsche.
Having said that a good 4 or a Fiat twin would do nicely too.
rkk01Free MemberPosted 7 years agoDidn’t the Focus ST run with a Volvo derived 5 at some stage…?
Always fancied the VFR800 – just to say that I do recognise that some 4s are interesting 😉
I also liked the small Mercedes 4 with the supercharger, well I liked the blower whine
Bike motors on my “like to have a play” wish list
2 – lots to choose from 🙂 Ducati, Rotax (from the Millie), BMW 800…
3 – Triumph
4 – VFR
5 – unlikely
6 – too scaredCars:
2 – Fiat Twinair – but in something stripped out & very light
3 – ???
4 – too much choice. The Abarth tuned Fiat 1.4 is fun, wouldn’t mind trying that in the 124
5 – Fiat Coupe 20v (still – tell me if you see a good one)
6 –something German, but silky smooth inline or entertaining flat 6…?nope: that insane new Alfa V6 😈jamesgarbettFree MemberPosted 7 years agoI had a Fiat Coupe 20V Turbo back in the day
Quick in a straight line but less good around corners
Over 200 bhp through the front wheels was interesting in the wet too
Build quality was iffy
Unusual looking – quite distinctive – mine was blue with a blue stripe along the dash to match
Ming the MercilessFree MemberPosted 7 years agoSupercharged 4, Kawasaki H2R (full power version = 300BHP, my old 7R weighs about the same and made 118!)
nicko74Full MemberPosted 7 years ago8 doesn’t have to be exotic: Vauxhall Monaro, some Audis, BMWs and Mercs do it.
V8 for me, just for the rumble – it feels grown up (even though one acts like a child with it…)
nedrapierFull MemberPosted 7 years ago4 is vanilla – but hugely capable
As per mboy, rkko1, and nicko – V4, half a V8, a lot of the same character:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHSGM7-lcME[/video]
or flat/boxer
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NQwFBQb_Vc[/video]CountZeroFull MemberPosted 7 years agoSo, in motorcycletrackworld, 2 & 3 are revered by many for their sound, 4 is vanilla – but hugely capable, 5 an oddity / race exotica and 6 for big cruisers / tourers
Four isn’t always vanilla, especially when it’s an original design:
Squariel – Aerial Square Four
And I’m not sure this qualifies as just a big cruiser/tourer:Honda CBX 1000
And this certainly doesn’t!
Benelli 900 Sei
Other than the Morgan 3 wheeler, not sure there are any 2cyl cars?
There certainly used to be:
mboyFree MemberPosted 7 years agoAlways fancied the VFR800 – just to say that I do recognise that some 4s are interesting
And yet, despite the many exotic applications of a V4, short perhaps of the Pan European, you manage to pick the most vanila application of it! 🙄
The guy that owns the motorbike shop 2 doors down from me has got a RSV4 Factory on full race pipes, it sounds like armageddon when he starts it up and blips the throttle! It makes his Ducati 1098R on full Termi pipes sound tame, put it that way…
I remember the first time I saw a Ducti Desmosedici, a mate’s Dad had just bought one when they came out… WOW! Shortly after I visited John Hackett Performnce, where he had Loris Capirossi’s 06 GP bike on display in the showroom… Apparently he’d just bought it off Ducati and was running it as a track day special! Can you imagine rocking up to a track day and the guy in the next garage to you is firing up Capirossi’s old GP bike!!! 😯
My first bike was an NC35 RVF400, an incredible machine even if it did only have 58bhp at about 14krpm. Mine had a non standard can that most of the packing had deteriorated in, so it was very loud for a 400. It ran a touch rich too, an often shot a flame out the exhaust on the over run! 😛
I have awesome memories of the 916/RC45 battles of the late 90s, where the likes of Kocinski, Edwards, Fogarty and Corser were going head to head on a fortnightly basis. Throw Nori Haga on the R7 (simply the most amazing inline 4 ever produced!) into the mix, that was absolutely the heyday of WSB racing…
Then you’ve got the ridiculous showpiece that was the Honda NR750. Oval Pistons, dual conrods and 8 valves per cyling anyone? Yes, really… It was a 750cc V8 in all but name in essence, yet they managed to put it in a frankly rather boring chassis. Still, possibly the motorbike world’s most elaborate engine, at least until the RC211V turned up anyway.
And then you’ve got the mother and father of WSB. I was about 9 years old and heavily into RC cars, and there I was staring intently at the 1989 Tamiya catalogue, but my eye kept getting drawn to the model motorbike section, and specifically the Honda RC30. The best looking bike honda has ever made? Almost certainly. The most influential road based race bike to come out of Japan? Without doubt…
Anyway… As you can see, I love a V4! Still impartial to a good twin mind, and always been a Ducati fan for that reason. MUST have a rattly dry clutch to add to the effect though, a Japanese twin with a wet clutch just doesn’t have the same effect.
But I’ll leave you with possibly the greatest engine noise ever to grace a motorbike, albeit very briefly. The Aprilia RS3 Cube. In the early 2000’s, the introduction of 4strokes to MotoGP meant some rapid engine development, and Honda and Yamaha quickly pushed their 4 and 5 cyl engines respectively through 220bhp. At the same time, Aprilia borrowed 3 cylinders from a Cosworth 3L F1 engine, and despite a numerical disadvantage on cylinder count, they had to detune the engine to around 240bhp (still 20bhp more than the others) just to make it anywhere near rideable! It’s a shame there isn’t more youtube footage than there is, cos it really was an incredible machine. I was at Donnington in 2002, and even though Haga was nowhere in the race, hearing him come past on that bike every single lap was by far and away the highlight of the weekend! Here’s Regis Laconi testing it in 03. It sounds like exactly what it is, 3 cylinders from a contemporary F1 engine!
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu3tc-d4FYY[/video]
NorthwindFull MemberPosted 7 years agoI used to have some japanese thinwall dual exhausts made for an SV400 on my 650, along with some pretty hot cams, and it sounded utterly incredible. Ludicrously loud, I couldn’t live with it so they got sold quite fast (I remember one of the organisers at knockhill complimenting me on how good it sounded when it was engine-braking into the hairpin off the back straight, he was up at the tower and could still distinguish it from about quarter of a mile away, with 30 bikes on the track 😆 But it was so thick, like summer thunder, then it howled like mad on the revs. Ahhhh. Not bad for a girl’s bike.
OTOH it did cost about 10bhp off the top and added about 10kg, compared to the works ti system I replaced it with, which isn’t that big a deal on a big bike but when it means 75bhp instead of 85 and 175 wet instead of 165, you notice 😆
nedrapierFull MemberPosted 7 years agoMy dad had one of those CBXs. Crazy looking things, you see them about every now and then.. Otherwise the most normal looking bike – ask a child to draw a motorcycle, they’ll have this sort of thing in mind, come away from a straight side on view and see that 2 1/2 foot wide engine! 😯
More 6: Honda’s “moar cylinderz!” straight 6 250.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaRop_ZMwo0[/video]
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