Documentary: formula one engine design

[Anthony Stuart]

I found an extremely in-depth documentary on the creation of a V6 turbo engine for Formula One by Ford, with video of each step in the process. I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to car engines, but this is absolutely fascinating to me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbB1qwhKaaE

[Daffyflyer]

Fascinating! Thanks for linking this!

[T16]

Yeah that documentary is really good, even if you like me don't care about F1.
I always loved for they have to pull the engine block apart to fit the main bearing caps.

[dread_darven]

ow.... added to the watch later playlist

[frenchy128]

Wow! this is great!..
I loved how they demonstrated an inline 4 that experienced a valve cross over/valve hitting pistons at 11,000 RPM (youtube - 15:11 to 19:10 (failure at 15:59)).. I'm learning much from this

[Azurael]

I was just waiting for that to happen as they started the dyno run

Amazing documentary - a good technical compliment to 'Senna', which I happened to watch last week. I also watched another one on YouTube which was linked from this, also an epic 2-parter - 'The Secret Life of F1', which was pretty interesting too.... And I don't even like F1!

I almost can't believe they carved the mould for the block and heads of the V6 from wood - but as they said, CAD/CAM was just too expensive for limited production engines in those days. The craftsmanship and skill involved in building a performance engine in those days was quite astounding. Nowadays, of course, the engine would have been subjected to hundreds of hours of 'virtual' testing before they ever built one, I doubt anything ever goes wrong with modern F1 engines on the dyno - I guess they're just testing what they already know. How things change