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Here is the new LT1 engine which calls the Corvette home. The plastic intake manifold is quite interesting because it looks to have a secondary external surface beyond the intake runner surface. My first thought is it provides an insulating air gap to prevent the hot ambient air of the engine bay soaking into the runners of the intake manifold. My second thought is that it does some acoustic tuning for NVH. Maybe it does both or maybe it does neither, but it’s different and GM didn’t go through the extra expense for nothing.
The new LT1 is now direct injected which helps boost the engine’s power and fuel economy. Here you can see the high pressure fuel pump (pretty sure that’s what it is…) sitting on the end of the camshaft. It uses a roller lifter (I guess that’s what you call it) with the roller aspect of it reducing friction. The spark plug comes in from the side as it historically has on GM’s LS engines. Something interesting I hadn’t noticed before is what I THINK is an oil squirter aimed directly at the pushrod. I had been trying to find the fuel injector when I saw it. It is pointed straight at the pushrod, so I think it’s an oil squirter used for cooling purposes. Anyone else know?
The primary of the exhaust manifold looks to flow pretty well with the gentle bends.
My buddy Joe Essien snagged this picture for me. It’s a Holset turbocharger on the Cummins diesel engine. Check out the beefy diesel piston and compare it to the weak looking gasoline piston in the LT1 engine. Anyways, back to the turbocharger. Holset uses a sliding vane design for its variable geometry turbocharger where the vanes are fixed in contrast to most variable geometry turbos which use rotating vanes. So instead of rotating vanes, I think it basically uses a moving wall that slides up and down to change the width of the flow path for the exhaust gas through the vanes.
This is another picture from Joe. Dodge decided to put all of their engines behind glass which made for funky reflections which is why I basically skipped them all. But thankfully Joe got a few with his phone. Here you can just make out the fixed vanes and the sliding wall in the fully open position. The actuator in the middle which says ‘Holset’ is bolted to the center housing and I think it is oil cooled. You can see the o-ring going between the actuator and the center housing to prevent leakage. |  |
What the heck is this? It’s the electric motor used in the new electric Golf. The other box with the orange connectors is the motor controller. The motor is rated at 115hp and 199 lb-ft of torque, so it’ll move a car pretty well.
Here is the motor in an electric Toyota RAV4. You better get used to this view. There are a few things that look somewhat familiar. There’s the A/C compressor sitting above the motor, but it’s driven by an electric motor itself instead of being driven off the crank of the engine. That black plastic thing in front of the electric motor that looks like a mini centrifugal blower is a water pump I think. The car still has a radiator and A/C condenser. The electronics require cooling hence the need for a cooling system.A lot of new engines are coming out and a lot of them are packing turbos. Some of them have two working in parallel. One engine even has two turbos in series. A lot of them spray fuel directly into the cylinder whether it is diesel or gasoline. Some cars don’t even have engines but rather electric motors. Or there are engines with electric motors. Someday, we’ll hopefully have engines with turbos AND electric motors. Formula 1 will have those next year after all. Until that day comes, you’ll just have to make due with Part II coming soon.
