August 15, 2019 • 37 mins
There are probably 100 reasons (or more) you shouldn’t try to put a Formula One engine in your car. We’ll tell you just five – but those five are more than enough. Race Car engines belong in race cars, not your grocery-getter.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to the Fast Track. I'm your host,
Scott Benjamin, and today we are going to talk about
something and I bet a lot of people are curious about, Um,
you know, why why is it that you can't take
a race engine and stuff that in your car, your truck,
whatever and make that work on the road. Why why
is it that you can't do that? And a lot
of people have tried, a lot of people come, you know,
(00:28):
kind of close to it, or they claim that they
have an engine that's that's a race engine that they've
turned into a street engine, you know, for their vehicle.
And you know, actually there are some examples of it,
but they require a ton of maintenance, a ton of upkeep,
and it's it's a different it's a whole different animal
than what you normally would have under the hood. And
manufacturers create engines specifically for ease of use among the
(00:50):
consumers and being able to turn the vehicle on and
and and expected to reliably power your vehicle, uh, you know,
to and from the grocery store, to and from work,
school where you happen to go long road trips whatever. Reliability, Um,
you know, um, just just the like the repetitive nature
of it that you can expect it to function in
a certain way all the time, and you're not going
(01:11):
to get that with a race engine. And and we'll
talk about that today. Um, in specific, we're gonna talk about,
you know, F one engine. So you know, because a
lot of people would have kind of the fantasy I've
been able to put a n F one engine, a
Formula one engine into their road car and make that work.
Because wouldn't that be just incredible? I mean, it would
be an amazing thing to to have an F one
engine under the hood of your you know, your Mercedes,
(01:33):
your BMW, your Miata, whatever it happens to be, you know,
a small little car. Can you imagine how much fun
that would be in order just to stuff some giant
race engine in there. And a lot of people again
have come close to it. And well we'll talk about
some of those people in just a moment, but um,
you know, I want to kind of catch you up
here on something. Well, in the last episode, we talked about, um,
(01:54):
some really fast cars. We talked about the ten fastest
production cars, and I told you that we're going to
talk about ten outright fastest cars pretty soon. But when
I was talking about ten fastest production cars. I asked
you the question, what was the first time that you
were in a car that ever traveled over one hundred
miles per hour? And I mentioned that it was my
my uncle's barracouta that I was in, you know, on
(02:14):
a fishing tripper, you know, just a weekend afternoon out
in the country, and that was the fastest I'd ever
gone at that point. I was really really young at
the time. Um. But I also want to mention this,
and I think there's another question that that begs to
be asked here, and that is what was the first
time that you ever drove a car over one hundred
miles per hour? What was the fastest you've ever driven
a car? Maybe, Um, that's maybe that's the second question.
(02:38):
That's actually two things. The first time that you ever
drove over one hundred miles per hour? When you hit
that that triple digit number for yourself with you behind
the wheel, Uh, do you clearly remember that? Because I
know I do. I clearly remember the first time I
ever did it. And again, you know, once again, it
was on these back roads in Indiana, these these these
old country roads that have you know, great big Swales
(02:59):
to them, they're you know, kind of hilly. They're they're
out in the middle of nowhere. And this time it
wasn't necessarily in the summer. You know, we weren't not
fishing or anything like that. This is a different person,
different car. Uh. This was This happened in the fall.
It happened right around Thanksgiving. And I know it was
Thanksgiving because it was my aunt's birthday and we were
always always in town there for my aunt's birthday right
around Thanksgiving. And she had she happened to have a
(03:22):
brand new car. And I was all excited about this
car because, um, A strange thing about this. She was
married prior to this and they had um An m
R two, a first generation MR two Toyota m R two.
Uh So that really angular a little little vehicle, two seater,
incredible little cars, really cool. It was black and gray.
Uh really really sharp little car was It looked like
(03:44):
a spaceship at the time. To me, it was incredible.
It was so cool and um just a blast to drive,
a lot of fun. It was a five speed with
that little um short throw shifter that was you know,
you put your arm way up on the arm rest
and you could just flip your wrist and shift this thing.
It was incredible and um was so go away by
this car. She had one when she was married. She
and her husband got divorced, and then she bought one
(04:05):
exactly the same as the one that her husband took
in the divorce. So she had the exact same car.
And I'm sure this was kind of and I'll show
you move you know a uh um, you know, I'll
get the same car Thingum. But but anyway, she showed
up for Thanksgiving dinner with this vehicle, this Mr two
and again first gen. And she threw me the keys
and I was a pretty new driver at the time.
(04:27):
I was as relatively young, um, I want to say
I was like seventeen, maybe eighteen and the most I
don't even think I was eighteen. And she tossed me
the keys and said, let's go out for a ride.
So we did before dinner, and we took it out
into you know, past the city limits. We went out
into the country, and she encouraged me to drive it
faster and faster and faster. And as we got going
(04:47):
faster and faster, I realized I'm going to break a
hundred miles per hour here and this is the very
first time I've ever pushed a car to that limit,
and it was so much fun and what if what
a great car to be in to do it is
so memorable. It was a great memory to have with
my aunt with this car. You know, the season, I guess,
you know it was it was cold, it was it
was dreary there. It was you know, not snowing yet
(05:09):
but but just about ready to snow. All the corns
knocked down the fields. You can see a long long distance,
so there wasn't much danger of cross traffic or anything
like that. Um, there's always animal traffic that's dangerous, but
reaching a hundred miles per hour in a car is
one of those milestone moments that I think a lot
of people recall, or a lot of people can really
you know, bring back up in their memory and say, like,
I remember the day specifically when I did this. And
(05:32):
then there's another you know question I guess that begs
to be asked, and that is, um, you know, the
fastest you've ever driven? And of course that's a that's
a completely different topic and we'll probably get into that
at some point on this show. I would think, but
I would love to hear some of these, uh moments
of yours, you know, your personal moments when you drove
over a hundred miles per hour for the first time
ever and uh, you know what what led to that?
(05:56):
With that intro, that's an exceedingly long intro and hopefully,
uh that I'll get you thinking about some things during
this podcast. But UM, I do want to mention you know,
we we said that we had kind of covered this
before on another show. You know, I did another podcast
called car Stuff and I still do Car Stuff. There's
a there's a new version of that with just me,
not not me and Ben my co host anymore. But
(06:17):
but go to car Stuff show dot com and check
out our archival information that we have there. You can
search our podcast history are archives and you can find
that we have over nine episodes in there that you
can you can search. One of those happens to be
on engine Swaps and the engine Swap episode we did
back in two thousand nine, and I believe there was
a repeat of this one back in two thousand twelve. Uh,
(06:39):
there's a rerun, same show, and um, we talked about
a lot of, um, you know, the things that people
have done to their cars in the past, you know,
whether it was you know, just fantasy they wanted to
do this, they have done it. I think mostly this
show was based in reality and that it was it
was people that had done swaps in their cars, maybe
even some listeners that had transplanted something incredible to the
(07:00):
hood of a you know, like a small little vehicle,
you know, taking a V eight and stuffing it into
a Fierro, or taking a giant again another V a
Corvette engine or something and putting it in a Miata.
Just incredible swaps like that that make cars faster and
better in some way, you know, kind of a sleeper,
I guess in a lot of ways, or or just
some enormous V eight engine that they would stuff into, um,
(07:21):
you know, an old pickup truck and make it, you know,
something that is unexpected on the drag strip, you know,
that type of that type of thing. There were a
lot of, um there's a lot of stories about people
that do things like this, you know, put w R
X S t I engines in different vehicles and and
just just fun things, fun swaps that people do. One
question that comes up quite a bit is um, you
know why can't I put a race car engine into
(07:43):
my daily driver and make it reliable, make it, you know,
something that I can count on to get me to
and from work or school or wherever. And uh, like
I said before, I think I just kind of touched
on this, but uh, you know that's the thing is
that like the logistics behind this whole thing, this this
type of engine swap, they just really don't match up.
The race engines and the production cars don't necessarily have
(08:05):
enough in common for it to work often enough. I know,
you can you can take you know, um, maybe an
engine from an old car that was a race car
that raced at the local dirt track or circle track
or whatever and put it in your your street car,
and and that might be kind of cool. But when
we're talking about this, this level of swap, when we're
talking about you know, taking an Indy car engine and
putting it into um, you know, I don't know, like
(08:26):
a Subaru or something like that, where you take a
an F one engine and you want to put it
in into your BMW. It doesn't necessarily work that way.
There's there's just not enough um you know, commonality between
the two vehicles in order to make it work. The
logistics don't work. And I'll tell you there are five
reasons at least five. There's probably way more than five
(08:47):
why this won't work. And it comes from an article,
uh that that I'm going to follow along with here
called the car Throttle dot com and a lot of this.
There's a lot of common sense in this as well. Um,
before I get into this whole thing, before I get into,
you know, the top five reasons, I do want to
say that, you know, I understand that there are some
F one derived engines in past vehicles, you know, past
(09:08):
road cars that have have been successful. Now, this isn't
necessarily taking an actual F one engine and putting it
into a road car and making it work. It's it's
it's a derived engine. So it has a lot of
commonality between the uh, the F one engine and the
road car. But maybe it's just the number of cylinders.
Maybe it's just some of you know, the the headwork
(09:29):
that they do on the thing. You know, maybe it's
very similar in that way. But you're gonna find that
the cooling and the fuel and all that is is
completely different in these vehicles. Now, a couple of them,
just to give you an example. I can give you
maybe three or four examples here just real quick. Uh,
the two thousand five BMW E sixt M five that
had a V ten engine that was um derived from
the F one vehicle that that BMW fronted at the time.
(09:52):
And if you want this is actually a pretty good
news because right now, going back to get an E
six d M five with that V ten engine, it's
it's fair really cheap considering considering what you're getting. Uh,
you can find one that is roughly, you know, somewhere
in the ballpark of about twenty dollars right now. I
know that still sounds like it's kind of expensive if
you're talking about just a toy car you know, have
on the weekends and have fun with or whatever. But uh,
(10:14):
this one could be a daily driver, it could be
a could be a fun car for under twenty thousand.
So keep your eyes open for an E sixt M
five BMW from around two thousand five, and you'll find
that they do have that that F one derived V
ten engine. In fact, there's another one that's a lot
more expensive. This will show you that, uh, you know,
the BMW maybe is quite a bargain compared to it
the Ferrari F fifty. The Ferrari F fifty does have
(10:37):
a V twelve engine that was derived from the F
one car at the time that Ferrari is posting in
that series, and this is from around to about nineteen seven.
And then there's the Porsche Carrera GT, which has a
five point seven leader V ten engine UM and that
is a car that was built around two thousand three
to two thousand seven. I believe that I think that
(10:57):
seven was the final model of the year for that vehicle. UM.
And there there's some others out there too, but those
are just you know, three quick examples of some of
these F one derived engines and some of the road
cars that you can have that that do have these.
But I want to point this out, and I think
this is really really important, you know, to make these
engines road where they would take so much effort to
(11:19):
make them, you know, so they're reliable, so that they
cool correctly, so that you know, you don't have to
use some crazy, ridiculous fuel in order to drive them,
you know, here and there to get the performance out
of them. They won't knock, so they won't destroy themselves.
There's there's so many uh different things that we need
to talk about in this podcast that we're gonna get to.
I promise F one engines. I wanted to stress this
(11:40):
are extreme. I mean and that's not an overexaggeration or
an overuse of the word extreme. They truly are F
one engines are extreme. And just to give you an
idea of what they're using right now, they're using um
the current F one configuration for nineteen, they're using one
point six leader four stroke turbocharged V six engines in
these cars. Now, there's been an incredible evolution in UH
(12:02):
in F one engines over the years, and going back
to pre nine, there were unlimited cylinders. You could use
an unlimited number of cylinders in the cars. If you
wanted to have sixteen cylinder, you could a twelve cylinder whatever.
In the nineties they limited the number of cylinders to twelve,
and then in the early two thousand's they cut that
back to V tens. Everybody was using V tens, and
then in two thousand and eight they went to V eights,
(12:23):
and then I don't remember, I think it's around twenty fourteen,
two thousand fourteen, I believe they backed it down to
these Uh, these turbo charge V six engines, and uh,
of course they're getting just as much power out of them,
so you know, the the engineering behind them is very
very solid, of course, as you can imagine. Uh, and
they drive just an incredible amount of power out of
these things. Just remember how extreme these engines are and
(12:46):
how the logistics just don't match up with your typical
road cars. So you know, some of the stuff that
that I'll tell you here, Uh, it's pretty incredible. I
mean really when you think, when you think about it, UM,
for number one, I guess we'll start right here. They
are notoriously difficult to start. They're very very difficult engine
to start. So you can't just jump in the car
and expect it to turn over if you turn a
(13:08):
key or push a button or whatever. It doesn't happen
that way. It has to These things have to be
brought to life in what we'll call precise conditions. And
by by precise, I mean that first of all, you'd
have to have these external pumps that would push um
coolant and fuel through the system. So you're gonna have
to um, you know, pump these these preheated liquids through
(13:29):
the engine in order to make it even work. Now
this is kind of funny. I mean, the water and
oil pump that would be necessary to send these around, um,
they have to um be preheated too, about a hundred
and seventy six degrees fahrenheit, that's eighty degrees centigrade, uh,
to to kind of warm up the engines inner passages
before they would even start. So you know, um, prior
(13:50):
to that, these things are built to such tight tolerances,
so such incredible small tolerances that anything cooler than that
and the engine is effectively seized. Either there's nothing that
would even turn that engine, and the pistons are gonna
be so tight within the cylinder walls that they're going
to be essentially sees solid. And so anything below sixty
(14:11):
degrees centigrade, which is about a hundred and forty degrees,
you can't even get it to budget all. So, so
a hundred and seventy six is going to be kind
of the minimum temperature that you're gonna need in this
thing in order to get it to even crank over.
And and then once you do, of course, you're gonna
have to have what is effectively like a large drill
or you know, a starting mechanism. And I think we've
all seen this on the starting grid for any type
(14:32):
of open wheel race car, you know, IndyCar, F one,
you know, whatever happens to be some of these other
formula series where they have to crank the engine with
UM an external starter and that's how they get it going.
So it's just not very practical for you to want
to do this in your in your own driveway, especially
on a like a you know, wintry morning on January
or something. You know, if you're trying to go out
(14:53):
and snow and and start up your car with an
F one engine, there's no way there's just gonna have
no chance of starting that thing out. So UM understand
that that you know, it will require these these external
pumps that that pump this heated fluid throughout the engine,
the cooling and lubricant. UM. You know, just a side
down here, and I want to take just a moment
to uh, to pause on this for a second as
(15:14):
we as we talk about this. And one thing that
I've really enjoyed watching over the past several years on YouTube,
and I've owned a car that has I don't own
it anymore. I had I had a car that had
an enormous V eight engine and it was just a
beautiful sounding engine. I love to hear it run. One
thing that I've I've kind of become addicted to, I
guess on on YouTube is watching people cold start their
(15:37):
muscle cars. And I know it's a little silly, it's
a little funny, but you know, it doesn't even have
to be muscle car. Can just be an old luxury car.
It can be any car from you know that nineteen
sixties nineteen seventies era that you know, they they just
refused to start on cold marains and you know, you're
you're pumping the gas pedal, you're pulling the choke. You know,
you're trying to do everything you can in order to
get it to go. I just won't fire. And then finally,
(15:59):
after know what, it seems like a minute of cranking
the engine, finally it just slowly starts to turn over
and chugged to life. And then once it does, you
know it it burbles and kind of gurgles quite a bit,
and uh, finally kind of breathe to life. Once it does,
you know, then you hear some owners after a few
minutes they might give it a little throttle, and you
know that's when they get they get the great sound.
(16:19):
But for some reason, these cold start videos online are
just they're fun to watch, and you can see some
incredible cars and you get to hear some of the
best engines that you know we're made ever really, I mean,
as far as I'm concerned. You know, some of these
these enormous vates that were just so powerful and so
so dramatic when they begin, you know, they sounds so amazing.
(16:39):
Just it's kind of a fun thing. So um, you know,
we've gone through our list here only we've only done
the first one on our list. We've got four more
to go, and I'd like to get back into it
in just a moment, but first let's take a break
for a word from our sponsor. And we're back and
you're listening to the Fast Track. I'm your host, Scott Benjamin,
(17:01):
and we were talking about about being able to stuff
and f one engine into your road car. Would it work?
Would it not work? And and uh, I think we're
pretty much uh getting to the point where we understand
that it would not work. But there are five reasons.
There are five good reasons. Probably a hundred other good
reasons why it wouldn't work as well. But I'm gonna
give you the top five. And the first one that
(17:22):
we talked about was because they're they're tough to start.
That's one thing, and really it's really tough to start. UM.
The second one that we're going to talk about here
on our way to the the last version of the
last reason is that they're not cheap. And uh, to
which most of you will reply, duh, we know that
they're not cheap. They're they're very very expensive. In fact,
(17:42):
the average F one power train at this point, and
I think this article was written in this is a
article article UM, the price is roughly seven point seven million,
anywhere up to ten point five million dollars per engine.
So imagine this. I mean, let's say that you've got
the the ultimate top end vehicle, UM, the Mercedes makes,
(18:05):
and you want to put a Mercedes F one engine
into it. It's not going to be as simple as
you think. Mercedes doesn't build its F one engines to
fit into its road cars. However, let's say you've got
a Mercedes that several hundred thousand dollars and you know,
to begin with, it's a road car and you want
to put one of these in there. The manufacturer is
not going to put a seven point seven million dollar
engine into the car and expect you to be able
(18:25):
to maintain it and and and keep that thing going.
It's just there. There's just no way, there's no way
to justify putting that type of money into an engine
for a road car. Um the cost again, the cost
comes from some of these extremely tight and tiny tolerances
that emines are manufactured or machine too. And because of
this that that's how they get every little tiny bit
(18:45):
of power out of them that they can within those
six cylinders because you know, again they're dealing with six
cylinders turbo charge engines, turbo of course, but but still
they are trying to get every tiny little bit of
a less little morsel of power out of that engine
that they can. And and uh, and that's how they
do it. They manufacture them to these really really tight tolerances.
And as we said in the starting part of this,
(19:06):
you know, if you don't even if you don't circulate
the fluid throughout the engine order to heat it up,
it's not even gonna turn. It's going to be as
if they're seized in there. It's that tight, and that's
not the case with your normal road car. You're able
to typically, you know, put a wrench on the engine
and turn it freely. Um, it's a struggle in some cases.
There's a lot of compression there. I agree, However, it's
(19:26):
nothing like an F one car. Um, there's just no
way to even move it at that point. I do
also want to say that F one engines rev it's
something like fifteen thousand RPMs or even more in some cases,
and they use things like pressurized nitrogen which snap the
engine valves back into place. Um, you know, after the
camshaft loads of open them. So they're they're like, there's
more to it than just you know it being um
(19:49):
expensive to uh um, you know, to manufacture the engine,
expensive to you know, upkeep the engine. I guess it's
like a different world. You know. You would you would
require having somebody on hand at all times in order
to monitor all systems in this car as you're driving it.
You know, practically after every drive to the office, you
would have to have somebody monitoring the engine, telling you
what you broke during your drive to work. How much
(20:11):
it's gonna cost, you know, and you likely wouldn't be
driving that same car home. That's the way. That's way
a lot of these work. And we'll we'll talk about
that in just a moment too, because that is coming up.
But one other thing, uh here in number three on
the list out of five that we're gonna talk about
is cooling and uh oh man with that fifteen thousand
rpm that we talked about, and uh, you know, just
the incredible efficiency that these things operate, and you know
(20:34):
how hot they have to be in order to to
maintain even fluid movement so that they that they continue
to operate. Um, you're gonna find that cooling is really
really critical in these things, and radiator sizing UM is
really really important. It's huge. It's a huge concern for
F one teams. And if you've ever seen an F
one car, and I'm sure that anybody listening to this
podcast is familiar with an F one car or an
(20:56):
Indy car, those enormous pods that are on the side
of the car, so the ones that are to the
left and right of the driver, those are where the coolants,
the cooling system is housed. So that's where that's where
you're gonna find the radiators and the radiator its actually
heat exchangers, but it's a radiator if you want to
call it that. That's the best way to say it. Um.
But they are enormous. They're they're much bigger than just
(21:17):
the pods. Uh. You know, the distance from the top
to bottom if you were to measure them, Uh, you know,
they're they're less than the height of your knee maybe
you know, when you're standing next to the car. So
the way they get around this in order to make
these um much much bigger than uh they would be
if they're standing upright, is that they angle them and
the heat exchangers are angled down and away, so the
top front edge is angled to the front of the car,
(21:39):
the bottom edges angled to the back of the car.
And uh, and they're really big there. They go through
that whole pod um kind of like at a forty
five degree angle. So there's the maximum amount of air
flow over top of those things. And um. You know,
in order to keep one of these f one uh
power units cool, you know, you have to keep them overheating.
You're not gonna be able to do much idling. So
(21:59):
if you in traffic every day, you know, in Atlanta traffic,
or Dallas or Los Angeles or wherever you happen to live. Uh,
you're not gonna be able to keep your f one
engine powered road car cool. There's just no way You're
gonna have to continue to have airflow over those radiators
those heat exchanges for uh the entire time that you're
driving it. It really requires you to to keep them
(22:20):
moving in order to keep them cool enough to operate.
And that's something that just a lot of people aren't
going to be able to to do. Um. You know,
they put out so much horsepower, they have such high
revving speeds that you know, it's difficult to keep them cool.
You need as much air as possible. Those side pods
are about the only way that it's going to happen.
And unless you know, you are someone who is willing
(22:41):
to completely change the look of your vehicle, you know, uh,
you know, the front opening for radiator in most cars
is not going to be enough to cool one of
these engines. If you were to try to get one
end of your car, you're gonna need something much much larger.
So you're gonna have to have I guess what you'd
call as this article says a rather adventurous body kit
um on your vehicle in order to to make it work,
(23:02):
So you're gonna have to, you know, add these extra
side pods on the side, or you know, add something
that is going to look out of place on your
vehicle in order to make it work and to to
get those um those coolant systems in place that are
sufficient enough to keep the temperature down. You know, we're
gonna talk about two more things here before we wrap
this up. But first let's take a break for a
(23:23):
word from our sponsor. And we're back and you're listening
to the fast Track. I'm your host, Scott Benjaman, and
we were just going through this list of reasons why
it might not be a good idea to stuff and
f one engine into your road car, and uh, and
there's a lot of good reasons, probably hundreds of reasons.
And we are up to number four on our list
(23:44):
of five here. That comes from an article that was
written in car throttle dot com if you want to
follow along with this, and there's probably many other articles
just like it with with other typical or other similar
reasons as well. I'm sure because these are these just
some good, some good reasons. Number one I think is
right where it should be. But first let's talk about
number four. We'll talk about the fuel bill, and uh
(24:07):
as you can imagine the fuel bill, so F one
regulations rule this. So there's a rule and F one
that dictates that an F one engine or F one
car cannot burn through more than one of petrol per
hour of driving. So that equates to roughly, I'm gonna
I'm gonna ballpark this. That's like a little more than
twenty six gallons of fuel. So that's for one hour
of driving. Now consider that you know a lot of
(24:29):
people drive about a half hour on your daily commute,
and that's of course you're not gonna go race speed,
obviously you're gonna go a little bit slower. But it's
gonna typically amount to about fifty leaders of fuel, which
is about thirteen and a half gallons of fuel that
you're gonna burn on that commute, on that half hour
commute to work. So it's gonna be quite quite an
expensive drive into work. And the thing is that these
(24:50):
F one cars can carry a lot of fuel too.
They can carry twittered and twenty five leaders, which is
almost sixty gallons of fuel. So that's a lot of
fuel to put in your car. Um, you're gonna end
up spending a lot of time at the gas station.
And and here's the interesting thing, and you might not
have guessed this, is that the type of fuel that
these things run on, it's it's not necessarily that much
(25:12):
different than the type of fuel that you use in
your daily drive, Like if you were to drive a
car that uses high octane fuel. Um, it's fairly close.
It's not exactly the same, but it's fairly close to
the same chemical makeup of fuel that we use every day.
But you know, there have been some slight modifications to it,
you know, with some uh, some additives and you know,
some different things that you know are required per engine.
(25:32):
And that's the thing that's part of why this is
again this is just something that is not capable of.
Logistics just don't work out for something like this. And
that's because after every single race, uh, the engine oil
is tested for up to fifteen different types of metal
to source any probable any probable concentrations aware in the engine.
So you're you're looking at um, you know, chemical analysis
(25:55):
is analysis rather of the engine oil. And I think
they even send the fuel out to make sure that
they're using the proper fuel and all that. But the
engine oil is is monitored for up to fifteen different
types of metal, uh that are they're found within the engine,
so that they'll be able to tell where the where
is coming from. If it's the piston rings, if it's
the cylinder walls, you know, whatever it happens to be,
(26:15):
if it's if it's camshafts that are wearing prematurely, they'll
be able to determine exactly where that metal is coming from.
And then they change the fuel. They contact the fuel
supplier and they dictate the level of cleaning and friction
reduction additives that have to be integrated into the next
batch of fuel that they send them for the race.
So fuel is not something uh that can be overlooked
(26:38):
in this when you're when you're talking about, you know,
putting an F one engine in your car, It's something
that you definitely have to consider if you're gonna even
try this. And again I don't recommend anybody does this.
If you have seven point seven to ten point five
million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and you
want to try this, go ahead and do it. But um,
I just don't think that the actually, that's just not
going to be possible. There's so many reasons why it's
(27:00):
not a good idea to do this. Um, but after
every single drive in your F one engine road car. Uh,
it would be advisable if you wanted to run and
to operate like an F one engine does in a
in a car, in a you know, on a team,
on an F one team, it would be advisable to
hire a chemical engineer to test your car after every
single drive that you make, you know, to and from
(27:22):
work wherever it happens to be, just around town, and
then supply you with you know, custom fuel specifically blended
for your engine. And that's that's one very good reason
not to do this. I mean, how boy, this would
be expensive, would it'd be? It would be super super expensive. Otherwise, um,
otherwise it might be a great idea other, you know,
other than the other four things that I've told you
(27:43):
already about this thing, uh, the last one on this list.
This is maybe again I think this is this is
the right where it should be. This is number one
on the list for a good reason. How many times
have you been watching a Formula One race or any
kind of car race, and one to three laps into
the race, someone blows an engine. There's mechanical failure immediately.
Now again this is a seven and a half to
(28:05):
ten and a half million dollar engine. That is somehow
something I find a way to grenade itself. It imploded
in some way. What happened? You know, you're you're gonna
find that. There's a variety of reasons. There's a lot
of problems there. They have to be cooled. If you're
not cooled correctly, you know, it could be any number
of things. There's just a lot of stresses put on
these engines, as you can imagine, even in a well
(28:26):
running car, and and something that is is perfectly running,
the lifespan on these engines is very very short. Now,
in an unlimited F one car, um you know that
they are allowed to spin as high as as twenty RPMs.
And we said, you know, they've been limited to about
fifteen thousand RPMs. I think that's what F one dictates.
But if it was unlimited, they could spin it up
(28:47):
to twenty RPMs. And they have a real small stroke,
a real wide board allows us to happen. But the
pistons are moving up and down at something like three
hundred times every second. So three times every second the
pistons are moving up and down. That's extremely fast. And
if you consider the weight of all those components that
that do all that that that make that crazy movement
(29:07):
in the engine, the pistons can experience somewhere in the
neighborhood of ten thousand, six hundred times the weight of gravity.
So the pistons are experiencing ten thousand six d g
s when they're at maximum revs. Now that's twenty thousand. Again,
I don't know what it is for fifteen thousand, no
calculation for that right now. But there's an incredible amount
of internal pressure that's going on within these cylinders. Um.
(29:30):
You know, the cylinders are reaching somewhere around fifteen hundred
ps i every second. Um, you know, it's no surprise
that these engines they typically lasted and this is the
maximum lifespan for these engines somewhere around a thousand kilometers. Now,
that's about six twenty one miles before they have to
be completely stripped and cared for and you know, rebuilt
in some way. Um. Now, that's not a whole lot
(29:52):
and you know, I've kind of done the calculation for this.
Now this article says something, do you know, do you
want to rebuild your engine six to ten times a year? Uh?
Not something that most people want to do. And and
here's the truth behind that is, you know, it's six
hundred twenty one miles for the maximum lifespan of this
before it has to be rebuilt six to ten times
a year. Doesn't amount to too many miles per year.
(30:13):
That's only between three thousand, seven hundred and twenty six
miles and six thousand, two hundred and ten miles driven
per year. And I don't know a lot of people
that drive, you know that short of a distance. That's
small of a distance. Uh, very few people do. Myself,
I put something like twenty thousand miles in a car here,
maybe even twenty five thousand UM. But the average US
driver at this point is putting thirteen thousand, four hundred
(30:35):
and seventy six miles on their vehicle every single year.
That's the US average right now, thirteen thousand, four hundred
and seventy six miles per year. That would equate if
if you divide that by six twenty one miles between rebuilds.
That means that the average driver would have to rebuild
their engine twenty two times every year. Twenty two times
is what you would be looking at to rebuild your
(30:56):
seven and a half to ten and a half million
dollar engines. So, um, there's just no there's no way
to get this done. And uh, you know, this is funny.
There's a there's a quote in here, and I've heard
this quote many many times and I think it's funny,
but it makes perfect sense. And it was actually a
quote from Ferdinand Porsche and it's from a long This
of course goes back to the I think, but it's
(31:17):
talking about race cars and perfect racing cars and how
you know, they just give their ultimately, you know, the
most that they possibly can, and then they just they
die at the end. That's it. I mean, it's very dramatic.
I understand that. You know, it's like, uh, um, you know,
give it, give it your all, and then that's it.
It's it's over. Um. But the quote is the perfect
racing car crosses the finish line first and subsequently falls
(31:39):
into its component parts. And I completely agree with this.
So the idea is that you win the race, the
car just completely falls apart before you even make it
around your victory lap. And uh, and you're the winner.
But you know, the car has given its all. It's
given everything. And I don't know if anybody has ever
driven a car like this. I've I've had several cars
like this, and and this is something that kind of
(32:00):
watch out for. I've I've I've driven many many cars
over my years. I've I've had several cars, and some
of them were a little sporty. Some of them were,
you know, just sedans or whatever, you know, a variety
of vehicles, the sporty cars. However, I've noticed a few
times and this this happens occasionally. There there's maybe and
I had it. You know what, I'm going to get
ahead of myself here, but let me just tell you this.
(32:20):
There's certain days when my cars felt better than other days,
and it felt like the car was just driving at
its ultimate best performance. It just felt good underneath me.
For so for whatever reason, it was shifting right, it
felt good, it was handling right. Everything was just right.
And uh, and then there are other days when it
feels like a little a little bit more sluggish or whatever.
And it doesn't coincide always with the weather because you
(32:41):
would think that um, you know, it would be as
one of my former bosses would say, it's maybe just
atmospheric conditions that that cause that. You know, it's it's
it's cool weather. It's uh, it's cool weather, that's not damp.
You know that it's dry weather. You know, and the
and the roadway is hot or you know, it feels
you know, the tires are able to warm up and
it feels better. And that wasn't always a case. It
didn't always match up that way, and I was always
(33:02):
puzzled by this. But then I've had a few cars
in the past that I've been driving, and this is
a fantastic thing. When it happens, it feels great. The
car just feels loose, it feels like everything is working right.
The engine is so smooth and so just everything is
like it doesn't make any noise, it's uh, it's shifting smoothly.
It's it's driving better than it ever has before. And
(33:25):
you're wondering, what is what's the deal with this? Why
is it working like this? And then you know one
week later catastrophic engine failure something like that. You know,
some major major problem happens it turns out the car
was loose because you know something was about to break.
You know, there are things that were going wrong in
the engine that we're making it loose. It wasn't as
tight or wasn't being bound up, it wasn't being restricted
in a way that it should have been. And uh,
(33:47):
you know, it ran too freely. It ran you know
a little too a little too good, or maybe I
pushed a little too hard or whatever. But um, you know,
watch for that sometimes. I mean, if if your car
is running really, really great, maybe you know, maybe uh,
instead of thinking like this is fantastic, maybe take a
look for something that's going wrong with it. And I
hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it
happens quite a bit. Um. But again that that kind
(34:09):
of falls into that category. And we've I think we've
seen cars that do that on the racetrack to you
know that, Uh, they run fantastic for the race, but
they can't make that final lap. They can't they can't
push it into victory circle. It's just it's too difficult.
So you know, when you're running a power train at
the peak of automotive engineering, at the peak of perfection,
it's something that is a different monster altogether from you know,
(34:30):
the car that you have in your garage right now
that is built for you know, a hundred thousand miles
of what you call, you know, low revering, low reving driving,
you know, like it doesn't it doesn't get pushed to
the limit every single day like this thing does, or
every single moment, like an F one engine does, or
or or should be. F one engines almost need to
be pushed to that limit. So, um, I don't know,
(34:52):
there's a lot of reasons. There's probably again a hundred
reasons not to put an F one engine into a
road car, But that's five and I think we'll stick
with that and and leave it there. Um. I do
want to mention that we are going to, uh, we're
gonna talk about more topics like this. We're gonna talk
about engine swaps, and we're gonna talk about some some
of these uh the these engines that that push the
ultimate limits in the in these cars. We're gonna talk about,
(35:13):
you know, drag cars that have five thousand plus horsepower.
We're gonna talk about some go carts. Even, we'll talk
about you know that that that go faster than you
could ever imagine from a modified Briggs and Stratton engine.
We're gonna talk about all kinds of engines in this
series and uh and and in this podcast over the
years as we as we progress here. And if you
have a comment on today's show about the F one
(35:34):
engine and and road cars and you know why it's
not possible or maybe an engine swap that you've done
that you know is pretty exciting to know something that, uh,
that that markedly improved the performance of the car, or
it was just an interesting swap for whatever reason. I
don't know, he put a helicopter engine into a car,
like you think about Tucker and what he did. He
put helicopter engines in the back end of his cars
early on. That was something remarkable. So that was that
(35:56):
was interesting. And maybe maybe you've done something similar, you know,
just tell me, tell me whatever you're up to and
what you've got going on in your bar out back
and and uh, I'd be excited about hearing about that. UM.
I like that kind of thing. And if you want to,
you can contact us. So there's the way you can
get ahold of us. You can you can find us
on any of the social network platforms. We are on
Twitter where we are at the fast Track Pod, or
(36:17):
you can find us on Facebook and Instagram where we
are UM at the fast Track Show. Or you can
go to the show's brand new website, which is The
fast Track Show dot com and I'm pretty excited about that.
You can check out, you know, all the podcasts there
and kind of look back through our archives. And of
course you can leave UM reviews on Apple Podcasts or
on the iHeart Radio Apple or wherever you happen to
(36:38):
listen to your podcasts. I mean, that's always helpful if
you can leave a review, and if you like what
you're listening to, if you like what you're hearing, be
sure to tell your friends because we're always looking for
new listeners. So UM, you know, we're excited about it.
We hope you're excited about it, and we'll see you
next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Fast Track. I'm your host,
Scott Benjamin, and today we are going to talk about
something and I bet a lot of people are curious about, Um,
you know, why why is it that you can't take
a race engine and stuff that in your car, your truck,
whatever and make that work on the road. Why why
is it that you can't do that? And a lot
of people have tried, a lot of people come, you know,
(00:28):
kind of close to it, or they claim that they
have an engine that's that's a race engine that they've
turned into a street engine, you know, for their vehicle.
And you know, actually there are some examples of it,
but they require a ton of maintenance, a ton of upkeep,
and it's it's a different it's a whole different animal
than what you normally would have under the hood. And
manufacturers create engines specifically for ease of use among the
(00:50):
consumers and being able to turn the vehicle on and
and and expected to reliably power your vehicle, uh, you know,
to and from the grocery store, to and from work,
school where you happen to go long road trips whatever. Reliability, Um,
you know, um, just just the like the repetitive nature
of it that you can expect it to function in
a certain way all the time, and you're not going
(01:11):
to get that with a race engine. And and we'll
talk about that today. Um, in specific, we're gonna talk about,
you know, F one engine. So you know, because a
lot of people would have kind of the fantasy I've
been able to put a n F one engine, a
Formula one engine into their road car and make that work.
Because wouldn't that be just incredible? I mean, it would
be an amazing thing to to have an F one
engine under the hood of your you know, your Mercedes,
(01:33):
your BMW, your Miata, whatever it happens to be, you know,
a small little car. Can you imagine how much fun
that would be in order just to stuff some giant
race engine in there. And a lot of people again
have come close to it. And well we'll talk about
some of those people in just a moment, but um,
you know, I want to kind of catch you up
here on something. Well, in the last episode, we talked about, um,
(01:54):
some really fast cars. We talked about the ten fastest
production cars, and I told you that we're going to
talk about ten outright fastest cars pretty soon. But when
I was talking about ten fastest production cars. I asked
you the question, what was the first time that you
were in a car that ever traveled over one hundred
miles per hour? And I mentioned that it was my
my uncle's barracouta that I was in, you know, on
(02:14):
a fishing tripper, you know, just a weekend afternoon out
in the country, and that was the fastest I'd ever
gone at that point. I was really really young at
the time. Um. But I also want to mention this,
and I think there's another question that that begs to
be asked here, and that is what was the first
time that you ever drove a car over one hundred
miles per hour? What was the fastest you've ever driven
a car? Maybe, Um, that's maybe that's the second question.
(02:38):
That's actually two things. The first time that you ever
drove over one hundred miles per hour? When you hit
that that triple digit number for yourself with you behind
the wheel, Uh, do you clearly remember that? Because I
know I do. I clearly remember the first time I
ever did it. And again, you know, once again, it
was on these back roads in Indiana, these these these
old country roads that have you know, great big Swales
(02:59):
to them, they're you know, kind of hilly. They're they're
out in the middle of nowhere. And this time it
wasn't necessarily in the summer. You know, we weren't not
fishing or anything like that. This is a different person,
different car. Uh. This was This happened in the fall.
It happened right around Thanksgiving. And I know it was
Thanksgiving because it was my aunt's birthday and we were
always always in town there for my aunt's birthday right
around Thanksgiving. And she had she happened to have a
(03:22):
brand new car. And I was all excited about this
car because, um, A strange thing about this. She was
married prior to this and they had um An m
R two, a first generation MR two Toyota m R two.
Uh So that really angular a little little vehicle, two seater,
incredible little cars, really cool. It was black and gray.
Uh really really sharp little car was It looked like
(03:44):
a spaceship at the time. To me, it was incredible.
It was so cool and um just a blast to drive,
a lot of fun. It was a five speed with
that little um short throw shifter that was you know,
you put your arm way up on the arm rest
and you could just flip your wrist and shift this thing.
It was incredible and um was so go away by
this car. She had one when she was married. She
and her husband got divorced, and then she bought one
(04:05):
exactly the same as the one that her husband took
in the divorce. So she had the exact same car.
And I'm sure this was kind of and I'll show
you move you know a uh um, you know, I'll
get the same car Thingum. But but anyway, she showed
up for Thanksgiving dinner with this vehicle, this Mr two
and again first gen. And she threw me the keys
and I was a pretty new driver at the time.
(04:27):
I was as relatively young, um, I want to say
I was like seventeen, maybe eighteen and the most I
don't even think I was eighteen. And she tossed me
the keys and said, let's go out for a ride.
So we did before dinner, and we took it out
into you know, past the city limits. We went out
into the country, and she encouraged me to drive it
faster and faster and faster. And as we got going
(04:47):
faster and faster, I realized I'm going to break a
hundred miles per hour here and this is the very
first time I've ever pushed a car to that limit,
and it was so much fun and what if what
a great car to be in to do it is
so memorable. It was a great memory to have with
my aunt with this car. You know, the season, I guess,
you know it was it was cold, it was it
was dreary there. It was you know, not snowing yet
(05:09):
but but just about ready to snow. All the corns
knocked down the fields. You can see a long long distance,
so there wasn't much danger of cross traffic or anything
like that. Um, there's always animal traffic that's dangerous, but
reaching a hundred miles per hour in a car is
one of those milestone moments that I think a lot
of people recall, or a lot of people can really
you know, bring back up in their memory and say, like,
I remember the day specifically when I did this. And
(05:32):
then there's another you know question I guess that begs
to be asked, and that is, um, you know, the
fastest you've ever driven? And of course that's a that's
a completely different topic and we'll probably get into that
at some point on this show. I would think, but
I would love to hear some of these, uh moments
of yours, you know, your personal moments when you drove
over a hundred miles per hour for the first time
ever and uh, you know what what led to that?
(05:56):
With that intro, that's an exceedingly long intro and hopefully,
uh that I'll get you thinking about some things during
this podcast. But UM, I do want to mention you know,
we we said that we had kind of covered this
before on another show. You know, I did another podcast
called car Stuff and I still do Car Stuff. There's
a there's a new version of that with just me,
not not me and Ben my co host anymore. But
(06:17):
but go to car Stuff show dot com and check
out our archival information that we have there. You can
search our podcast history are archives and you can find
that we have over nine episodes in there that you
can you can search. One of those happens to be
on engine Swaps and the engine Swap episode we did
back in two thousand nine, and I believe there was
a repeat of this one back in two thousand twelve. Uh,
(06:39):
there's a rerun, same show, and um, we talked about
a lot of, um, you know, the things that people
have done to their cars in the past, you know,
whether it was you know, just fantasy they wanted to
do this, they have done it. I think mostly this
show was based in reality and that it was it
was people that had done swaps in their cars, maybe
even some listeners that had transplanted something incredible to the
(07:00):
hood of a you know, like a small little vehicle,
you know, taking a V eight and stuffing it into
a Fierro, or taking a giant again another V a
Corvette engine or something and putting it in a Miata.
Just incredible swaps like that that make cars faster and
better in some way, you know, kind of a sleeper,
I guess in a lot of ways, or or just
some enormous V eight engine that they would stuff into, um,
(07:21):
you know, an old pickup truck and make it, you know,
something that is unexpected on the drag strip, you know,
that type of that type of thing. There were a
lot of, um there's a lot of stories about people
that do things like this, you know, put w R
X S t I engines in different vehicles and and
just just fun things, fun swaps that people do. One
question that comes up quite a bit is um, you
know why can't I put a race car engine into
(07:43):
my daily driver and make it reliable, make it, you know,
something that I can count on to get me to
and from work or school or wherever. And uh, like
I said before, I think I just kind of touched
on this, but uh, you know that's the thing is
that like the logistics behind this whole thing, this this
type of engine swap, they just really don't match up.
The race engines and the production cars don't necessarily have
(08:05):
enough in common for it to work often enough. I know,
you can you can take you know, um, maybe an
engine from an old car that was a race car
that raced at the local dirt track or circle track
or whatever and put it in your your street car,
and and that might be kind of cool. But when
we're talking about this, this level of swap, when we're
talking about you know, taking an Indy car engine and
putting it into um, you know, I don't know, like
(08:26):
a Subaru or something like that, where you take a
an F one engine and you want to put it
in into your BMW. It doesn't necessarily work that way.
There's there's just not enough um you know, commonality between
the two vehicles in order to make it work. The
logistics don't work. And I'll tell you there are five
reasons at least five. There's probably way more than five
(08:47):
why this won't work. And it comes from an article,
uh that that I'm going to follow along with here
called the car Throttle dot com and a lot of this.
There's a lot of common sense in this as well. Um,
before I get into this whole thing, before I get into,
you know, the top five reasons, I do want to
say that, you know, I understand that there are some
F one derived engines in past vehicles, you know, past
(09:08):
road cars that have have been successful. Now, this isn't
necessarily taking an actual F one engine and putting it
into a road car and making it work. It's it's
it's a derived engine. So it has a lot of
commonality between the uh, the F one engine and the
road car. But maybe it's just the number of cylinders.
Maybe it's just some of you know, the the headwork
(09:29):
that they do on the thing. You know, maybe it's
very similar in that way. But you're gonna find that
the cooling and the fuel and all that is is
completely different in these vehicles. Now, a couple of them,
just to give you an example. I can give you
maybe three or four examples here just real quick. Uh,
the two thousand five BMW E sixt M five that
had a V ten engine that was um derived from
the F one vehicle that that BMW fronted at the time.
(09:52):
And if you want this is actually a pretty good
news because right now, going back to get an E
six d M five with that V ten engine, it's
it's fair really cheap considering considering what you're getting. Uh,
you can find one that is roughly, you know, somewhere
in the ballpark of about twenty dollars right now. I
know that still sounds like it's kind of expensive if
you're talking about just a toy car you know, have
on the weekends and have fun with or whatever. But uh,
(10:14):
this one could be a daily driver, it could be
a could be a fun car for under twenty thousand.
So keep your eyes open for an E sixt M
five BMW from around two thousand five, and you'll find
that they do have that that F one derived V
ten engine. In fact, there's another one that's a lot
more expensive. This will show you that, uh, you know,
the BMW maybe is quite a bargain compared to it
the Ferrari F fifty. The Ferrari F fifty does have
(10:37):
a V twelve engine that was derived from the F
one car at the time that Ferrari is posting in
that series, and this is from around to about nineteen seven.
And then there's the Porsche Carrera GT, which has a
five point seven leader V ten engine UM and that
is a car that was built around two thousand three
to two thousand seven. I believe that I think that
(10:57):
seven was the final model of the year for that vehicle. UM.
And there there's some others out there too, but those
are just you know, three quick examples of some of
these F one derived engines and some of the road
cars that you can have that that do have these.
But I want to point this out, and I think
this is really really important, you know, to make these
engines road where they would take so much effort to
(11:19):
make them, you know, so they're reliable, so that they
cool correctly, so that you know, you don't have to
use some crazy, ridiculous fuel in order to drive them,
you know, here and there to get the performance out
of them. They won't knock, so they won't destroy themselves.
There's there's so many uh different things that we need
to talk about in this podcast that we're gonna get to.
I promise F one engines. I wanted to stress this
(11:40):
are extreme. I mean and that's not an overexaggeration or
an overuse of the word extreme. They truly are F
one engines are extreme. And just to give you an
idea of what they're using right now, they're using um
the current F one configuration for nineteen, they're using one
point six leader four stroke turbocharged V six engines in
these cars. Now, there's been an incredible evolution in UH
(12:02):
in F one engines over the years, and going back
to pre nine, there were unlimited cylinders. You could use
an unlimited number of cylinders in the cars. If you
wanted to have sixteen cylinder, you could a twelve cylinder whatever.
In the nineties they limited the number of cylinders to twelve,
and then in the early two thousand's they cut that
back to V tens. Everybody was using V tens, and
then in two thousand and eight they went to V eights,
(12:23):
and then I don't remember, I think it's around twenty fourteen,
two thousand fourteen, I believe they backed it down to
these Uh, these turbo charge V six engines, and uh,
of course they're getting just as much power out of them,
so you know, the the engineering behind them is very
very solid, of course, as you can imagine. Uh, and
they drive just an incredible amount of power out of
these things. Just remember how extreme these engines are and
(12:46):
how the logistics just don't match up with your typical
road cars. So you know, some of the stuff that
that I'll tell you here, Uh, it's pretty incredible. I
mean really when you think, when you think about it, UM,
for number one, I guess we'll start right here. They
are notoriously difficult to start. They're very very difficult engine
to start. So you can't just jump in the car
and expect it to turn over if you turn a
(13:08):
key or push a button or whatever. It doesn't happen
that way. It has to These things have to be
brought to life in what we'll call precise conditions. And
by by precise, I mean that first of all, you'd
have to have these external pumps that would push um
coolant and fuel through the system. So you're gonna have
to um, you know, pump these these preheated liquids through
(13:29):
the engine in order to make it even work. Now
this is kind of funny. I mean, the water and
oil pump that would be necessary to send these around, um,
they have to um be preheated too, about a hundred
and seventy six degrees fahrenheit, that's eighty degrees centigrade, uh,
to to kind of warm up the engines inner passages
before they would even start. So you know, um, prior
(13:50):
to that, these things are built to such tight tolerances,
so such incredible small tolerances that anything cooler than that
and the engine is effectively seized. Either there's nothing that
would even turn that engine, and the pistons are gonna
be so tight within the cylinder walls that they're going
to be essentially sees solid. And so anything below sixty
(14:11):
degrees centigrade, which is about a hundred and forty degrees,
you can't even get it to budget all. So, so
a hundred and seventy six is going to be kind
of the minimum temperature that you're gonna need in this
thing in order to get it to even crank over.
And and then once you do, of course, you're gonna
have to have what is effectively like a large drill
or you know, a starting mechanism. And I think we've
all seen this on the starting grid for any type
(14:32):
of open wheel race car, you know, IndyCar, F one,
you know, whatever happens to be some of these other
formula series where they have to crank the engine with
UM an external starter and that's how they get it going.
So it's just not very practical for you to want
to do this in your in your own driveway, especially
on a like a you know, wintry morning on January
or something. You know, if you're trying to go out
(14:53):
and snow and and start up your car with an
F one engine, there's no way there's just gonna have
no chance of starting that thing out. So UM understand
that that you know, it will require these these external
pumps that that pump this heated fluid throughout the engine,
the cooling and lubricant. UM. You know, just a side
down here, and I want to take just a moment
to uh, to pause on this for a second as
(15:14):
we as we talk about this. And one thing that
I've really enjoyed watching over the past several years on YouTube,
and I've owned a car that has I don't own
it anymore. I had I had a car that had
an enormous V eight engine and it was just a
beautiful sounding engine. I love to hear it run. One
thing that I've I've kind of become addicted to, I
guess on on YouTube is watching people cold start their
(15:37):
muscle cars. And I know it's a little silly, it's
a little funny, but you know, it doesn't even have
to be muscle car. Can just be an old luxury car.
It can be any car from you know that nineteen
sixties nineteen seventies era that you know, they they just
refused to start on cold marains and you know, you're
you're pumping the gas pedal, you're pulling the choke. You know,
you're trying to do everything you can in order to
get it to go. I just won't fire. And then finally,
(15:59):
after know what, it seems like a minute of cranking
the engine, finally it just slowly starts to turn over
and chugged to life. And then once it does, you
know it it burbles and kind of gurgles quite a bit,
and uh, finally kind of breathe to life. Once it does,
you know, then you hear some owners after a few
minutes they might give it a little throttle, and you
know that's when they get they get the great sound.
(16:19):
But for some reason, these cold start videos online are
just they're fun to watch, and you can see some
incredible cars and you get to hear some of the
best engines that you know we're made ever really, I mean,
as far as I'm concerned. You know, some of these
these enormous vates that were just so powerful and so
so dramatic when they begin, you know, they sounds so amazing.
(16:39):
Just it's kind of a fun thing. So um, you know,
we've gone through our list here only we've only done
the first one on our list. We've got four more
to go, and I'd like to get back into it
in just a moment, but first let's take a break
for a word from our sponsor. And we're back and
you're listening to the Fast Track. I'm your host, Scott Benjamin,
(17:01):
and we were talking about about being able to stuff
and f one engine into your road car. Would it work?
Would it not work? And and uh, I think we're
pretty much uh getting to the point where we understand
that it would not work. But there are five reasons.
There are five good reasons. Probably a hundred other good
reasons why it wouldn't work as well. But I'm gonna
give you the top five. And the first one that
(17:22):
we talked about was because they're they're tough to start.
That's one thing, and really it's really tough to start. UM.
The second one that we're going to talk about here
on our way to the the last version of the
last reason is that they're not cheap. And uh, to
which most of you will reply, duh, we know that
they're not cheap. They're they're very very expensive. In fact,
(17:42):
the average F one power train at this point, and
I think this article was written in this is a
article article UM, the price is roughly seven point seven million,
anywhere up to ten point five million dollars per engine.
So imagine this. I mean, let's say that you've got
the the ultimate top end vehicle, UM, the Mercedes makes,
(18:05):
and you want to put a Mercedes F one engine
into it. It's not going to be as simple as
you think. Mercedes doesn't build its F one engines to
fit into its road cars. However, let's say you've got
a Mercedes that several hundred thousand dollars and you know,
to begin with, it's a road car and you want
to put one of these in there. The manufacturer is
not going to put a seven point seven million dollar
engine into the car and expect you to be able
(18:25):
to maintain it and and and keep that thing going.
It's just there. There's just no way, there's no way
to justify putting that type of money into an engine
for a road car. Um the cost again, the cost
comes from some of these extremely tight and tiny tolerances
that emines are manufactured or machine too. And because of
this that that's how they get every little tiny bit
(18:45):
of power out of them that they can within those
six cylinders because you know, again they're dealing with six
cylinders turbo charge engines, turbo of course, but but still
they are trying to get every tiny little bit of
a less little morsel of power out of that engine
that they can. And and uh, and that's how they
do it. They manufacture them to these really really tight tolerances.
And as we said in the starting part of this,
(19:06):
you know, if you don't even if you don't circulate
the fluid throughout the engine order to heat it up,
it's not even gonna turn. It's going to be as
if they're seized in there. It's that tight, and that's
not the case with your normal road car. You're able
to typically, you know, put a wrench on the engine
and turn it freely. Um, it's a struggle in some cases.
There's a lot of compression there. I agree, However, it's
(19:26):
nothing like an F one car. Um, there's just no
way to even move it at that point. I do
also want to say that F one engines rev it's
something like fifteen thousand RPMs or even more in some cases,
and they use things like pressurized nitrogen which snap the
engine valves back into place. Um, you know, after the
camshaft loads of open them. So they're they're like, there's
more to it than just you know it being um
(19:49):
expensive to uh um, you know, to manufacture the engine,
expensive to you know, upkeep the engine. I guess it's
like a different world. You know. You would you would
require having somebody on hand at all times in order
to monitor all systems in this car as you're driving it.
You know, practically after every drive to the office, you
would have to have somebody monitoring the engine, telling you
what you broke during your drive to work. How much
(20:11):
it's gonna cost, you know, and you likely wouldn't be
driving that same car home. That's the way. That's way
a lot of these work. And we'll we'll talk about
that in just a moment too, because that is coming up.
But one other thing, uh here in number three on
the list out of five that we're gonna talk about
is cooling and uh oh man with that fifteen thousand
rpm that we talked about, and uh, you know, just
the incredible efficiency that these things operate, and you know
(20:34):
how hot they have to be in order to to
maintain even fluid movement so that they that they continue
to operate. Um, you're gonna find that cooling is really
really critical in these things, and radiator sizing UM is
really really important. It's huge. It's a huge concern for
F one teams. And if you've ever seen an F
one car, and I'm sure that anybody listening to this
podcast is familiar with an F one car or an
(20:56):
Indy car, those enormous pods that are on the side
of the car, so the ones that are to the
left and right of the driver, those are where the coolants,
the cooling system is housed. So that's where that's where
you're gonna find the radiators and the radiator its actually
heat exchangers, but it's a radiator if you want to
call it that. That's the best way to say it. Um.
But they are enormous. They're they're much bigger than just
(21:17):
the pods. Uh. You know, the distance from the top
to bottom if you were to measure them, Uh, you know,
they're they're less than the height of your knee maybe
you know, when you're standing next to the car. So
the way they get around this in order to make
these um much much bigger than uh they would be
if they're standing upright, is that they angle them and
the heat exchangers are angled down and away, so the
top front edge is angled to the front of the car,
(21:39):
the bottom edges angled to the back of the car.
And uh, and they're really big there. They go through
that whole pod um kind of like at a forty
five degree angle. So there's the maximum amount of air
flow over top of those things. And um. You know,
in order to keep one of these f one uh
power units cool, you know, you have to keep them overheating.
You're not gonna be able to do much idling. So
(21:59):
if you in traffic every day, you know, in Atlanta traffic,
or Dallas or Los Angeles or wherever you happen to live. Uh,
you're not gonna be able to keep your f one
engine powered road car cool. There's just no way You're
gonna have to continue to have airflow over those radiators
those heat exchanges for uh the entire time that you're
driving it. It really requires you to to keep them
(22:20):
moving in order to keep them cool enough to operate.
And that's something that just a lot of people aren't
going to be able to to do. Um. You know,
they put out so much horsepower, they have such high
revving speeds that you know, it's difficult to keep them cool.
You need as much air as possible. Those side pods
are about the only way that it's going to happen.
And unless you know, you are someone who is willing
(22:41):
to completely change the look of your vehicle, you know, uh,
you know, the front opening for radiator in most cars
is not going to be enough to cool one of
these engines. If you were to try to get one
end of your car, you're gonna need something much much larger.
So you're gonna have to have I guess what you'd
call as this article says a rather adventurous body kit
um on your vehicle in order to to make it work,
(23:02):
So you're gonna have to, you know, add these extra
side pods on the side, or you know, add something
that is going to look out of place on your
vehicle in order to make it work and to to
get those um those coolant systems in place that are
sufficient enough to keep the temperature down. You know, we're
gonna talk about two more things here before we wrap
this up. But first let's take a break for a
(23:23):
word from our sponsor. And we're back and you're listening
to the fast Track. I'm your host, Scott Benjaman, and
we were just going through this list of reasons why
it might not be a good idea to stuff and
f one engine into your road car, and uh, and
there's a lot of good reasons, probably hundreds of reasons.
And we are up to number four on our list
(23:44):
of five here. That comes from an article that was
written in car throttle dot com if you want to
follow along with this, and there's probably many other articles
just like it with with other typical or other similar
reasons as well. I'm sure because these are these just
some good, some good reasons. Number one I think is
right where it should be. But first let's talk about
number four. We'll talk about the fuel bill, and uh
(24:07):
as you can imagine the fuel bill, so F one
regulations rule this. So there's a rule and F one
that dictates that an F one engine or F one
car cannot burn through more than one of petrol per
hour of driving. So that equates to roughly, I'm gonna
I'm gonna ballpark this. That's like a little more than
twenty six gallons of fuel. So that's for one hour
of driving. Now consider that you know a lot of
(24:29):
people drive about a half hour on your daily commute,
and that's of course you're not gonna go race speed,
obviously you're gonna go a little bit slower. But it's
gonna typically amount to about fifty leaders of fuel, which
is about thirteen and a half gallons of fuel that
you're gonna burn on that commute, on that half hour
commute to work. So it's gonna be quite quite an
expensive drive into work. And the thing is that these
(24:50):
F one cars can carry a lot of fuel too.
They can carry twittered and twenty five leaders, which is
almost sixty gallons of fuel. So that's a lot of
fuel to put in your car. Um, you're gonna end
up spending a lot of time at the gas station.
And and here's the interesting thing, and you might not
have guessed this, is that the type of fuel that
these things run on, it's it's not necessarily that much
(25:12):
different than the type of fuel that you use in
your daily drive, Like if you were to drive a
car that uses high octane fuel. Um, it's fairly close.
It's not exactly the same, but it's fairly close to
the same chemical makeup of fuel that we use every day.
But you know, there have been some slight modifications to it,
you know, with some uh, some additives and you know,
some different things that you know are required per engine.
(25:32):
And that's the thing that's part of why this is
again this is just something that is not capable of.
Logistics just don't work out for something like this. And
that's because after every single race, uh, the engine oil
is tested for up to fifteen different types of metal
to source any probable any probable concentrations aware in the engine.
So you're you're looking at um, you know, chemical analysis
(25:55):
is analysis rather of the engine oil. And I think
they even send the fuel out to make sure that
they're using the proper fuel and all that. But the
engine oil is is monitored for up to fifteen different
types of metal, uh that are they're found within the engine,
so that they'll be able to tell where the where
is coming from. If it's the piston rings, if it's
the cylinder walls, you know, whatever it happens to be,
(26:15):
if it's if it's camshafts that are wearing prematurely, they'll
be able to determine exactly where that metal is coming from.
And then they change the fuel. They contact the fuel
supplier and they dictate the level of cleaning and friction
reduction additives that have to be integrated into the next
batch of fuel that they send them for the race.
So fuel is not something uh that can be overlooked
(26:38):
in this when you're when you're talking about, you know,
putting an F one engine in your car, It's something
that you definitely have to consider if you're gonna even
try this. And again I don't recommend anybody does this.
If you have seven point seven to ten point five
million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and you
want to try this, go ahead and do it. But um,
I just don't think that the actually, that's just not
going to be possible. There's so many reasons why it's
(27:00):
not a good idea to do this. Um, but after
every single drive in your F one engine road car. Uh,
it would be advisable if you wanted to run and
to operate like an F one engine does in a
in a car, in a you know, on a team,
on an F one team, it would be advisable to
hire a chemical engineer to test your car after every
single drive that you make, you know, to and from
(27:22):
work wherever it happens to be, just around town, and
then supply you with you know, custom fuel specifically blended
for your engine. And that's that's one very good reason
not to do this. I mean, how boy, this would
be expensive, would it'd be? It would be super super expensive. Otherwise, um,
otherwise it might be a great idea other, you know,
other than the other four things that I've told you
(27:43):
already about this thing, uh, the last one on this list.
This is maybe again I think this is this is
the right where it should be. This is number one
on the list for a good reason. How many times
have you been watching a Formula One race or any
kind of car race, and one to three laps into
the race, someone blows an engine. There's mechanical failure immediately.
Now again this is a seven and a half to
(28:05):
ten and a half million dollar engine. That is somehow
something I find a way to grenade itself. It imploded
in some way. What happened? You know, you're you're gonna
find that. There's a variety of reasons. There's a lot
of problems there. They have to be cooled. If you're
not cooled correctly, you know, it could be any number
of things. There's just a lot of stresses put on
these engines, as you can imagine, even in a well
(28:26):
running car, and and something that is is perfectly running,
the lifespan on these engines is very very short. Now,
in an unlimited F one car, um you know that
they are allowed to spin as high as as twenty RPMs.
And we said, you know, they've been limited to about
fifteen thousand RPMs. I think that's what F one dictates.
But if it was unlimited, they could spin it up
(28:47):
to twenty RPMs. And they have a real small stroke,
a real wide board allows us to happen. But the
pistons are moving up and down at something like three
hundred times every second. So three times every second the
pistons are moving up and down. That's extremely fast. And
if you consider the weight of all those components that
that do all that that that make that crazy movement
(29:07):
in the engine, the pistons can experience somewhere in the
neighborhood of ten thousand, six hundred times the weight of gravity.
So the pistons are experiencing ten thousand six d g
s when they're at maximum revs. Now that's twenty thousand. Again,
I don't know what it is for fifteen thousand, no
calculation for that right now. But there's an incredible amount
of internal pressure that's going on within these cylinders. Um.
(29:30):
You know, the cylinders are reaching somewhere around fifteen hundred
ps i every second. Um, you know, it's no surprise
that these engines they typically lasted and this is the
maximum lifespan for these engines somewhere around a thousand kilometers. Now,
that's about six twenty one miles before they have to
be completely stripped and cared for and you know, rebuilt
in some way. Um. Now, that's not a whole lot
(29:52):
and you know, I've kind of done the calculation for this.
Now this article says something, do you know, do you
want to rebuild your engine six to ten times a year? Uh?
Not something that most people want to do. And and
here's the truth behind that is, you know, it's six
hundred twenty one miles for the maximum lifespan of this
before it has to be rebuilt six to ten times
a year. Doesn't amount to too many miles per year.
(30:13):
That's only between three thousand, seven hundred and twenty six
miles and six thousand, two hundred and ten miles driven
per year. And I don't know a lot of people
that drive, you know that short of a distance. That's
small of a distance. Uh, very few people do. Myself,
I put something like twenty thousand miles in a car here,
maybe even twenty five thousand UM. But the average US
driver at this point is putting thirteen thousand, four hundred
(30:35):
and seventy six miles on their vehicle every single year.
That's the US average right now, thirteen thousand, four hundred
and seventy six miles per year. That would equate if
if you divide that by six twenty one miles between rebuilds.
That means that the average driver would have to rebuild
their engine twenty two times every year. Twenty two times
is what you would be looking at to rebuild your
(30:56):
seven and a half to ten and a half million
dollar engines. So, um, there's just no there's no way
to get this done. And uh, you know, this is funny.
There's a there's a quote in here, and I've heard
this quote many many times and I think it's funny,
but it makes perfect sense. And it was actually a
quote from Ferdinand Porsche and it's from a long This
of course goes back to the I think, but it's
(31:17):
talking about race cars and perfect racing cars and how
you know, they just give their ultimately, you know, the
most that they possibly can, and then they just they
die at the end. That's it. I mean, it's very dramatic.
I understand that. You know, it's like, uh, um, you know,
give it, give it your all, and then that's it.
It's it's over. Um. But the quote is the perfect
racing car crosses the finish line first and subsequently falls
(31:39):
into its component parts. And I completely agree with this.
So the idea is that you win the race, the
car just completely falls apart before you even make it
around your victory lap. And uh, and you're the winner.
But you know, the car has given its all. It's
given everything. And I don't know if anybody has ever
driven a car like this. I've I've had several cars
like this, and and this is something that kind of
(32:00):
watch out for. I've I've I've driven many many cars
over my years. I've I've had several cars, and some
of them were a little sporty. Some of them were,
you know, just sedans or whatever, you know, a variety
of vehicles, the sporty cars. However, I've noticed a few
times and this this happens occasionally. There there's maybe and
I had it. You know what, I'm going to get
ahead of myself here, but let me just tell you this.
(32:20):
There's certain days when my cars felt better than other days,
and it felt like the car was just driving at
its ultimate best performance. It just felt good underneath me.
For so for whatever reason, it was shifting right, it
felt good, it was handling right. Everything was just right.
And uh, and then there are other days when it
feels like a little a little bit more sluggish or whatever.
And it doesn't coincide always with the weather because you
(32:41):
would think that um, you know, it would be as
one of my former bosses would say, it's maybe just
atmospheric conditions that that cause that. You know, it's it's
it's cool weather. It's uh, it's cool weather, that's not damp.
You know that it's dry weather. You know, and the
and the roadway is hot or you know, it feels
you know, the tires are able to warm up and
it feels better. And that wasn't always a case. It
didn't always match up that way, and I was always
(33:02):
puzzled by this. But then I've had a few cars
in the past that I've been driving, and this is
a fantastic thing. When it happens, it feels great. The
car just feels loose, it feels like everything is working right.
The engine is so smooth and so just everything is
like it doesn't make any noise, it's uh, it's shifting smoothly.
It's it's driving better than it ever has before. And
(33:25):
you're wondering, what is what's the deal with this? Why
is it working like this? And then you know one
week later catastrophic engine failure something like that. You know,
some major major problem happens it turns out the car
was loose because you know something was about to break.
You know, there are things that were going wrong in
the engine that we're making it loose. It wasn't as
tight or wasn't being bound up, it wasn't being restricted
in a way that it should have been. And uh,
(33:47):
you know, it ran too freely. It ran you know
a little too a little too good, or maybe I
pushed a little too hard or whatever. But um, you know,
watch for that sometimes. I mean, if if your car
is running really, really great, maybe you know, maybe uh,
instead of thinking like this is fantastic, maybe take a
look for something that's going wrong with it. And I
hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it
happens quite a bit. Um. But again that that kind
(34:09):
of falls into that category. And we've I think we've
seen cars that do that on the racetrack to you
know that, Uh, they run fantastic for the race, but
they can't make that final lap. They can't they can't
push it into victory circle. It's just it's too difficult.
So you know, when you're running a power train at
the peak of automotive engineering, at the peak of perfection,
it's something that is a different monster altogether from you know,
(34:30):
the car that you have in your garage right now
that is built for you know, a hundred thousand miles
of what you call, you know, low revering, low reving driving,
you know, like it doesn't it doesn't get pushed to
the limit every single day like this thing does, or
every single moment, like an F one engine does, or
or or should be. F one engines almost need to
be pushed to that limit. So, um, I don't know,
(34:52):
there's a lot of reasons. There's probably again a hundred
reasons not to put an F one engine into a
road car, But that's five and I think we'll stick
with that and and leave it there. Um. I do
want to mention that we are going to, uh, we're
gonna talk about more topics like this. We're gonna talk
about engine swaps, and we're gonna talk about some some
of these uh the these engines that that push the
ultimate limits in the in these cars. We're gonna talk about,
(35:13):
you know, drag cars that have five thousand plus horsepower.
We're gonna talk about some go carts. Even, we'll talk
about you know that that that go faster than you
could ever imagine from a modified Briggs and Stratton engine.
We're gonna talk about all kinds of engines in this
series and uh and and in this podcast over the
years as we as we progress here. And if you
have a comment on today's show about the F one
(35:34):
engine and and road cars and you know why it's
not possible or maybe an engine swap that you've done
that you know is pretty exciting to know something that, uh,
that that markedly improved the performance of the car, or
it was just an interesting swap for whatever reason. I
don't know, he put a helicopter engine into a car,
like you think about Tucker and what he did. He
put helicopter engines in the back end of his cars
early on. That was something remarkable. So that was that
(35:56):
was interesting. And maybe maybe you've done something similar, you know,
just tell me, tell me whatever you're up to and
what you've got going on in your bar out back
and and uh, I'd be excited about hearing about that. UM.
I like that kind of thing. And if you want to,
you can contact us. So there's the way you can
get ahold of us. You can you can find us
on any of the social network platforms. We are on
Twitter where we are at the fast Track Pod, or
(36:17):
you can find us on Facebook and Instagram where we
are UM at the fast Track Show. Or you can
go to the show's brand new website, which is The
fast Track Show dot com and I'm pretty excited about that.
You can check out, you know, all the podcasts there
and kind of look back through our archives. And of
course you can leave UM reviews on Apple Podcasts or
on the iHeart Radio Apple or wherever you happen to
(36:38):
listen to your podcasts. I mean, that's always helpful if
you can leave a review, and if you like what
you're listening to, if you like what you're hearing, be
sure to tell your friends because we're always looking for
new listeners. So UM, you know, we're excited about it.
We hope you're excited about it, and we'll see you
next time.
The Fast Track News
Host
Scott Benjamin
Show Links
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