Porsche are the kings of the flat-six. When you hear this noise, you know exactly what car's coming past. But recently, it's been discovered that they've filed a patent for a brand new engine technology. One that could be game-changing.
Not six cylinders, but six strokes. How the hell does that work? Six strokes instead of four.
Well, let's start with four strokes, and then build up to what Porsche are up to. up to. We all know it, the auto cycle, suck, squeeze, bang, blow that was invented in the 1800s.
The stroke of an engine is essentially the full throw of the piston up or down the cylinder. When the piston is at the top of its throw, it's at top dead center. When the piston is at the bottom of its throw, it's at bottom dead center. A four-stroke engine takes four strokes down, up, down, up to complete its power cycle and its internal combustion process. It sucks the air and fuel in on the way down, squeezes that mixture on the way up, the spark plug ignites that mixture and sends the piston back down, before momentum then brings it back and the exhaust gases are pushed slash sucked out to start the cycle all over again.
The Autocycle has worked for a century and a half now, but it's clearly not good enough for Porsche anymore. What the hell is a six-stroke engine then? Before we dive deeper into Porsche's new design, it's time to have a look at a different piece of engineering to help you and your balls look and feel as good as possible. MANSCAPED has helped over 10 million men with their grooming, that means roughly 20 million balls have been scaped.
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So that's 20% off, free international shipping, and two free gifts when you use the discount code drivetribe at manscaped.com, which you'll find in the link in the description below. Trust me when I say, guys, your balls will thank you. Well obviously it's about adding two extra strokes in there, but where do they go?
Porsche is planning to put an extra compression and combustion stroke in before the final exhaust stroke. So that means it will be intake compression combustion, compression, combustion, and then exhaust. So suck, squeeze, bang, squeeze, bang, blow, if that makes sense.
Now, I hear you. After that first combustion, you're just gonna have a cylinder full of fairly useless exhaust gases to try and compress and combust again. But this is where the really clever bit comes in.
Porsche are planning to put a planetary gear onto the crankshaft. That means that the piston will reach different heights in the cylinder when that planetary gear rotates. Essentially what they're doing is changing the top dead center and bottom dead center values.
That planetary gear allows the piston to come further down the cylinder and exposes a ring of ports. They allow a brand new air-fuel mixture to be sucked into the cylinder, kind of like a two-stroke. While all this is happening the traditional exhaust valve opens and starts to suck out those original exhaust gases. That vacuum caused by those gases leaving the cylinder further sucks in that new air-fuel mixture.
The piston then comes up and compresses that new mixture, which still has some leftover exhaust gases in it, but at a new top-dead centre value. That is then ignited, and then there's a final power and then exhaust stroke. You can split these six strokes into two sets of three.
So you have the intake compression and combustion strokes, just like the start of any normal four-stroke cycle, but then the planetary gear. does its thing, top dead centre and bottom dead centre change, the piston comes further down the cylinder, in comes that new air-fuel mixture, compression, combustion and then one final exhaust stroke to get rid of all the excess gases and the cycle starts all over again. So why is this engine concept so special? Well, there's no set compression or stroke like any other engine Porsche has ever made.
There should be more power more of the time because there's a power stroke happening more often than in a normal four-stroke engine, kind of like the benefits of a two-stroke. Also, the combustion should be slightly cleaner because some of the exhaust gases are being recycled in that second combustion, kind of simulating an exhaust gas recirculation or EGR valve. In a world where petrol engines are under huge amounts of pressure to be as clean as possible, that's a biggie. The usual thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine in a car is around 30%. That means out of the energy in the fuel inputted to the system, about 30% of it is converted into work, the kinetic energy that rotates a crankshaft and sends you down the road.
It's being circulated that the thermal efficiency of a six stroke engine should be up at 50%. Which was the crazy milestone that Mercedes F1 surpassed during their dominant engine phase a few years ago. Those stats reaching the world of road cars would be a serious jump up for us mere mortals. The downsides?
Well, the two combustion strokes will create different levels of power because of the difference in the stroke, and also the difference in the air-fuel mixture, that second one having those exhaust gases present. Also the additional power strokes, power engine cycle, could create more unwanted vibration which could test Porsche's reliability, something they're quite good at. You could see this as over complicating the internal combustion engine especially with that planetary gearing on the crank. That will be creating additional parasitic losses due to additional friction that will be sapping energy from the engine.
If this six-stroke engine was to go into say the 2030 Porsche 911 we would also need to get used to the sound that it made. If you think about the differences in sound between a a two-stroke, and a four-stroke engine that you can hear a mile off. Imagine what a six-stroke would sound like. Not saying it's gonna sound bad, but we would need to get used to it. Porsche has never gone about engine technology by the boot.
They've always mucked about in pivoted direction. Starting with a flat four, they moved to a flat six, then they went racing with a flat 12, followed by a monstrous era of turbocharging, Suddenly there was a V8 on the cards, but all of this time the flat-six kept ticking along in the 911. Then came the scary leap from air-cooled to water-cooled, from the 993 into the 996. There was uproar, accusations of blasphemy, the 911 had lost its way. And yet you could say all Porsche had done was take its flat-six cooling strategy from its race cars from the 80s and 90s and applied it to their road cars.
Water cooling meant there was more opportunity to ramp up power and take their flat-six to all new levels. So they did. 9,000 rpm GT3s, 500 horsepower GT2s, then came possibly the greatest of them all, a 5.4-litre V10.
They then went racing with a V4, their hypercar had a V8 out of an LMP2 car, they then had plans for a flat-eight supercar. Basically, Porsche never stands still with its engines, so maybe a switch from four-stroke to six-stroke shouldn't come as a surprise. Let's remember that this is just a patent that has been filed. Porsche has made no additional signs that this technology is going to come anytime soon, if at all. What is cool though, is that Porsche are such a standard bearer for internal combustion, even these days.
They are currently pioneering e-fuel technology, doing everything that they can to keep the sports car alive as a thing. And maybe the six-stroke engine... will be another piece to the petrolhead recovery of the future.
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