If you’re anything like me then you can’t get enough of hand-drawn exploded engine diagrams, and this one of an Ariel Square Four is a pip. Designed by the legendary Edward Turner – he of both Ariel and later Triumph fame – the Square Four had an amazingly long run, as it was produced from 1931 through 1959. Essentially two vertical twins sharing a common crankcase and head, the Square Four proved a relatively compact design for a four. You can see pretty much all of that design – in the buff – in the above drawing.
Last Call indicates the end of Hooniverse’s broadcast day. It’s meant to be an open forum for anyone and anything. Thread jacking is not only accepted, it’s encouraged.
Image: GoAwayGarage
Last Call: It's Hip To Be Square-Four Edition
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15 responses to “Last Call: It's Hip To Be Square-Four Edition”
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Excellent! I’d love to see an animated cutaway along these lines for the Square Four:
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Here’s a nifty, slightly more modern one. What markets got a Subaru turbo diesel?
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Definitely Europe. When it came out, the press considered it an essential, overdue engine.
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Though before the diesel they offered LPG conversions of the petrol engine from the factory. I’m not actually sure what I’d rather have. LPG is really rather cheap in Germany. 30-35% savings over petrol, whereas a diesel “only” offers 20-25% savings in a similar engine.
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Agreed. But LPG is still not a huge market. Volvo was a pioneer in the 90s offering the “BiFuel”, but it didn’t go particularly well back then.
After two decades of pro-diesel-propaganda, several Norwegian cities, including Oslo, ban diesels from city cores on smoggy winter days. So diesels are becoming much less popular.
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And NZ. Small diesels a must in our market.
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Look where I was: birthplace of the
BentleyPhaeton:
I didn’t visit, though, due to the attraction on my back:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Parkeisenbahn_Dresden_Lisa_2010-09-11.jpg/640px-Parkeisenbahn_Dresden_Lisa_2010-09-11.jpg -
Does by any chance some place on the internet house a more or less complete registry of car models using engines by different manufacturers?
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Hooniverse?
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This is it, or would have been it, had ID not crashed.
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Nice pull. I knew there’d been a post on that here at some point.
/shakes fist, silently curses the Infernal Debate crash -
Oh well.
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Looks like we need to have this Asks again, then.
For posterity!
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The only other twin crankshaft four cylinder engines I can think of are the late eighties two-strokes from Yamaha and Suzuki.The RZ500/RD500 Yamaha and the RG500 Suzuki.
A friend had the RZ500 Yamaha and it was ferociously fast, (GPZ900 fast, and lighter too). And so smooth, ( 2 stroke four = 4 stroke eight and it had a balance shaft as well, so smoother than a rotary and no engine braking) The suspension was also amazing and only recently have I ridden anything with damping approaching the same quality.
But Yamaha described theirs as a V4 as they angled the cylinders apart
http://static.blog.leparisien.fr/media/11/ym50_doc-20-rzv500r-thumb.jpg
The Suzuki had a more square stepped arrangement with the cylinders in two pairs next to each other, more like the Ariel above and there is an animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUiTNiiHqd0
http://www.southbayriders.com/forums/attachments/98443/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/RG_500_Gamma.JPG
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