03-16-2020, 07:04 PM
It's taken me a while to find this again, but the quote from the Honda Designers Talk propaganda back in the day was:
Quote:Sekiya:
On the hardware side, phased valve timing gives the engine its characteristic feel around the 3,000 rpm range. How did you create the engine's personality?
Minami:
Basically, straight-four engines run smooth as long as all four pistons move the same way. My initial thoughts were, to give the engine a deep rumble, we'd have to change the movement a bit.
We ended up shifting the valve timing of cylinders 1 and 2, compared to cylinders 3 and 4, and by continuing to change the gap, found the right combustion out-of-sync feel.
Sekiya:
Valve timing is usually changed or made variable to increase output, but your aim was completely different. Maybe the exact opposite of conventional wisdom.
Minami:
Precisely. We took the opposite approach to conventional thinking, so we weren't sure if it would work.
Quote:Sekiya:
On the hardware side, phased valve timing gives the engine its characteristic feel around the 3,000 rpm range. How did you create the engine's personality?
Minami:
Basically, straight-four engines run smooth as long as all four pistons move the same way. My initial thoughts were, to give the engine a deep rumble, we'd have to change the movement a bit.
We ended up shifting the valve timing of cylinders 1 and 2, compared to cylinders 3 and 4, and by continuing to change the gap, found the right combustion out-of-sync feel.
Sekiya:
Valve timing is usually changed or made variable to increase output, but your aim was completely different. Maybe the exact opposite of conventional wisdom.
Minami:
Precisely. We took the opposite approach to conventional thinking, so we weren't sure if it would work.