A friend recently sent me this interesting story about a new type of horizontally opposed engine with a link to VW. Not all together new a chap in New
Zealand came up with a very similar engine in 1902, Richard Pearce but that is another story.
This is no wimp engine.
It's a two cylinder with four pistons delivering 300+ Horse Power It's extremely small and very efficient and is presently in use in test
applications. The configuration below is equivalent to a extremely ballsy four cylinder engine. When doubled, it's an extremely ballsy 600+ H.P.
engine
It’s called OPOC (Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder), and it’s a turbocharged two-stroke, two-cylinder, with four pistons, two in each cylinder,
that will run on gasoline, diesel or ethanol. The two pistons, inside a single cylinder, pump toward and away from each other, thus allowing a cycle
to be completed twice as quickly as a conventional engine while balancing its own loads.
The heavy lifting for this unconventional concept was performed Prof. Peter Hofbauer. During his 20 years at VW, Hofbauer headed up, among other
things, development of VW’s first diesel engine and the VR6.
The OPOC has been in development for several years, and the company claims it’s 30 percent lighter, one quarter the size and achieves 50 percent
better fuel economy than a conventional turbo diesel engine.
They’re predicting 100 MPG in a conventional car.
For a good demo, See:
http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Opposed-Piston-Opposed-Cylinder
Fantastic, great technical video, thanks.
Very interesting!
Just a remake of the deltek, doxford and the engine used in the Commer knocker, the principal has been around as stated for years, but also in use, there was no mention in the program about were it had been used before.
The benefit of a Commer or this 'two cylinder' engine principal, is when it comes to registration, you register your vehicle based on the number of
cylinders not pistons :P.
SO if you had an 8 piston engine with the same setup (4 cylinders), you'd only register it as a 4 cylinder haha. brilliant!
Looks pretty cool.
That video was from 2008, I wonder if anything has come of this?
Smiley 
It'll probably go the way of the Sarridge (?) engine, bought out by some big manufacturer then put away somewhere where it'll not bother anyone.
Hopefully the new ones wont scream like the commers did!!!!
Its a two stroke so it probaly will.
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seen this video ages ago few years now.
no one mentioned the revetec?
there is no crank in these engine and that key to their effency and massive torque.
NA petrol version reached 39.5% effecient.
Now a diesl in the works. could reach 50 or 60% effciency
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q57ugVBMEeg&feature=plcp
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