The Brutus BMW V12 is just amazing to hear start. So is the sight of the open valve train.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i6sPBxN1fM


Same goes with this Russian Radial


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW-G7pF6gUQ&vl=en


Am I the only one fascinated by their sound?


Any reason in particular they sound this way?

__________________
1998 Ford Escort ZX2 5 speed - 279,000 miles My Daily

1992 Mercedes 300D 2.5 202,000 - Pure junk
2000 Mercedes E320 Black - 136,000 miles - Needs repair

Don't forget to grease the screw and threads on the spring compressor.

They are spinning up a flywheel as energy storage. Then engage the now spinning flywheel to spin the engine.

__________________
Satan creates nothing: he only ruins everything. He does not invent: he tampers. And his followers are no different ~ Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigaṇ

Is this a different action than a regular car?I'm clueless honestly.

__________________
1998 Ford Escort ZX2 5 speed - 279,000 miles My Daily

1992 Mercedes 300D 2.5 202,000 - Pure junk
2000 Mercedes E320 Black - 136,000 miles - Needs repair

Don't forget to grease the screw and threads on the spring compressor.

A regular starter is a torque monster with the single largest wire/cable in the car, going directly from the battery to the starter. The solenoid pushes a small gear into a space next to a large geared ring on the flywheel and it turns it from scratch, no building up of inertia as with the starter in the vid. If you run it for as long as that starter is run in the vid, you could well fry it. I'm still a little shocked that starters can turn the motor over fast enough to start it. I just put one in my SDL and you know you're hanging onto a powerful sucker.

Word I read is that Charles Kettering (name famous today largely for the Sloan Kettering Cancer Clinic), who also invented the coil and breaker points ignition system, invented the starter after a friend of his was badly injured by kickback from a hand starter on a Cadillac. IIRC he eventually died from his injuries. Kettering was a monster inventor, large parts of the auto as we have long known it sprang from his brain.

That is an interesting car in the OP, you know it's a monster when you have a guy ready with a fire extinguisher to nip the scorched earth thing in the bud. That starter motor appears to be a design that can run at high rpm for an extended period compared to the starter motors we normally use.

*ETA*

I had the story of the starter mostly right. Just read Kettering's wiki page, it's an interesting read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Kettering

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

CFK is famous to me because I was born in Kettering, Ohio at Kettering Medical Center. My ex wife's grandfather was a carpenter for CFK, building much of the observatory at his property, Moraine Farm. Boss Kett, as he was known, gave us Delco, which later became Delphi.

An amazing mind...

__________________
1987 560SL
85,000 miles

There's a complete Anatov AN-2 at the National Warbird Museum in Geneseo, NY. It's one ugly duckling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-2

Jeez, that's the biggest bi-plane I've ever seen, well photos, I haven't seen many in the 'flesh.'

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I understand that starters in the newer cars that stop and start-up again at every stop for a traffic light have really been beefed up. I haven't seen one but suspect that starters may be a major cost that has to be considered in used cars of the future.

I can only guess you're talking about hybrids. I'd heard a little about that, I didn't realize it happened that often. But I suspect you have to be right, that would be a lot of wear and tear.

I don't quite get the starter setup on the Brutus car. You can see the valve train moving from the beginning but at some point it sure seems like a clutch is loosed that engages the pistons, that is, the momentum of the flywheel, the whine slows considerably all at once. But it makes no sense that the valve train would be separate from that.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

The hybrids mostly use the hybrid motor windings to start the car.

The brutus has a compression release to get the mass of the crank and pistons up to speed first

__________________
Satan creates nothing: he only ruins everything. He does not invent: he tampers. And his followers are no different ~ Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigaṇ

Ah, of course, that way not only do you have inertia in the flywheel, everything is moving.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Lots of non hybrids have start stop systems too. There are different mechanisms to assist with it, one I've heard of is simply a spring (think a a long and very strong clock spring). When the car comes to a stop it uses the engines momentum to wind the spring. When the brake is released, so does a pawl in the spring, which releases the tension.

I believe the most common implementation is to use an integrated starter-generator which spins all the time. Some have paired it with super efficient capacitors like Mazda I-eloop. Seems like a topic that would be pretty boring but the technology is really neat!

Fwiw I had a stop start bmw for some time a couple years ago and HATED the feature. It was intrusive and would jolt you on restart. Have to imagine they have improved by now though.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

I've heard a bit over the years about our burning more fuel than we realize while idling but I've never experienced a stop start car. There are a few traffic lights in my circuit that I know are long as hell. If I'm back from the front a ways I'll sometime turn off the engine, that way (with a manual) I can just leave it in first and relax my feet. Then I have plenty of time to restart.

Up in OlyWA, where I went to HS and where about half of my family still lives, they went whacky for traffic circles about 10 years ago. They're all over the place. I'm in favor. Much less stopping and starting and idling.

Not everyone is thrilled and I gather that in several locations, at least one house needed to be seized and demolished to pull it off.

One of my pet peeves in modern times is $h!tty stop lights. The good ones will have sensors that activate the left turn light if you move into that lane and no traffic is coming the other way. There really ought to be major inroads made into smart traffic lights. There's one about a mile from my shop - and this hard into silicon valley, a couple of miles from bleeping octopus Facebook - where you will have to wait - at night, very light traffic, for one to two minutes to get green. More and more if there are no headlights visible I'll run it. Plan to tell the cop that I'd been there for 5 minutes, surely it's broken, right?

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I'm also a fan of traffic circles, they seem to be (And I know there are plenty of studies on this too) significantly more efficient. I would imagine that they are safer too, someone is much less likely to miss the circle than a stoplight and a hit would mean an oblique blow rather than a right angle.

Back on topic, compression valves are a nice idea for the home mechanic. I would love to unscrew or flip a switch every time I needed to check timing or something that an engine needed to be turned over by hand.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

It has a decompression lever, whats happening is that fuel is allowed to suck in but the mix is not compressed, this wet mix lives there until the decompression lever is released and then you get a compression with the wet mix followed by a spark and eventually one or two cylinders speed up with an ignition event and the engine party gets going.

like 4 stroke large capacity single cylinder dirt bike engines. Its very painful to experience a kickback on those without decompression lever engaged.

In short what you are hearing is the starter spinning the engine with no load, if you remove all the plugs from your engine, it will sound the same

__________________
2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)