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?

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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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.

Meh. I always liked that high-toned whine of Chrysler starters from the mid-Sixties through mid-Seventies. I could always tell if a Chrysler Corp. car was starting even if I didn't see it.

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.

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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

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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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...

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1987 560SL
85,000 miles

Just figuring out the coil-breaker points thing is noteworthy. Turning 12 volts into 18,000 volts for an instant over and over is pretty wild. We've gone past breaker points, but cars still have coils. Breaker points were critical for many decades for function of the auto.

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