Bugatti fun facts

[Mark]

"At maximum power, the engine is consuming 45,000 liters of air per minute.
At maximum power, the engine is burning 1.33 gallons of gasoline per minute and needs to dissipate all of that heat through its radiators."
It's kind of interesting to read all the pages of information, you can compare it to a pulsejet. It's a big mama.
"1,000 horsepower is equivalent to roughly 2.6 billion joules per hour. A gallon (3.8 liters) of gasoline contains 132 million joules, so a 1,000-hp engine has to be able to burn just over 20 gallons of gasoline per hour."

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/bugatti.htm

[Zippiot]

1 pound of thrust is roughly equal to 2 horsepower, so that giagantic engine consuming huge amounts of fuel and air...is roughly equivolent to a high powered solid rocket motor....for 4 or 5 seconds until the rocket runs outta fuel

The veyron 18:4 was based on the lamborghini diablo vt, the veyron 16:4 is technically its own model but pretty much is just a larger w-18 that makes 1k hp while the 18:4 was a 6.2 liter w-18. Torqueshare awd make it so that a car moving 250 mph doesnt hav extremem understeer...


45k liters of air per minute, how much would, say, a 100 pound thrust lockwood take in? A 100 pound thrust centrifugal turbine? Axial?

[Bruno Ogorelec]

I must say I found the old, "true" Bugattis so much more interesting.

Bugattis used to be a study of engineering contradictions -- brilliant solutions bundled together with unreasonably pigheaded ones.

They had rather poor brakes, but when customers complained, old Ettore reportedly harrumphed -- "I make my cars to be driven, not braked!"

His finned cast alloy wheels (in the early 1930s!) looked impossibly space age against the wires used by the opposition.

Top speeds were ridiculously high for the time and handling was out of this world. Even today, a Type 57 Bugatti of the late 30s can give a very good account of itself on the modern road. Just don't count on power steering, power braking and similar labor-saving devices.

Also, set aside a lot of money for the mechanic. Ettore Bugatti counted on mechanics being fantastically skilled. Such mechanics are available today, if you know where to look, but their fees make dentists and litigation lawyers look modest.

Rebuilding a crankshaft takes about a week. Remember, it is a straight-eight engine, meaning that the crank has eight throws and five main bearings. The conrod ends are NOT split in the interest of strength and conrod bearings are needle roller bearings. So, the crank is built up of seventeen individual parts plus five plain and eight roller bearings, all press fit and manually aligned with the help of wedge keys the mechanic taps in carefully with a wooden hammer... No Hirth couplings, no splines or any other help -- just incredible manual skill.

[Jonny69]

Quick back-of-ciggie-packet calculation, if a 100lb lockwood drinks 3kg of propane per minute roughly and the mixture is about 10:1 then I make that requiring about 30Kg of air per minute. Density of air is about 1.2 kg/m3 so that's about 25 m3 of air per minute. One cubic metre is 1000 litres so that wants to suck in 25,000 litres of air in a minute.

Well well well, who'd have known it?

[Jonny69]

Bruno, I saw some pre-war Bugattis being thrashed in anger in the support race at Lemans this year. Their speed and prowess on the track defies belief for such an old race car and I have nothing but utmost respect for their pilots who were throwing them sideways, cross-armed and comitted through the esses before the Tertre Rouge bend.

Most satisfying was that they are all road registered and many were driven to the race all that time ago.

[Zippiot]

so a 200 pound thrust lockwood running on propane can eat just as much air as the 1000 hp bugatti....and if 1 pound of thrust equals 2 hp locky seems a bit inefficient...
To be fair it is only a bent pipe compared to a technical marvel that has been in the works for over 125 years (piston engine I mean).

[DanielS]

Jonny: when you say mixture of 10:1 you are not referring to the fuel air mixture are you? Because I thought that propane could only combust between 2% and 9% concentration in the air, with 4.03% being ideal, So couldn't your 25,000LPM be almost cut in half (assuming that by "mixture you meant fuel to air) Just my thoughts.

[Zippiot]

Does that apply to constant combustion aswell as pulsed?

[Steve Wallington]

Earlier this year I made an aluminium inlet manifold and a steel exhaust manifold for a Type 5 Bugatti. The car is being built frim plans and drawings, as no Type 5 exists today.
The photo is of a Type 5, taken in the early 1900's. The gentleman, front left, smoking a cigarett is Ettore Bugatti, aged 21. I find it amazing that he could design, build, and repair a car at such an age. I bet he's thinking about inventing roadside recovery.

Cheers Steve

[Jonny69]

Daniel you could be right there, I don't know the exact mixture for combustion. It's just a rough calculation on the back of a fag packet. Well not quite because I don't smoke :D

If it's only 4% mixture (not 10%) then we can over double the air it requires!

[DanielS]

Oh, alright, so long as its not for some in-depth scientific analysis. It's all good.

[hinote]

Earlier this year I made an aluminium inlet manifold and a steel exhaust manifold for a Type 5 Bugatti.

Hi Steve:

Beautiful work on the steel! (looks like stainless?)

I wish I could translate my ongoing skills in SS TIG into some real American $$. Maybe some day................

[Bruno Ogorelec]

Earlier this year I made an aluminium inlet manifold and a steel exhaust manifold for a Type 5 Bugatti. The car is being built frim plans and drawings, as no Type 5 exists today.
The photo is of a Type 5, taken in the early 1900's. The gentleman, front left, smoking a cigarett is Ettore Bugatti, aged 21. I find it amazing that he could design, build, and repair a car at such an age. I bet he's thinking about inventing roadside recovery.

Cheers Steve

Looks great, Steve! It's a small world, eh? I never would have expected to find anyone on the forum involved with Bugattis in any capacity. Yet, there you are. Thank you for the pictures. I don't recall ever seeing a picture of the Type 5 before.

[dynajetjerry]

Watch out, Zippiot and others,

Many people (here and in NASA and the Media,) equate thrust with horsepower but ain't so! The velocity at which the thrust is applied is also required, with HP equalling lbs. thrust only at approx. 720 mph (I think.)
If this were not the case, we could calculate the HP of a 100 lb. rock lying on the ground but, of course, there ain't no such thing! Thrust without speed is zero HP and speed without thrust is also zero.

As a reference, HP = lb-ft torque X rpm / 5252. If I could convert rpm into mph and lb-ft into thrust, I would determine the exact speed in the above formula.

Jerry

[Al Belli]

Hi,

According to Irwin E. Treager ( aircraft gas turbine engine technology ), thrust in pounds = horsepower at 375 MPH. ( speed of aircraft )
So static thrust equates to zero horsepower.

Hp = net thrust X velocity of the plane / 550 ( fps )

Book example:
4000 Lb. thrust X 375 mph. / 375 mph = 4000 Hp.

4 Lbt X 200 mph /375 = 2.133 Hp. ( dynajet example )

Al Belli