From the October 2017 issue
Downsized turbocharged engines have become a cornerstone in the car industry?s effort to increase fuel economy. And as CAFE stand­ards push us toward a 54.5-mpg fleet average, engines are bound to get even smaller and turbo boost even higher. Such radically downsized engines can be strong at full throttle but tend to be sluggish from a stop.
Automakers are exploring plenty of solutions to this problem, including staged turbos, variable-geometry turbines, and electrically driven compressors. Jim Clarke has a more radical idea. Thus far, it?s all theory?no prototype has been built or tested?but it?s a theory with 27 claims covered by a patent and with a weighty résumé behind it. Over the course of a long career at Ford, Clarke was responsible for the modular V-8 and the Duratec V-6, including the Yamaha-built V-8 and Aston Martin V-12 variants. He was also engineering vice president at Navistar, the heavy-truck manufacturer that owns International Trucks, and he headed up special projects for Kohler Engines. His technical partner, Dick Fotsch, is a past president of engine divisions at Navistar and Kohler. Combined, the two have some 60 years of executive-level engineering and management experience. (Full disclosure: Clarke was this author?s manager decades ago at Ford.)
The first element of the design, which they call ?synergistic induction and turbocharging,? is to place individual throttles?two per cylinder, one for each intake port?right n...