Obviously pretty old news around here, but still, this year's LeMans (not to be confused with its fun loving redneck cousin) had the diesels just whupping up on everybody else. I would have thought the gas cars would step their game waaay up after underestimating the Audi diesel last year. I'm sure they did, in fact, and the diesels fed em dust anyway.
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/diesels-crush-a.html
How long until the word diesel starts taking on the same ring as supercharged?
well typically a diesel thats of any interest on this board is one with a turbocharger
How close is what they put in these things to "pump" diesel? You could probably make a compression-ignition engine run on methanol or whatever but that wouldn't really be "diesel" would it?
J
One must also consider that the rules are very much tilted toward diesels at the moment.
IMHO, if they didn't take the top 5 places, THAT would have been news.
Eric
Yeah they have bigger air restricters and a displacement allowance which are both very generous. Organizers specifically wrote the rules to make sure diesels would win. A gas motor with the same allowances would absolutely destroy the diesels.
They were running biodiesel, which is pretty much the same thing as pump diesel... a little less sulfur but pretty much the same stuff.
You can also have a compression ignition engine that's not a Diesel. The term Diesel simply has to do with the thermodynamic cycle that the engine uses to make power. One of the main economic advantages of running Diesel fuel is that it can take very high compression ratios and boost pressures. The Otto cycle is actually just a little more efficient, but most Otto cycle engines can't touch the compression ratios of Diesel engines, therefore the Diesel's are more efficient.
stumpmj said:Yeah they have bigger air restricters and a displacement allowance which are both very generous. Organizers specifically wrote the rules to make sure diesels would win. A gas motor with the same allowances would absolutely destroy the diesels.
Ah. That would make sense. It also explains why diesels keep winning LeMans, but aren't doing so dramatically well elsewhere.
they run a synthetic Gas to Liquid fuel with a small ammount of biomass made diesel.
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/05/31/audi-r10-tdi-using-biofuel-for-the-first-time/
The Otto cycle is less efficient. Diesel cycle has little to no pumping losses when compared with an Otto engine (not at WOT).
