Diesel to Run at LeMans, Expected to Win

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FullerH

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Multiple winner of the LeMans 24 Hour Race, Audi, is to replace its unbeaten R8 prototypes with a new R10, a similar car powered by a 90 degree, twin turbocharged V-12 diesel engine. It is a real and serious attempt to win the race with a diesel powered car and, given Audi's record at LeMans, I would not bet against them. I have been waiting for the more complete articles in this month's Car and Driver and Road & Track magazines to appear on their websites, but they haven't seen fit to put them up as yet, so here we go from Autoweek: http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051226/FREE/51214013&SearchID=73238049991259

For those of you who can get to see a Rolex Challenge or an American LeMans Race, Audi will be campaigning a pair of R10s in those races as well.
 
25% of cars sold in Europe are now diesels so I guess that's the driving force. Did you know at one time there were diesel airplane engines ? Way back Pontiac was trying to find new markets for diesels so they had some planes built with diesel engines !!!
 
Diesels rock...nothing like 300lbs and 600lb ft of torque (with a few mods, you can have a 12 second pickup)
 
According to Car and Driver, the engine is a 5.5 liter and will weigh around 580 lbs. with the Audi engineering team admitting to "over 650 horsepower and 1100 newton-meters [811 pound-feet] of torque." Remnember that, being a diesel, these figures are generated at around 3000-4000 rpm. They had to build a special tranzaxle to handle the torque and low revs. BTW, Peugeot has had a diesel program scheduled to run LeMans in 2007 and they are rumored to be very unhappy with Audi for beating them to the punch.
 
Audi already sells to the public a V8 4 liter diesel 326HP and 480 lb-ft torque (see http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3583411&postcount=23), so a competition tuned 5.5 liter with it's better tolerances and materials, bigger turbos could do double the power and torque. I'm curious what are they going to do to overcome the narrower rpm range that a diesel can handle. Maybe some kind of special gearbox.
Audi/VW have been for a long time one of the best at designing performant diesel engines.
 
flava said:
I'm curious what are they going to do to overcome the narrower rpm range that a diesel can handle. Maybe some kind of special gearbox.
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It has to be gearing, with all that low end grunt you could have really wide spacing.
 
I hope the buzz around this will help diesels to catch on in America. IMO Diesels > Hybrids.
 
I almost bought a TDI Golf in 2000. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. My next car will be a diesel. An Audi or a Lexus.
 
Temper said:
It has to be gearing, with all that low end grunt you could have really wide spacing.
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From the Car and Driver article on this car, it's torque peak is around 3000 rpm and the power peaks in the low 4000s. They estimate over 650 hp and 811 pound-feet of torque. It actually only has 5 gears (as opposed to 6 in the R8) so the tranny will last 24 hours with all that torque.
 
Audi won the 12 Hours of Sebring so it looks good for LeMans as well as Diesel engines in general. The Hindenburg was Diesel powered and i am sure it's demise help hinder the further development of Rudolph Diesels invention. I think you will see Diesels and Airships make more progress in our computer enhanced age. History is full of great tales. Diesels story would make a great movie.
 
The WWII era Messerschmitt Bf-109, Germany's foremost fighter aircraft, was diesel powered.

Craig
 
Huh? The BF/ME-109s used different Junkers and Daimler gas engines.

Junkers did make a selection of diesel commercial aircraft engines earlier. Like the opposed-piston models used in that bat-wing thing.
 
I love my Liberty CRD! 26 mpg over the jeeps unimpressive 20, and wrangler's even more ablyssmal numbers. Not to mention 295 lbs of torque in a 4 cylinder, that's about 90 more than the 6 cyl. Interestingly enough the vehicle is bumper to bumper but the engine is like 150,000 covered and rated for a million! With an increased interest in bio-diesel it hopefully will catch on. Bio-diesel production will greatly reduce outside oil consumption.
 
So we are going to take all the fat which was removed to make fat free food and transesterficate it and voila , we have bio-diesel !!! A win -win solution.
 
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