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The BMC E-series engine was a straight-4 and straight-6 overhead camshaft automobile petrol engine from the British Motor Corporation (BMC). It displaced 1.5 L or 1.8 L in four-cylinder form, and 2.2 L or 2.6 L as a six-cylinder. The company's native United Kingdom market did not use the 2.6 L version, which was used in vehicles of Australian and South African manufacture. Although designed when the parent company was BMC, by the time the engine was launched the company had become British Leyland (BL), and so the engine is commonly referred to as the British Leyland E-series engine. The four-cylinder E-series was eventually replaced by the R-series, and the S-series in the mid-1980s. The six-cylinder version was not directly replaced. ==History== The E-Series was an overhead cam design, planned essentially for front-wheel drive use in the BMC range. It was intended to replace the transverse A- and B-series overhead valve designs used at the time in other BMC cars (but see also the O-series, another replacement line for the B-series). A purpose built production facility was built at Crofton Hackett south of Longbridge Birmingham to build the units. The first use of the E-series was the front-wheel drive Austin Maxi five-door hatchback of 1969, and it also appeared in the Australian Morris 1500 saloon and Morris Nomad in the same year. These models were closely based on the ADO16 platform, but fitted with the 1.5 L E-series. The 1500 was a four-door saloon, the Nomad a five-door hatchback borrowing some of its looks from the Maxi. The E-series was always intended to provide larger capacity six-cylinder engines made on the same tooling as the four-cylinder. These were intended for use in physically larger, more upmarket versions of UK and European front-wheel drive models, and for use in a mixture of mass-market front- and rear-wheel drive models sold mainly in the markets of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Using a common design saved time, but had drawbacks. The six-cylinder had to be short to fit transversely across the nose of a front-wheel drive car. To save such horizontal space the engines were long in stroke and had no water-jacketing between cylinder bores. The engines were very tall though, combining long stroke with OHC. This in turn forced a high bonnet line when the E-series was fitted to smaller cars, something which infamously compromised the styling of the Austin Allegro, which was originally intended to sport a much sleeker appearance until it was decided by BL management that it would use the E-series in its largest engine variants. As fours and sixes shared production tooling, the four also had a long stroke and lack of water jacketing, even though it did not need the reduced width. This was especially true in later designs of transverse-engined BMC and BL cars, when the side-mounted radiator was moved to fit across the nose of the car reducing overall width of the engine considerably. The lack of water jacketing caused considerable development problems when the 1.5 L in the Austin Maxi needed an optional larger engine size. The 1.5 L four-cylinder E-series could not be readily bored out, the placing of the gearbox directly underneath the sump made stroking the engine more difficult, and the Maxi was too narrow to accommodate a large-capacity six-cylinder. Overcoming these problems meant that even a modestly increased displacement, to 1748 cc, did not appear until 1971. The engine was originally envisaged as a 1.3 L and 1.5 L four-cylinder, with a 2.0 L six-cylinder created by adding two cylinders to the 1.3 L block. However, as development continued it appeared the 1.3 litre E-series would not have any huge benefits over the 1.3 L A-series being developed at that time from the existing 1.1 L, so the smaller E-series was dropped. The result was a saving in development capital for BMC, but also meant the six-cylinder had to be developed from the 1.5 L block, creating its unusual engine size of 2227 cc. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「BMC E-Series engine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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