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The Bugatti U-16 was a 16-cylinder water-cooled double-8 vertical in-line "U engine", designed by Ettore Bugatti in 1915-1916 and built in France in small numbers. The US Bolling Commission bought a license to build the engine in the US,〔http://museum.eaa.org/collection/aircraft/Bugatti%20Model%20100%20Racer.asp〕 and small numbers of a slightly revised version were built by the Duesenberg Motor Corporation as the King-Bugatti. Probably about 40 King-Bugattis were made before the end of World War I caused building contracts to be canceled.〔http://home.uni-one.nl/bugatti/revue3/rev3-3.htm#king〕 ==Design and development== The U-16 engine was designed to use as many features of a previous Bugatti 8-cylinder in-line engine as possible. Two eight-cylinder banks were mounted vertically side by side on a common cast aluminium crankcase, each bank driving its own crankshaft. The two crankshafts were geared to and drove a single common airscrew shaft. The shaft was bored to accept a 37-mm gun barrel, and a clear passage was provided through the crankcase in line with the shaft boring for the same purpose.〔Jane's fighting aircraft of World War I, originally published by Jane's Publishing Company, 1919, re-printed by Studio Editions Ltd, London, 1990, pps 275-277, ISBN 1-85170-347-0〕 Each eight-cylinder bank was made up of two cast iron four-cylinder blocks; the crankshafts were each made up of two standard four-cylinder crankshafts joined end to end by a fine taper cone joint. To reduce overall length, these crankshafts were undercut: a typical Bugatti approach, where only their unlimited budget and attention to detail could afford such complexities. A bevel gear at the junction drove a vertical shaft from which the single overhead camshaft and dual magnetos for each bank were driven. Two magnetos were mounted on the outside of each cylinder bank. Each magneto fired all eight cylinders for that bank, driven by bevel gear from the vertical shaft that also drove the bank's single overhead camshaft. Each cylinder had two vertical inlet valves and a single vertical exhaust valve, all driven by rocking levers from the camshaft. Four carburettors each fed four cylinders via a water jacketed manifold. Each cylinder exhausted into an individual pipe in the space between the cylinder blocks.〔 The whole construction was protected by patents until 1935.〔L'Ebé Bugatti, 1966, "The Bugatti Story", Editions de la Table Ronde & L'Action Automobile, first British edition 1967, Len Ortzen (translator) and Souvenir Press Ltd, London, pps 70-72, p162〕 The engine completed ten-hour and fifty-hour endurance tests in 1917, and the French government purchased a license and arranged for production by Peugeot. During the fifty hour test a US sergeant who was observing the test for the Bolling Commission was killed by the propeller, becoming the first US serviceman to die on active service during World War I.〔 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「Bugatti U-16」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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