I guess every air-cooled engine is different, but how would 'most' fare if they were positioned out of the direct airstream... say behind a leading bulkhead (with no sides)?

How did Porsche / VW manage to get away with sticking them in the back of vehicles?

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How did Porsche / VW manage to get away with sticking them in the back of vehicles?

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And the Fiat's had a big fan on back of alternator blowing air past the cylinders

Cheers... I can do that!

I didn't know if they employed engine bay fans or the likes.

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Originally posted by fazerruss
And the Fiat's had a big fan on back of alternator blowing air past the cylinders

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technically speaking you could say these engines were super charged as some of the air from the fan was directed into the carb!

It made a spine shattering 16bhp or was it 26?!!

Ah.. so does that principle change when it's an ickle air-cooled bike-engine pumping out 150bhp and 100ft/lbs of torque???

Could you fit a large ish oil cooler to help out?

I'm going to use flexible ducting to direct air to the bike's radiator. But, if the bikes air cooled, I will use the same to direct air ro the fins.

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Originally posted by fazerruss

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How did Porsche / VW manage to get away with sticking them in the back of vehicles?

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The same way Fiat did with the 125,126


Ducting will be your solution

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Maybe I meant the fiat 500 (early one with the 500cc air cooled twin). I thought It was also known as the 125 preceeding the 126.

The 125 was a cortina sized four door car , with that fabulous twin cam engine (1.8 I think - I do remember it went and sounded nice )
Parents had one - JVG 171G - I wonder if its still out there somewhere.........doubt it somehow , it was starting to rust well at just four years old........

Citroen GS engines were at the front, but the barrels were covered with metal ducting with all the air blown round by a crank mounted fan.

I should think it would work fine at the other end of a car.

Stu

The VW air cooled lumps also had a massive (probs 20" dia or thereabouts?) fan on the front of the engine which forced air thro' the cylinder & head fins - this was all tightly ducted to ensure the air was driven through effectively, this fan was also used to drive air thro the heat exchangers for the in car heating.

I would be very careful using an air cooled bike lump which was intended for use in the main airstream (remember bikes stay moving the vast majority of the time too, they spend far less time stationary in traffic), just putting a fan in front of the engine probably won't be enough without some very hard to create ducting to make it go where it's needed, if you can get some really big ducts into the airstream that might have a chance of working.

All that said, most Japanese bike "air" cooled engines are actually much more oil cooled than air, so with a good airstream to the oil cooler you'd probably be ok - I would suggest speak to someone who has used the type of engine in question in competition to get an idea of how forgiving it is.

Cheers guys.

i thought its said that people forget that vw engines get a lot of their cooling through the oil itself