Quote:
Originally Posted by shift@red
The thing is, the GT3 doesnt need anything more than what it is/has. It is THE winningest car in motorsport history from THE winningest manufacturer in motorsport history. Why mess with what works? Its not supposed to be a high tech motor. Its just supposed to be a reliable one that wins races and does so with ease over the v8 competition. Cars like the 911 turbo pack a lot of tech, and things im sure BMW wont have for quite a while in their cars.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by devo
^^^ Exactly! The Mezger engine has a long history of winning races and endurance reliability. Although there may be higher tech stuff, the GT3 with 114.4 hp per liter and the RS with 118.4 speaks volumes. Their current torque curves are very, very impressive as well.
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There is no doubt that the Metzger motor is powerful, reliable, and one of the best motors ever built, and I do love mine. But everything gets old... The '07 GT3 cup motor in the back of my car is 480 lbs dressed. The street motors add emissions and a bunch of other stuff and weigh a
lot more. Now compare that to a Carrera GT, for example- a street motor that weighs 8 lbs less than my race motor at 472 lbs, but has 184 more hp. And this is an older motor (2003) that was also designed for endurance racing and has a dry sump- I don't think anyone doubt its reliability.
The reason is pretty obvious when you take a GT3 motor apart- every time they added power they also added weight. That flat power curve? Bolt on variocam and a three stage intake. Bolt on emissions controls, water jackets for pistons, water passages and water pumps, etc, each with it's own separate castings and bolts. So the newest GT3 motor is also the heaviest. In contrast to Porsche's slow evolution, BMW has been pushing engine technology every generation of M3. Using clean-sheet design they were able to make the S65 V8 33 lbs lighter than the S54 it replaced while still gaining over 80 hp. They've been pushing the use of lighter materials, and advanced concepts like valvetronic. The result is an engines that are both more advanced and have higher power to weight ratios than their porsche counterparts; I know some porsche race engine designers and the freely admit to this.
Of course this is about to change, and the CGT reminds us of what Porsche can do when they put their mind to it. Porsche will drop a huge amount of weight from the tail of the car with a clean-sheet design when they go to the next gen GT3 motor while still gaining power. In the end
that's why you mess with success...
My original point was not to sell BMW engineers short here- they are on the very cutting edge on engine design, and we've seen what
they can do as well. When they don't blow motors up, that is (early S54s, etc)...