Talk:Flat-eight engine

Very smooth engine?

Flat-8 engines would be even better, because in the boxer configuration the secondary vibrations of the two straight-4 banks will cancel each other, there are no tertiary vibrations, and all you are left with is an intrinsic quaternary vibration which should be insignificant. But nobody has a problem with the tertiary vibrations of the flat-6 (which are themselves very expensive to build), so nobody bothers with flat-8s. They are sometimes used in racing engines, but racers are not concerned with a few vibrations, so they usually use the non-boxer or 180° V8 layout in which opposing pistons share crank journals. In this case the two banks reinforce rather than cancel the secondary imbalances, and the engine has a rather nasty side-to-side vibration at twice crankshaft speed. They just use lots of lock washers, secure all the fasteners very well, and hope the engine doesn't shake the car to pieces at high speed.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 02:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Can a reference for this be found, so that this information may be included in this article with a citation?

Respectfully, SamBlob (talk) 13:13, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]