Yeah, I had similar dreams before (do we both eat too many Fruit Loops?) and went even further, but with 4 cylinder engines.
If you put your engines inline as I imagine, the first problem (besides space, but as you said we’ll overlook that) is if you transmit the power from engine one into the nose of the second engine, then the second engine will have twice the power going through it and might break at the flywheel.
So if you put them in a side by side, then the clutch gets difficult because you have 2 clutches which need to be engaged at the same time, not to mention shifting the gearboxes.
So to your W type engine. If you make new block, then you also need a new crankshaft because those extra rods won’t fit on a standard crank. So you end up making almost everything new.
Take a look at the kitcar guys in Britain, they use two 4 cylinder motorbike engines to make V-8s. Beautiful. But they end up only using the original heads. That is what would happen to you too.
Now… I have designed a way to economically mate four 4 cylinder engines together to make an H-16 and figured out the transmission too. Won’t fit in an NSX though… Next summer’s project. I can’t wait to hear what a 16 cylinder engine sounds like!
Peter
