Radial or Inline?

[Wilbus]

What's the real difference?

[Naudet]

Wilbuz, i think the main difference ist that an inline is almost everytime an liquid cooled engine, while the radial is an aircooled one.

Also inlines can be fittet into a longer but more streamline housing while an radial has more often larger frontal area that leads to greater drag.

Also radials can substain more battledamage (cause most often they dont have a vulnurable cooling system).

And last but not least it's a matter of personal taste, it's the same as if you want an V6 in your car or a line 6.

[Staga]

Radials air-cooled and inlines water-cooled.
Radials have always "unpaired" numbers of cylinders in a row (7 or 9) when ww2 inlines had usually 12 or sometime even 24. Napier Sabre (Typhoon, Tempest) was built in H-configuration, you might think it as a two 12cyl boxer-engines stacked one above another.
There was also samekind X-engine, four inline cyl-blocks using one crankshaft.

was that enough ?

[Wilbus]

Thanks both

Just a question Staga, what do you mean with "unpaired", they sat one by one or what? Looking at an F4u engine on a picture, they all sit in around the enringe in a circle, 2 rows I think, 9 in each, is that what you mean?

[Naudet]

i think stage means that aircooled hat odd numbers in a row like 5,7,9,11 and so on, while inlines had even numbers like 8,10,12 and so on.

[Wilbus]

Hardly know anything about engines at all. Take the 190 engine, in sweden it's called "stjärn motor", Freely translated that means "star engine" because the cylinders are put in a star (all around as in a circle, like on the Boeing Stearman). Is this in a row or what?

Are ALL radials like that? Cylinders in a circle?

[straffo]

let reformulate wilbus's question :

Blonde or brunette ?

hmmmm ...
that's truly an hard question ...

[Monk]

Inline........never heard of it.

[Xjazz]

Check this out about radial engine.

[Wilbus]

It's not the hair straffo, it's the "big blue eyes"

That is a difficult question though

Thanks link, reading now (ok not now, typing but soon).

[Wilbus]

Yes Xjazz! That is what I ment about "star engine" all in a sort of circle

Thanks

[devious]

AFAIK, radials use odd numbers of cylinders per circle as to under no circumstance have TWO cylinders pushing/pulling on the central rod in opposing directions (There is no 180 degree angle 'tween two cylinders, vector addition does the rest for u) This would damage the rod, and some inline engines (dunno about the WW2 ones) were able to produce such a direct-opposition condition with fatal results to the drive train (is that the correct word ?)

Also, inlines are liquid-cooled while ww2 radials were air-cooled, as has been pointed out above.

[Widewing]

A long-time friend and former AVG member (Flying Tigers), Erik Shilling, used to go ballistic whenever anyone would describe his beloved Curtiss Tomahawk (P-40) as having an "inline" engine.

"A Chrysler Slant-6 is an inline engine. the P-40 had a V-12!"

BTW, Erik passed away several weeks ago after a long term fight with cancer. He is greatly missed.

My regards,

Widewing

[Staga]

It's easy: cylinders, valves etc. in line = inline

btw did you know a boxer-engine (=180 degree angle between cyl-blocks, like in old beetle and Subarus) could be called as a V engine in some cases ?

[Wilbus]

No idea Staga, I know zip about engines

Any info welcome, don't even understand all you're saying about it