Engine revolutions

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Sun 3 Aug 2003 23:03
Engine revolutions - SteveH42
In one of those moments on the A1 where there was some spare processing power available due to fairly low traffic levels I did a few calculations.

Based on an average of 3500 revs to cover 70 miles (about the equivalent of running in 5th in the Yaris), the engine would perform 3000 revolutions of the engine per mile. Taking in to account things like idling, use of lower gears around town etc, you could easily expect an engine to perform 500 MILLION revolutions in it's lifetime and as many as 1000 million (or a foreign billion) if the car lasts much >100k miles or does a lot of around town work.

Even in a basic engine this is a rather remarkable feat of engineering when you think of it, but looking at new engines with all the gizmos like solenoid controlled valves etc and it really does show just how reliable components need to be on car engines.

Now I've bored you all with that, I'll leave you to the normal Backroom service!
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Mon 4 Aug 2003 12:20
Engine revolutions - Colin M
Using similar calculations, I have just flown a 747 from Singapore to London. Each of the 4 engines turned more than 8 million revolutions during the 14 hour flight without a glitch. What's more, not even a litre of oil burnt in each.

Jet engines do suck squeeze bang and blow but without the tremendous pressure changes associated with the piston engine, so in a way, the average car engine is a very reliable piece of kit even when compared to a jet.

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