Ilmor Back in Business: 700cc 132 Horsepower Engine

Ilmor Engineering, the company that supplied engines to Mercedes-Benz for their Formula 1 team, is again making the headlines, this time with a brand new technology providing amazing results to say the least. The company is developing a three-cylinder, 700cc five-stroke gasoline engine that develops no less than 132 horsepower and 165 Nm of torque. Quite impressive for such a small-displacement configuration and Ilmor says it can do even more than that.

The engine is at least 5 percent more efficient than an equivalent direct injection unit, and is suitable for installation for either hybrid or conventional installation, as the company said in a release.

Turbocharged to 3 bar abs, the 5-stroke concept uses two fired cylinder working on a conventional 4-stroke cycle "which which alternately exhaust into a central expansion cylinder, whereupon the burnt gases perform further work," as the developer explained. "The additional low pressure expansion cylinder decouples the expansion and compression processes, and enables the optimum expansion ratio to be selected independently of the compression ratio."

Ilmor Engineering says the engine could be further improved by working on a number of features, including cylinder capacity, valvegear design, turbo selection and ancillaries. This would result in a power boost to 112 kW (150 bhp) and a weight saving of approximately 20 percent, according to preliminary figures.

"No modifications are planned which would require any unconventional or new manufacturing processes, its simplicity and reliance on tried and tested technology being one of the key benefits of the Five-Stroke engine," the company said.