That's a series of engines, not a single model. The FIAT FIRE [1] series has been in production for 36 years from 1985 to 2021 and, maybe you wouldn't expect it from FIAT, those engines were reliable.
The Jag XK platform had 45+ year run. I'd bet that as long as the 911 is made, it'll have an inline 6 and to someone's thinking it will be the same platform as the air-cooled version from 1964.
Engine architectures tend to last unless they are bad. They can do a lot on one also, the Toyota GR platform started out as a fairly vanilla V-6 but it has variations with GDI and variations with turbochargers and has been used a lot of different vehicles. A lot of different variations with different levels of compressions and such. It's basically the block and cylinders configuration.
I'll shout out the K-series though, it's a shockingly good platform. Lots of little details have been thought through, it's relatively simple, inexpensive and reliable and maybe one of the easiest engines to work on. If you were new to cars and wanted to start wrenching, the K-series is a pretty good place to start. It can take boost and make power and has lots of aftermarket support. I know civics aren't everyones cup of tea and it's not a big V-8, but I've yet to meet an engineer that isn't at least slightly impressed by the k-series.
Ah man, I owned a Jag XJS with the V12. Nothing on that car was what I'd consider 'normal'. Want to change the brake pads - down the rabbit hole I went. That car was why I own a voltmeter. I was a lot more knowledgeable after that car - smart enough to run, not walk from an XKE opportunity.
Came here just to rant about the FIRE and the Firefly.
The Multijet was also extremely reliable.
Instead, they were tossed aside to promote whatever garbage came out of citroen design centers, i guess to achieve the destruction of stellantis. (except in south america, they still get to use the Firefly)
I had the first Twingo model with that engine. Sure, reliability was exceptional, and it also felt nice to drive for a low power engine (55 HP). What wasn't exceptional however was fuel economy, which significantly increased the total cost of ownership of a car like the Twingo.
I think the car made it to almost 300000 km with the engine showing barely any sign of wear. Some parts broke down, and there was still regular maintenance, which, combined with poor fuel economy and state subsidies made it not economically viable to keep the car even though it still ran. The newer model we bought later didn't last as long, the engine was good but not as robust, but it was still worth changing because of fuel economy alone.
At no point we considered environmental factors, only cost, but they are tied, since better fuel economy means both lower costs and lower emissions.
So in the end, you we a engine that was reliable for sure but didn't meet modern standards in terms of running costs, emissions and performance. When the Twingo came out, the use of the Cléon-Fonte engine was generally considered a serious downside, and it was changed to the more modern and appropriate "Energy" engine shortly after.
In the couple years I've owned my (now) 10 year old wee-Fiat I think I've opened the hood once, when I first bought it, just to confirm the engine was actually there. Other than that, what engine?
Probably should pop it open (heh, Fiat Pop, no pun intended) to fix the headlight which has been out for about a year but it was a lot easier to get a (free) veteran's plate than poke around in there and you pretty much have to commit vehicular homicide in front of a cop to get pulled over with a veteran's plates so... I mean, it came with an extra headlight for a reason.
But, yeah, tiny little engine for a tiny little car which does it's job without issue, what's not to love?
Fiat FIRE engines are reliable workhorses, but they arent cool nor overbuild like K series. You can tune NA K20 to over 250 whp, or 400 whp turbo with _stock_ bottom end. Same reason 2JZ are legendary with stock bottom end good for at least 600 whp.
This little 20HP one-cylinder Diesel engine [1] powers much of third world agriculture. The original design seems to have come from Shanghai Engine Company in 1953, and is still manufactured by multiple companies. It's water-cooled, but non-recirculating; you have to fill the water tank when you fill the fuel tank. No electrical components at all. Starts with a hand crank.
Over 75 years of production of that design. It's the AK-47 of engines.
It came out at a time when Shanghai Diesel Engine Company was totally government owned.
Shanghai Diesel Engine Co., Ltd. (SDEC) originated from the Shanghai Diesel Engine Factory, founded in 1947 under the name Wusong Manufacturing Plant of the China Agricultural Machinery Company, where it produced a trial batch of 5 HP gasoline engines. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the factory was renamed Wusong Machinery Plant, which later began mass-producing a single-cylinder, horizontal 12 HP diesel engine operating at 750 rpm. In August 1953, it officially became Shanghai Diesel Engine Factory and started independently designing and manufacturing diesel engines.[1]
That's the engine - that little 12HP single-cylinder horizontal Diesel engine. It's up to 20HP now; there's been progress in 70 years. Here's a full teardown and overhaul.[2]
It doesn't seem to resemble any common US, UK, Japanese, or German diesel engine of the 1940s. All those countries built small Diesels in that period, but none are close to the Chinese design. Don't know who the designer was, though. If you asked SDEC, they'd probably tell you.
25yr is "meeting expectations" for any mass market[1] engine designed after about the mid 1970s or so.
A design that is both not fundamentally flawed in some way and cutting edge enough for its time to not quickly rendered obsolete the steady increase in expectations should go far longer. A design that is "ok" and cutting edge will probably go 20-30yr. A design that is behind the times, and very good (easier to not make wrong design decisions when you're not on the cutting edge) will probably do 20-30yr as well.
[1] i.e. not some specialty truck or sports car thing that could become not worth making due to a shift in market conditions for the few segments where it's applicable.
Needs a million upvotes. It costs a large pile of money to design an all-new engine from the ground up that meets modern emissions and is reliable is service for hundreds of thousands of miles. You should be thinking billions of dollars. They only way to make this affordable is to amortize that cost over many many cars of many many years. Sure you will tweak the design here and there for various reasons, but the initial investment to get the first car to a customer is too high to dare start again anytime soon.
Of course with electric cars obviously coming it is questionable if any engine is worth starting today. There isn't much worth doing that a minor tweak to an existing design cannot do - and even if there is something it is questionable if engines will be sold long enough to be worth it. (at least for cars - if you target boats or construction equipment or such maybe - though you will note smaller boats typically just take an existing engine and tweak it because there are not enough small boats sold to be worth a new design)
This comment made me question the specifics of my mental model pushrod vs overhead cam engine. I found this site that has three nice gif’s which was exactly what my visual brain wanted to see for comparing the differences - https://www.samarins.com/glossary/dohc.html
Thanks for the comment as it was the impetus for me to expand my engine knowledge today!
I used to view them with disdain - a clearly obsolete design GM kept using because they're cheap or lazy or some such.
I no longer hold that view. GM's pushrod V8s are considerably smaller than their competition, and lightweight relative to their displacement, for which there is famously no replacement.
Ok, stick a huge turbo on a 100cc engine and power my 1 ton pickup please. Id like it to feel quick in traffic but also tow a few thousand lbs uphill without really noticing it.
No one buys a 1-ton to feel quick in traffic. A few thousand lbs going uphill can be easily done with a 1/2 ton, and the majority of them are now turbocharged.
Forced Induction has made its way tho. Not all, but a lot of modern turbo engines are great in all three aspects of reliability, performance, and efficiency.
I can see turbo'ed PHEV being the solution to heavy-duty use cases one day. Pretty stoked for the Ramcharger.
Someone will, because it's a useful form factor. And that someone is gonna be the people who are the experts in it, which is pretty strongly arguably GM.
There have been sooooo many SBCs shat out into the world in industrial applications that even if GM stops making them someone will keep making them. You can't make a compatible single replacement because you'll break a ton of applications. You can't make a ton of different replacements because that's not economical. Only makes sense to keep making them.
Definitely, and the old carborated beasts just work and can be fixed with minimal tools and ran off of just a few wires.
I've been enjoying watching a coworker resurrect his M715 Military Truck (basically a government J-Series truck from Kaiser/Jeep) with a fresh blueprint SBC and a mix mash of GM and aftermarket drive train parts.
It may be the least efficient truck I've ever ridden in, but it can reliably pull tree stumps out of the ground.
A lot of bigger engines are running right on the edge of oiling problems these days. With fuel economy rules being what they are it's just how it is. GM isn't special in this regard. Ford is killing a lot of cams and lifters (a problem GM fought through some years ago).
Meanwhile Toyota[1] is recalling blown up turbo v6s left and right (for problems that you can't just dump different oil in to solve) because they didn't invest in keeping a big v8 on the cutting like GM did and they didn't invest in making small turbo stuff last long like Ford did.
[1]Mentioned not because they have unique problems but because who if not a Toyota fanboy makes a comment like yours
To be fair Ford's small turbos are also notorious for shitting the bed, but mostly due to cooling system failures or the terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
Ford's big mistake with the 1.0L Ecoboost wasn't exclusively using a timing belt, it was using a timing belt submerged in oil. They did state that they engineered the rubber to withstand being submerged in oil, but ultimately it didn't really work out like they had hoped.
Lol. The most insane thing about the 1.0 is that they switched back to a timing chain due to the belt issues. But guess what? The fuxking oil pump is still driven by a rubber belt submerged in oil... And guess what happens to the oil pump belt? Just mind blowing that they would half ass this fix so badly.
>terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
3.0 Duramax says hold my beer (for the readers not familiar, it has a wet belt driving the oil pump and it's mounted in the back making proactive replacement prohibitively expensive).
My jaded take is that they're sticking with the wet belt on what's generally a europoor economy car engine in order to force planned obsolecense.
They spec the thinnest stuff they can get away with to add .0001mpg. Multiply that by all the Chevy 1500s GM makes or F150s Ford makes and you see the draw.
Sometimes it turns out that the thinnest stuff they can get away with just not quite thick enough at the margins or in transient conditions. And of course they stretch out the oil change interval to reduce on-paper TCO as well which doesn't help.
You can mitigate this with thicker oil (what GM did for the recall) by can go too far and create other oiling issues because thick oil drains back slower and going to some super high spec 0-W-<whatever> Euro oil may cause other problems related to soot and sludge so there's no silver bullet.
The "safe" advice most people give out is to use whatever the <nation with no emissions or fuel economy rules> version of your owners manual says to use for oil.
And if you have a high strung turbo engine you ought to take your oil change intervals seriously.
The headline isn’t really true. The K series of engines has been in production for 25 years but it has been redesigned along the way.
The article mentions this further down:
> The K20C is Honda's current-generation of the K-Series range, upgraded to deliver strong real-world efficiency and long-term reliability across the Honda and Acura catalogs. It's also a redesign that meets stricter global emissions rules and tighter thermal demands that come with modern turbocharging.
The original K20A has been out of production for a long time.
Each iteration of the engine shares a lot in common with the previous iteration, but the redesigns have been significant enough that I wouldn’t say it’s accurate to claim that one engine has been in production for 25 years.
When Honda changes the letter on the end of the motor code, that’s a good indication: They started with K20A and now it’s K20C, there was a K20Z and so on.
It’s actually very common for engine series to span decades, even though this article is presenting it like it’s an unusual achievement. Chevy has the LS, Subaru with the EJ, Mitsubishi with the 4G.
I think the article's broader point still stands: Honda built a platform with enough foresight and flexibility that it could be continuously refined rather than scrapped and replaced every few years
True, but this is actually common for engine manufacturers. Most manufacturers have an engine series that spans multiple decades.
> rather than scrapped and replaced every few years
This doesn’t really happen for mainstream engines. Maybe for specialty and exotic engines, but not the engines you see powering the commuter cars and trucks on the road. Engine development is expensive. Nobody is scrapping and replacing their bread and butter engine design every few years.
I don't think that lack of reliability is the key factor for why new motors are still being developed. Fuel efficiency or changing emission standards are two points that come to mind that drive further optimizations.
Perhaps that's what's remarkable about these? They had architectures that could meet 2025 emissions standards, 25 years ago. That said the Honda "L" series engines are just as long-lived and are the even more efficient variety.
My favorite fact I used to tell people when I owned a 2008 Honda Fit was that parts of the L-Series engines was from Honda Powersport's Boat Motor lines. (the crankshaft if memory isn't failing me)
They should do more cross-over technology. Why do they make a motorcycle with a 1.8l flat 6 engine that shares the 73mmx73mm cylinder format of the early L-series car engine, but they can't bring an engine like that to cars? It would be smooth as hell.
"Engine failure" is something everyone thought was a last century problem, yet it's back. Some blame extra thin oils, and some are pointing to cheap parts (ex. plastic manifolds and plastic timing guides). There are now engine lawsuits in 2015-2025 model vehicles from all the big vehicle manufacturers, with new failures clustering in late models. They literally don't make them like they used to.
Intuitively I feel like it's something like the light bulb.
For a while, bulbs had to meet efficiency standards. These standards were configured such that they didn't technically exclude incandescent bulbs, however, for an incandescent bulb to comply, it would have to be driven hard and thus comparatively short-lived.
(for context, incandescent bulbs last something like 4x as long if you let them be 10% dimmer)
I have 3x 100watt lightbulbs in a single fixture that have been running strong for years. The secret? I keep them dimmed by ~20%. Longevity wasn’t the intent, though, I just like them dimmer and warmer. A pleasant side effect nonetheless.
My Acura V6 got recalled due to main bearings being out of spec. I still haven't taken it in for that because the damn thing runs perfect and I don't want them to mess that up. But Honda, uh, did they forget how to build engines the past few years?
The torque steer on those things is unbelievable, they are really unsafe but a lot of fun. I drove one that had 'only' 160 HP according to the owner and it was incredible. Cars like that will get you shrinkwrapped but you will be smiling...
Classic Mini that meet with an bad end really do look like that, it is unfortunately very descriptive. Issigonis created an icon, and John Cooper improved substantially on it. Incidentally, one of Cooper's creations, the 'Twini' nearly killed him:
I've driven a lot of weird and interesting cars but none quite that scary. It felt borderline out of control all the time and I was happy to return it to the owner with all the parts still attached.
The 'worst' mini I owned was a souped up Innocenti bored out to the max, it was still fairly safe to drive but I would not let non experienced mini drivers others drive it, too many surprise factors. We drove that thing through Scotland (my eldest and me) and it was a trip to remember.
Another interesting one - that I didn't drive but the son of the owner did - was a TR with a massive Ford special products V8 shoehorned into it. If you live in eastern Canada and you're overtaken by something small and wicked fast with 'BAD TR' as the license plate, that was it. Getting in the passenger seat of that thing was an interesting experience, the engine took up half the footwell, and the clutch had so little throw that you couldn't really tell when it was depressed and when it wasn't. It certainly moved though.
Capri 2.8i is a practical classic. You could drive it every day. Convert it to run on LPG, and you could drive it in most city centres, blast right through that Low Emission Zone, wafting out warm carbon dioxide and water vapour and (at least in theory) cleaning up some of the oily sulphurous stink of diesel bus engines.
Porsche 911 Turbo is not just dangerous, it's actively trying to kill you. The engine is at the wrong end so it doesn't handle (if you throw a dart feathers-first at the dart board, it'll try to flip round in the air so the heavy end is at the front), and the turbo lag and very "peaky" cam gives you a throttle response of <STOMP> nothing, nothing, faint whistling, WWWAAAAAAAAH WE'RE BACKWARDS THROUGH THE HEDGE.
That's largely a myth told by people with shiny new Coscast engine blocks to sell you.
They run too hot because everyone runs lawnmower-grade 95 octane petrol these days, which contributes more than anything else to liners breaking free especially with the liners being thinner on later (90s onwards) 94mm-piston engines. I do wonder if the switch from thin steel "shim" head gaskets to composite ones allowed the liners to move more?
Anyway they only break liners free completely (the infamous "dropped liner") if you run them absolutely bone dry of water until one piston expands enough to jam in the liner and start hammering it up and down, just before the engine seizes entirely.
It's cheap and easy to get the liners knocked out and the block machined to take "top hat" liners, with a lip around the top that clamps them in place, something like £1800 last time I looked.
Japanese cars can be amazingly reliable. My wife drives a 2003 Toyota Celica (a sporty Corolla) and I drive a 2003 Audi A4. They both have about the same miles, around 150k. The A4 has had thousands and thousands of dollars worth things fail the years. There is a lot of extra Audi tech stuff to break of course, but even common things like oil seals and water pumps and wheel bearings just seem to require more frequent maintenance than our Japanese cars.
The Toyota, since new, has needed 2 sets of tires and 1 set of brake pads, both normal wear-out items. The air conditioner relay has failed twice, at a cost of ~$15 to replace. The newer part number has a higher amp capacity and seems to be holding up fine since then. The driver side door lock actuator failed once.
It almost gets it's preventative maintenance missed, because nothing ever breaks to jog your mind that the car needs to be maintained.
Toyota 5A was in production 1987–2006, and IIRC was licensed to Chinese manufacturers afterwards. The A series as a whole lasted 1978–2006. Less modern than Honda K, but these were lovely engines. They just won't fail as long as you replace parts on time.
I strongly suspected it was going to be a Honda before even clicking the link. I traded in my RSX-s many years ago for Cherokee because kids. I miss that car, that was a lovely engine even though the low-end torque was a bit anemic.
I’ve noticed Honda puts an emphasis on reducing stress. I have a 20 year old Honda which still runs fine because everything about it seems “overbuilt” - other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc - just keeps plugging along.
You reminded me of a stunt/promotion I saw on TV in the 1970's where they drained the oil from a Japanese import and then ran the engine (red-lined it as I recall, perhaps a brick on the accelerator) until they blew the engine.
This was when there was a lot of grousing about those cheap (and fuel efficient!) Japanese cars catching on in the U.S. market.
Hilariously, the Japanese car just kept running and they had to intervene — maybe drain the radiator?
I wish I could find something about it but even ChatGPT comes up empty handed. Maybe it was a half-time stunt? I feel like it was in a stadium anyway.
Depends on what you are asking of the engine. An engine at red line but under no load doesn't generate that much heat, and so can get by with no coolant, and run for a long time on just the oil film left after draining the oil. This is really bad for the engine and it will wear out much faster - but it will run for a surprisingly long time.
These are random little examples that might work in theory. Sure, a car can idle for an hour without coolant probably in the winter, possibly.
I can't be driven on the street in any meaningful way anywhere but a Minnesota winter.
If you can't drive to work 20 miles away in 75 degree weather without coolant, than no a car can't run without coolant.
And no it can't run without oil in any meaningful way on the street for more than maybe 15 minutes.. so again, no Honda Toyotas are no built so well that they run without oil.
The demos I've seen of running without oil or coolant were not your definiton, but the useless one of engine not doing anything other than running. don't run an engine without fluids - it will work in some cases but they are not normal and won't last long.
> other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc
Um, no. Go ahead dump your oil and coolant, go drive your car, and report back how "fine" it did.
(No, please don't actually do this. Although here's a guy who did, for the clicks. The Honda did impressively well, but it wasn't "fine". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyejT4VPzlE)
My friend ran his 1995 Civic about 40 miles with no coolant in it. It warped the head and blew the head gasket. But I skimmed the head, put in a new gasket and got another 50k out of it before selling it. It didn't have a single problem the whole time I had it.
I had a friend who had a Honda (edit: actually, Toyota iirc) for ~15 years that didn’t know it had oil; So when they sold it and was asked how often the oil was changed, the potential buyer was met with a quizzical look. Tires and gasoline and window washer fluid was its maintenance.
I coworker of my mother some 20-25 years ago bought a new car. Drove it until it stopped and refused to go further. Called some road service who upon inspecting it announced that she had run out of gas. She was surprised, "Cars still need to be refueled??!!".
I find that a bit hard to believe. Someone in that family knew and took care of it sometimes.
The longest I've seen a used car go without an oil change was 40k miles and it was changed when it started making noise instantly on startup. That was basically 90k to 130k. Sure 0 to 40k would go a bit better.. but not 15 years of typical driving.
Between carbon blowby, gasoline dilution, oil burning at the rings/cylinder walls even if minimal, no car is making it 15 years if the person drives more than 5k miles a year IMO.
Unless they were driving very very low miles per year, they are simply incorrect. A car isn't making it over 100k miles without an oil change IMO, even a Toyota.
Similar to how this person went most of a lifetime without noticing and wondering what oil change businesses, advertisements, coupons, etc were for... They also didn't notice someone in their household or a service provider of some kind (brakes, tires, idk) changing their oil.
On older heavy equipment of low value and high difficulty servicing (think like a forklift or skid steer) it's not uncommon to replace the coolant with oil to mitigate a head gasket issue and simply drain some oil and add to the coolant on some semblance of a schedule.
One of my favorite tractors was the old Oil Pull's which were designed for oil in the radiator. (they were a gas engine, but designed to run on "tractor fuel" which is closer to diesel than gasoline - in order to work the engine had to be very hot)
It's of course possible to design engines to be oil cooled, though water-glycol tends to be preferred due to about twice the specific heat capacity, meaning smaller coolant channels, radiators, and fans are required.
I don't think it occurred to anyone in 1905 that a water/glycol mix might be good. They either used straight water with a warning to drain the engine when you shut down in cold weather so it didn't freeze, or they used oil. My 1939 tractor has instructions to start the engine and then pour water in the radiator when it is below freezing.
Not in 1905, no. I believe water-glycol mixes became widely used in the 1920'ies. But without glycol, water is an even better heat transfer agent. Shame about the freezing thing, though.
Is it specific heat that we care about, or rate of heat transfer?
Specific heat matters a bit, but if you make your coolant take twice the energy to change 1 degree, the same thing happens on the radiator side and you must release twice the heat to cool 1 degree.
Rate of heat transfer in general if probably more important.
Well, it gets really complex. Yes, specific heat matters, but as you say so does the heat transfer coefficient. And the viscosity. And is the flow laminar or turbulent? Etc.
But, turns out water is just very very good also when you take these other factors into account. Compared to oil, it has, as mentioned, much higher specific heat, it has higher heat conductivity, it has lower viscosity which means less pumping power and more likely to see turbulent flow which helps with mixing.
In the case of the oil pull tractor they needed to run the tractor much hotter than water boils - even if they had known modern antifreeze it still boils too hot. They also didn't know to make modern radiators - they usee very large radiators to make up for lack of surface area. (They also used exhaust to pull air through the radiator instead of a fan). All in all a very ingenious design - but there is good reason they don't make them like that anymore. (My 1939 is a lot more modern - and it lacks electric start)
What's impressive isn't just the longevity, but how gracefully it's evolved over two decades while still feeling relevant in today's turbocharged, emissions-strangled landscape
I was flabbergasted driving a 2023 Honda Civic Sport during a trip to Thailand, easily one of the best-balanced cars I’ve driven. Makes me wonder if that model is using the same engine they’re talking about here
Depends on the engine. They had an option for a turbo 1.5l l15 and a 2l k20. Plus a few others I don't know were offered in usdm. No idea about Thailand but if it wasn't a 2 liter, I think it was not a k series.
In a very niche form of motorsport, the civic sport is top in class for a lower tier Street class with the SI being top of another lower tier Street class.
One of the interesting quirks of the Honda K-series is that it spins “backwards”. If you try to mate one to a different transmission (or try to mate a different engine to a K-series transmission), it’s going to give you, uh, interesting results! Lots of people found out the hard way when they used their Fast & Furious inspiration to do JDM swaps :)
So what? The Rolls-Royce & Bentley L-series engine was made from 1959 to 2020, 60 years, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce–Bentley_L-series_V...), and was only replaced because of mergers and change in ownership, not because of its capacities. It of course evolved quite some during that production span.
Engines used in general aviation have interchangeable parts from almost 100 years ago. You could warp a Lycoming engine mechanic in from 1942 using your time traveling phone booth and he'd be able to fix your 172 of any vintage.
Yeah, but that's because general aviation engines are stuck in a time capsule from the 1940'ies, not because they are particularly good engines by today's standards. Exception being Rotax on the low end.
Funny considering the K20A1 started off with a dogshit reputation and chain tensioner issues just like the F-series engines in the S2000 that honda refused to learn from.
But thanks to aftermarket support you can get third party parts to fix any issue with the K-series, and even see people turbocharging to get them north of 1,200hp. We've got a local guy with a k-swapped Acura NSX that is an absolute monster of a car.
Peugeot XUD, built from 1982 until the early 2000s, and then still built today as the DW8 which is basically just an XUD9 with a different head suitable for common-rail injection fitted.
The Rover V8 that powered the P5, P6, SD1, various Landrovers and Range Rovers up to the mid-2000s, TVRs, Morgans, and so on was first built as the Rover V8 in 1964 and only stopped mass production in 2006 - although blocks are still cast and you can buy a brand new one today. If you do, I don't need to tell you that there's no price tag because you already know what you're getting into.
They were based on an earlier Buick design, which makes it all the more hilarious when people freak out about finding an exotic imported engine specialist to work on their Discovery 2 in North America. Go and ask your grandad about old Buick smallblocks...
Even before clicking through, I said to myself "... and it's made by Honda."
I don't know precisely what special sauce they have, but while I've parted with a couple of Hondas over the years due to rust or accessory breakdown (and one, sadly, to a crash; hey, I know the Fit has a reputation as a deathtrap, but it saved my life), I've never had one give me engine trouble.
Their starter has a very iconic sound too; I'm a little surprised marketing has never seemed to catch onto that. You can identify the sound of a Honda starting up in a parking lot.
I just sold my 2005 CRV with the same 4. At 170,000 miles, the engine burned no oil, started first crank every time, moved the car adequately, and got 25 mpg in an suv.
I replaced it with a Corolla hybrid. It gets 60 mpg. I have expectations of longevity for this one, too.
That's a series of engines, not a single model. The FIAT FIRE [1] series has been in production for 36 years from 1985 to 2021 and, maybe you wouldn't expect it from FIAT, those engines were reliable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Integrated_Robotised_Eng...
The Jag XK platform had 45+ year run. I'd bet that as long as the 911 is made, it'll have an inline 6 and to someone's thinking it will be the same platform as the air-cooled version from 1964.
Engine architectures tend to last unless they are bad. They can do a lot on one also, the Toyota GR platform started out as a fairly vanilla V-6 but it has variations with GDI and variations with turbochargers and has been used a lot of different vehicles. A lot of different variations with different levels of compressions and such. It's basically the block and cylinders configuration.
I'll shout out the K-series though, it's a shockingly good platform. Lots of little details have been thought through, it's relatively simple, inexpensive and reliable and maybe one of the easiest engines to work on. If you were new to cars and wanted to start wrenching, the K-series is a pretty good place to start. It can take boost and make power and has lots of aftermarket support. I know civics aren't everyones cup of tea and it's not a big V-8, but I've yet to meet an engineer that isn't at least slightly impressed by the k-series.
Ah man, I owned a Jag XJS with the V12. Nothing on that car was what I'd consider 'normal'. Want to change the brake pads - down the rabbit hole I went. That car was why I own a voltmeter. I was a lot more knowledgeable after that car - smart enough to run, not walk from an XKE opportunity.
The 911 is a flat-six, but I agree with your point wholeheartedly.
Indeed, long lived engines are not unusual
Chrysler LA - 1964-2003
Ford Windsor 1961-2000
Ford Inline 6 1960-2016
Modular V8 1990-2014
The BMC A Series is another exceptionally long lived one. 1951-2000 in original form, and then licenced by Nissan until 2009.
> Modular V8 1990-2014
Still lives to this day. The 5.0/5.2 engines are modular.
Nissan VQ series, 1994-today
There is zero commonality between a ‘64 911 and a modern 992.
Came here just to rant about the FIRE and the Firefly. The Multijet was also extremely reliable.
Instead, they were tossed aside to promote whatever garbage came out of citroen design centers, i guess to achieve the destruction of stellantis. (except in south america, they still get to use the Firefly)
For a short while we had them in the US, on the Dodge darts and some other Fiat applications. 1.4 + multiair + sometimes turbo.
Great little engine that powered my first car, a 2005 Fiat Uno, made for the Argentinean market in Brazil: 1.4 (1.345L), 8v of reliability.
I counter you with a Cleon engine[0] with 42 years. ;)
But in the end an engine can be reliable but still be an environmental liability.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Cl%C3%A9on-Fonte_engin...
I had the first Twingo model with that engine. Sure, reliability was exceptional, and it also felt nice to drive for a low power engine (55 HP). What wasn't exceptional however was fuel economy, which significantly increased the total cost of ownership of a car like the Twingo.
I think the car made it to almost 300000 km with the engine showing barely any sign of wear. Some parts broke down, and there was still regular maintenance, which, combined with poor fuel economy and state subsidies made it not economically viable to keep the car even though it still ran. The newer model we bought later didn't last as long, the engine was good but not as robust, but it was still worth changing because of fuel economy alone.
At no point we considered environmental factors, only cost, but they are tied, since better fuel economy means both lower costs and lower emissions.
So in the end, you we a engine that was reliable for sure but didn't meet modern standards in terms of running costs, emissions and performance. When the Twingo came out, the use of the Cléon-Fonte engine was generally considered a serious downside, and it was changed to the more modern and appropriate "Energy" engine shortly after.
I had a lot of Minis, so I'll counter with the BMC A-Series: 1951-2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMC_A-series_engine
i counter you all with the 70 year legend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_air-cooled_engine
You win :) That was actually my first engine... would have thought I'd have remembered the Beetle engine.
I’ll counter with the jaguar xk engine in production for 43 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_XK_engine
I assume the American s will be by with a pushrod v8 soon.
Actually I'll give a V6 instead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick_V6_engine
1961-2008.
Ford Kent engine[0] was first produced in 1959 and is still being produced and used in motorsport, so technically it qualifies for a pension now.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine
In the couple years I've owned my (now) 10 year old wee-Fiat I think I've opened the hood once, when I first bought it, just to confirm the engine was actually there. Other than that, what engine?
Probably should pop it open (heh, Fiat Pop, no pun intended) to fix the headlight which has been out for about a year but it was a lot easier to get a (free) veteran's plate than poke around in there and you pretty much have to commit vehicular homicide in front of a cop to get pulled over with a veteran's plates so... I mean, it came with an extra headlight for a reason.
But, yeah, tiny little engine for a tiny little car which does it's job without issue, what's not to love?
Fiat FIRE engines are reliable workhorses, but they arent cool nor overbuild like K series. You can tune NA K20 to over 250 whp, or 400 whp turbo with _stock_ bottom end. Same reason 2JZ are legendary with stock bottom end good for at least 600 whp.
I’d consider it very bad marketing for Fiat to use the brand ‘FIRE’ for their engine. :)
Meh, GM 3800 had a good 40+ years of production (although some of those years were 3rd party,) I'd take one of those over a FIRE.
This little 20HP one-cylinder Diesel engine [1] powers much of third world agriculture. The original design seems to have come from Shanghai Engine Company in 1953, and is still manufactured by multiple companies. It's water-cooled, but non-recirculating; you have to fill the water tank when you fill the fuel tank. No electrical components at all. Starts with a hand crank.
Over 75 years of production of that design. It's the AK-47 of engines.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-Quality-Manufact...
That's rather peculiar. Was this a project of the CCP or was it derived from some other design?
It came out at a time when Shanghai Diesel Engine Company was totally government owned.
Shanghai Diesel Engine Co., Ltd. (SDEC) originated from the Shanghai Diesel Engine Factory, founded in 1947 under the name Wusong Manufacturing Plant of the China Agricultural Machinery Company, where it produced a trial batch of 5 HP gasoline engines. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the factory was renamed Wusong Machinery Plant, which later began mass-producing a single-cylinder, horizontal 12 HP diesel engine operating at 750 rpm. In August 1953, it officially became Shanghai Diesel Engine Factory and started independently designing and manufacturing diesel engines.[1]
That's the engine - that little 12HP single-cylinder horizontal Diesel engine. It's up to 20HP now; there's been progress in 70 years. Here's a full teardown and overhaul.[2]
It doesn't seem to resemble any common US, UK, Japanese, or German diesel engine of the 1940s. All those countries built small Diesels in that period, but none are close to the Chinese design. Don't know who the designer was, though. If you asked SDEC, they'd probably tell you.
[1] https://www.chinadieselgen.com/en/history-of-shanghai-diesel...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Voev_QmZnYs
Looks like it might have a job with western pollution regs (https://youtu.be/Voev_QmZnYs?t=2803)
25yr is "meeting expectations" for any mass market[1] engine designed after about the mid 1970s or so.
A design that is both not fundamentally flawed in some way and cutting edge enough for its time to not quickly rendered obsolete the steady increase in expectations should go far longer. A design that is "ok" and cutting edge will probably go 20-30yr. A design that is behind the times, and very good (easier to not make wrong design decisions when you're not on the cutting edge) will probably do 20-30yr as well.
[1] i.e. not some specialty truck or sports car thing that could become not worth making due to a shift in market conditions for the few segments where it's applicable.
Needs a million upvotes. It costs a large pile of money to design an all-new engine from the ground up that meets modern emissions and is reliable is service for hundreds of thousands of miles. You should be thinking billions of dollars. They only way to make this affordable is to amortize that cost over many many cars of many many years. Sure you will tweak the design here and there for various reasons, but the initial investment to get the first car to a customer is too high to dare start again anytime soon.
Of course with electric cars obviously coming it is questionable if any engine is worth starting today. There isn't much worth doing that a minor tweak to an existing design cannot do - and even if there is something it is questionable if engines will be sold long enough to be worth it. (at least for cars - if you target boats or construction equipment or such maybe - though you will note smaller boats typically just take an existing engine and tweak it because there are not enough small boats sold to be worth a new design)
So much money for an engine or transmission that some companies started collaborating...
GEMA was the collab between Chrysler/Mitsu/Hyundai for an inline 4, and GM/Ford have collaborated on a few transmissions too.
Plenty of engines hit the 20-year mark, but not many do it while still powering everything from family sedans to track-ready Type Rs
The V6 2GR is about to do it for Toyota. Subaru had the EJ going strong for 20 years. Honda has this. Nissan had a few contenders.. there's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward%27s_10_Best_Engines
GM/Chevrolet are still making small-block 350 engines, they started in the 1950's
https://www.gmperformancemotor.com/parts/19433032.html
I have a feeling GM is going to keep making pushrod v8's until the eventual death of the internal combustion engine.
This comment made me question the specifics of my mental model pushrod vs overhead cam engine. I found this site that has three nice gif’s which was exactly what my visual brain wanted to see for comparing the differences - https://www.samarins.com/glossary/dohc.html
Thanks for the comment as it was the impetus for me to expand my engine knowledge today!
Thanks for the link. Like you, it really helped me understand what's going on with all three of the designs shown.
I used to view them with disdain - a clearly obsolete design GM kept using because they're cheap or lazy or some such.
I no longer hold that view. GM's pushrod V8s are considerably smaller than their competition, and lightweight relative to their displacement, for which there is famously no replacement.
Turbos are the replacement for displacement.
Ok, stick a huge turbo on a 100cc engine and power my 1 ton pickup please. Id like it to feel quick in traffic but also tow a few thousand lbs uphill without really noticing it.
No one buys a 1-ton to feel quick in traffic. A few thousand lbs going uphill can be easily done with a 1/2 ton, and the majority of them are now turbocharged.
Forced Induction has made its way tho. Not all, but a lot of modern turbo engines are great in all three aspects of reliability, performance, and efficiency.
I can see turbo'ed PHEV being the solution to heavy-duty use cases one day. Pretty stoked for the Ramcharger.
People don't buy 1 tons to feel quick. But they want their 1 tons to feel quick.
The examples you gave show that turbos are nice additions to a specific displacement size.
Op said turbos are a replacement for displacement. My example is there to show him they are not.
Does it need to last one trip up this hill or thousands of trips?
Someone will, because it's a useful form factor. And that someone is gonna be the people who are the experts in it, which is pretty strongly arguably GM.
There have been sooooo many SBCs shat out into the world in industrial applications that even if GM stops making them someone will keep making them. You can't make a compatible single replacement because you'll break a ton of applications. You can't make a ton of different replacements because that's not economical. Only makes sense to keep making them.
>Someone will, because it's a useful form factor.
Definitely, and the old carborated beasts just work and can be fixed with minimal tools and ran off of just a few wires.
I've been enjoying watching a coworker resurrect his M715 Military Truck (basically a government J-Series truck from Kaiser/Jeep) with a fresh blueprint SBC and a mix mash of GM and aftermarket drive train parts.
It may be the least efficient truck I've ever ridden in, but it can reliably pull tree stumps out of the ground.
> And that someone is gonna be the people who are the experts in it, which is pretty strongly arguably GM.
They were, at least.
Massive recall on the 6.2L versions of their V8 engines right now.
https://www.lemonfirm.com/blog/gm-6-2l-engine-recall-what-tr...
A lot of bigger engines are running right on the edge of oiling problems these days. With fuel economy rules being what they are it's just how it is. GM isn't special in this regard. Ford is killing a lot of cams and lifters (a problem GM fought through some years ago).
Meanwhile Toyota[1] is recalling blown up turbo v6s left and right (for problems that you can't just dump different oil in to solve) because they didn't invest in keeping a big v8 on the cutting like GM did and they didn't invest in making small turbo stuff last long like Ford did.
[1]Mentioned not because they have unique problems but because who if not a Toyota fanboy makes a comment like yours
To be fair Ford's small turbos are also notorious for shitting the bed, but mostly due to cooling system failures or the terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
Ford's big mistake with the 1.0L Ecoboost wasn't exclusively using a timing belt, it was using a timing belt submerged in oil. They did state that they engineered the rubber to withstand being submerged in oil, but ultimately it didn't really work out like they had hoped.
Lol. The most insane thing about the 1.0 is that they switched back to a timing chain due to the belt issues. But guess what? The fuxking oil pump is still driven by a rubber belt submerged in oil... And guess what happens to the oil pump belt? Just mind blowing that they would half ass this fix so badly.
>terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
3.0 Duramax says hold my beer (for the readers not familiar, it has a wet belt driving the oil pump and it's mounted in the back making proactive replacement prohibitively expensive).
My jaded take is that they're sticking with the wet belt on what's generally a europoor economy car engine in order to force planned obsolecense.
I’d love to read about how emissions / fuel economy is causing the oiling problems. Any articles?
Would putting an aftermarket oil pump in these modern engines protect them or is it a deeper design issue?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbEdr6Q6cKw
They spec the thinnest stuff they can get away with to add .0001mpg. Multiply that by all the Chevy 1500s GM makes or F150s Ford makes and you see the draw.
Sometimes it turns out that the thinnest stuff they can get away with just not quite thick enough at the margins or in transient conditions. And of course they stretch out the oil change interval to reduce on-paper TCO as well which doesn't help.
You can mitigate this with thicker oil (what GM did for the recall) by can go too far and create other oiling issues because thick oil drains back slower and going to some super high spec 0-W-<whatever> Euro oil may cause other problems related to soot and sludge so there's no silver bullet.
The "safe" advice most people give out is to use whatever the <nation with no emissions or fuel economy rules> version of your owners manual says to use for oil.
And if you have a high strung turbo engine you ought to take your oil change intervals seriously.
My daily driver is a '91 GMC, with a 350 (5.7L TBI). It's got 140k miles on it, burns no oil, and I fully expect it to outlive me.
The headline isn’t really true. The K series of engines has been in production for 25 years but it has been redesigned along the way.
The article mentions this further down:
> The K20C is Honda's current-generation of the K-Series range, upgraded to deliver strong real-world efficiency and long-term reliability across the Honda and Acura catalogs. It's also a redesign that meets stricter global emissions rules and tighter thermal demands that come with modern turbocharging.
The original K20A has been out of production for a long time.
Each iteration of the engine shares a lot in common with the previous iteration, but the redesigns have been significant enough that I wouldn’t say it’s accurate to claim that one engine has been in production for 25 years.
What criteria should we use to decide if redesigns are significant enough to not claim it is the same engine?
When Honda changes the letter on the end of the motor code, that’s a good indication: They started with K20A and now it’s K20C, there was a K20Z and so on.
It’s actually very common for engine series to span decades, even though this article is presenting it like it’s an unusual achievement. Chevy has the LS, Subaru with the EJ, Mitsubishi with the 4G.
Parts compatibility?
Engine of Theseus
I think the article's broader point still stands: Honda built a platform with enough foresight and flexibility that it could be continuously refined rather than scrapped and replaced every few years
True, but this is actually common for engine manufacturers. Most manufacturers have an engine series that spans multiple decades.
> rather than scrapped and replaced every few years
This doesn’t really happen for mainstream engines. Maybe for specialty and exotic engines, but not the engines you see powering the commuter cars and trucks on the road. Engine development is expensive. Nobody is scrapping and replacing their bread and butter engine design every few years.
I don't think that lack of reliability is the key factor for why new motors are still being developed. Fuel efficiency or changing emission standards are two points that come to mind that drive further optimizations.
The engine series in this article (Honda K-series) has been redeveloped over its lifetime too. The original K20A was only produced for about a decade.
A bunch of engines (Toyota and Subaru come to mind) had oil sludge problems when CAFE standards changed (early 2000s) and they had to redesign.
What's tricky is that even tiny improvements in fuel economy or emissions can justify a redesign when you're building at scale
Perhaps that's what's remarkable about these? They had architectures that could meet 2025 emissions standards, 25 years ago. That said the Honda "L" series engines are just as long-lived and are the even more efficient variety.
My favorite fact I used to tell people when I owned a 2008 Honda Fit was that parts of the L-Series engines was from Honda Powersport's Boat Motor lines. (the crankshaft if memory isn't failing me)
It's sad they're not making Fits anymore.
They should do more cross-over technology. Why do they make a motorcycle with a 1.8l flat 6 engine that shares the 73mmx73mm cylinder format of the early L-series car engine, but they can't bring an engine like that to cars? It would be smooth as hell.
Yes, particularly for diesel engines.
"Engine failure" is something everyone thought was a last century problem, yet it's back. Some blame extra thin oils, and some are pointing to cheap parts (ex. plastic manifolds and plastic timing guides). There are now engine lawsuits in 2015-2025 model vehicles from all the big vehicle manufacturers, with new failures clustering in late models. They literally don't make them like they used to.
Intuitively I feel like it's something like the light bulb.
For a while, bulbs had to meet efficiency standards. These standards were configured such that they didn't technically exclude incandescent bulbs, however, for an incandescent bulb to comply, it would have to be driven hard and thus comparatively short-lived.
(for context, incandescent bulbs last something like 4x as long if you let them be 10% dimmer)
I have 3x 100watt lightbulbs in a single fixture that have been running strong for years. The secret? I keep them dimmed by ~20%. Longevity wasn’t the intent, though, I just like them dimmer and warmer. A pleasant side effect nonetheless.
Engine lawsuits from "all the big vehicle manufacturers" - while I don't like the guy, Teslas don't have engine failure lawsuits.
My Acura V6 got recalled due to main bearings being out of spec. I still haven't taken it in for that because the damn thing runs perfect and I don't want them to mess that up. But Honda, uh, did they forget how to build engines the past few years?
When I was a kid I wanted a classic Mini with a transplanted Honda K-Series engine.
It's a big engine for that little car but I'd completely forgotten about them over the years.
It's wild that people are still doing this: https://potentialmotorsport.com/
I might have to reserect that dream. :D
The torque steer on those things is unbelievable, they are really unsafe but a lot of fun. I drove one that had 'only' 160 HP according to the owner and it was incredible. Cars like that will get you shrinkwrapped but you will be smiling...
> Cars like that will get you shrinkwrapped…
Well that's an evocative term I've not seen before, lol.
Classic Mini that meet with an bad end really do look like that, it is unfortunately very descriptive. Issigonis created an icon, and John Cooper improved substantially on it. Incidentally, one of Cooper's creations, the 'Twini' nearly killed him:
https://www.classicandsportscar.com/news/csc-features/mini-t...
I have a feeling it's one of those things, like owning a Capri 2.8i or one of the really old school 911 Turbos, that is better left to fantasy for me.
I love the idea but I'm a pretty rubbish driver and would probably end up getting myself into trouble.
...would be fun though!
I've driven a lot of weird and interesting cars but none quite that scary. It felt borderline out of control all the time and I was happy to return it to the owner with all the parts still attached.
The 'worst' mini I owned was a souped up Innocenti bored out to the max, it was still fairly safe to drive but I would not let non experienced mini drivers others drive it, too many surprise factors. We drove that thing through Scotland (my eldest and me) and it was a trip to remember.
Another interesting one - that I didn't drive but the son of the owner did - was a TR with a massive Ford special products V8 shoehorned into it. If you live in eastern Canada and you're overtaken by something small and wicked fast with 'BAD TR' as the license plate, that was it. Getting in the passenger seat of that thing was an interesting experience, the engine took up half the footwell, and the clutch had so little throw that you couldn't really tell when it was depressed and when it wasn't. It certainly moved though.
Capri 2.8i is a practical classic. You could drive it every day. Convert it to run on LPG, and you could drive it in most city centres, blast right through that Low Emission Zone, wafting out warm carbon dioxide and water vapour and (at least in theory) cleaning up some of the oily sulphurous stink of diesel bus engines.
Porsche 911 Turbo is not just dangerous, it's actively trying to kill you. The engine is at the wrong end so it doesn't handle (if you throw a dart feathers-first at the dart board, it'll try to flip round in the air so the heavy end is at the front), and the turbo lag and very "peaky" cam gives you a throttle response of <STOMP> nothing, nothing, faint whistling, WWWAAAAAAAAH WE'RE BACKWARDS THROUGH THE HEDGE.
> they are really unsafe but a lot of fun
It's hard to think of a worse combination.
I frine of mine had one many years ago, was weird watching poeples faces as they got overtaken on the motorway by a mini doing 90mph.
The suspension wasnt really up for that.
Classic Mini would work perfectly with the electric motor and battery.
Mighty Car Mods build one, was tight fit but looked like tons of fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN7tl7nhV0s&list=PLp0KnUFYB-...
The "Mopar 318" (Chrysler LA engine) lasted almost 40 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_LA_engine
Land Rover bought the rights to use an aluminum V8 that GM/Buick developed in 1960 and it remained in production until 2006.
True, but they wore out the casting infrastructure and probably should have stopped in 2001
That's largely a myth told by people with shiny new Coscast engine blocks to sell you.
They run too hot because everyone runs lawnmower-grade 95 octane petrol these days, which contributes more than anything else to liners breaking free especially with the liners being thinner on later (90s onwards) 94mm-piston engines. I do wonder if the switch from thin steel "shim" head gaskets to composite ones allowed the liners to move more?
Anyway they only break liners free completely (the infamous "dropped liner") if you run them absolutely bone dry of water until one piston expands enough to jam in the liner and start hammering it up and down, just before the engine seizes entirely.
It's cheap and easy to get the liners knocked out and the block machined to take "top hat" liners, with a lip around the top that clamps them in place, something like £1800 last time I looked.
Funny that no one’s mentioning the air cooled VW boxer engine which had variants manufactured for 70 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_air-cooled_engine
Japanese cars can be amazingly reliable. My wife drives a 2003 Toyota Celica (a sporty Corolla) and I drive a 2003 Audi A4. They both have about the same miles, around 150k. The A4 has had thousands and thousands of dollars worth things fail the years. There is a lot of extra Audi tech stuff to break of course, but even common things like oil seals and water pumps and wheel bearings just seem to require more frequent maintenance than our Japanese cars.
The Toyota, since new, has needed 2 sets of tires and 1 set of brake pads, both normal wear-out items. The air conditioner relay has failed twice, at a cost of ~$15 to replace. The newer part number has a higher amp capacity and seems to be holding up fine since then. The driver side door lock actuator failed once.
It almost gets it's preventative maintenance missed, because nothing ever breaks to jog your mind that the car needs to be maintained.
Toyota 5A was in production 1987–2006, and IIRC was licensed to Chinese manufacturers afterwards. The A series as a whole lasted 1978–2006. Less modern than Honda K, but these were lovely engines. They just won't fail as long as you replace parts on time.
reminds me of the LADA vs BMW meme
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn...
Eh, I think the Lada is more of a "you can't polish a turd" situation.
The annoying thing is the third BMW from the left was the perfect one, with the fourth left a close second.
Yeah going downhill fast they didnt include some of the newer crap
Russian LADA Niva is so reliable still in prodiction after ~50 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Niva) (No)
I always thought one of these would fit a Shelby cobra kit car really well but culturally ppl want to stick giant ford v8’s in them
Approaching Plymouth Prowler territory.
I strongly suspected it was going to be a Honda before even clicking the link. I traded in my RSX-s many years ago for Cherokee because kids. I miss that car, that was a lovely engine even though the low-end torque was a bit anemic.
That engine had character
I’ve noticed Honda puts an emphasis on reducing stress. I have a 20 year old Honda which still runs fine because everything about it seems “overbuilt” - other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc - just keeps plugging along.
You reminded me of a stunt/promotion I saw on TV in the 1970's where they drained the oil from a Japanese import and then ran the engine (red-lined it as I recall, perhaps a brick on the accelerator) until they blew the engine.
This was when there was a lot of grousing about those cheap (and fuel efficient!) Japanese cars catching on in the U.S. market.
Hilariously, the Japanese car just kept running and they had to intervene — maybe drain the radiator?
I wish I could find something about it but even ChatGPT comes up empty handed. Maybe it was a half-time stunt? I feel like it was in a stadium anyway.
(My first car was a used 1974 Datsun B210.)
Reminds me of the 1990's Prolong commercials on late-night TV. They drained the oil out of a Dodge Viper and drove it around a track on the desert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Sbo9RQA4w
>other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc - just keeps plugging along.
This is called lying. They are lying.
Depends on what you are asking of the engine. An engine at red line but under no load doesn't generate that much heat, and so can get by with no coolant, and run for a long time on just the oil film left after draining the oil. This is really bad for the engine and it will wear out much faster - but it will run for a surprisingly long time.
These are random little examples that might work in theory. Sure, a car can idle for an hour without coolant probably in the winter, possibly.
I can't be driven on the street in any meaningful way anywhere but a Minnesota winter.
If you can't drive to work 20 miles away in 75 degree weather without coolant, than no a car can't run without coolant.
And no it can't run without oil in any meaningful way on the street for more than maybe 15 minutes.. so again, no Honda Toyotas are no built so well that they run without oil.
The demos I've seen of running without oil or coolant were not your definiton, but the useless one of engine not doing anything other than running. don't run an engine without fluids - it will work in some cases but they are not normal and won't last long.
"This is really bad for the engine and it will wear out much faster" is significantly different than "runs fine [...] just keeps plugging along".
But yeah, you can limp along without the essential fluids for a bit.
> other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc
Um, no. Go ahead dump your oil and coolant, go drive your car, and report back how "fine" it did.
(No, please don't actually do this. Although here's a guy who did, for the clicks. The Honda did impressively well, but it wasn't "fine". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyejT4VPzlE)
My friend ran his 1995 Civic about 40 miles with no coolant in it. It warped the head and blew the head gasket. But I skimmed the head, put in a new gasket and got another 50k out of it before selling it. It didn't have a single problem the whole time I had it.
Coolant sure, my RSX has a radiator leak for the past 2 years.
Oil not so much.
I had a friend who had a Honda (edit: actually, Toyota iirc) for ~15 years that didn’t know it had oil; So when they sold it and was asked how often the oil was changed, the potential buyer was met with a quizzical look. Tires and gasoline and window washer fluid was its maintenance.
I coworker of my mother some 20-25 years ago bought a new car. Drove it until it stopped and refused to go further. Called some road service who upon inspecting it announced that she had run out of gas. She was surprised, "Cars still need to be refueled??!!".
I find that a bit hard to believe. Someone in that family knew and took care of it sometimes.
The longest I've seen a used car go without an oil change was 40k miles and it was changed when it started making noise instantly on startup. That was basically 90k to 130k. Sure 0 to 40k would go a bit better.. but not 15 years of typical driving.
Between carbon blowby, gasoline dilution, oil burning at the rings/cylinder walls even if minimal, no car is making it 15 years if the person drives more than 5k miles a year IMO.
I wouldn't believe it either unless I heard it directly from my earnest friend who learned at that moment:
1) cars have oil
2) said oil should be changed regularly
Unless they were driving very very low miles per year, they are simply incorrect. A car isn't making it over 100k miles without an oil change IMO, even a Toyota.
Similar to how this person went most of a lifetime without noticing and wondering what oil change businesses, advertisements, coupons, etc were for... They also didn't notice someone in their household or a service provider of some kind (brakes, tires, idk) changing their oil.
Just pour coolant in via the oil cap. It'll be fine. /s
On older heavy equipment of low value and high difficulty servicing (think like a forklift or skid steer) it's not uncommon to replace the coolant with oil to mitigate a head gasket issue and simply drain some oil and add to the coolant on some semblance of a schedule.
One of my favorite tractors was the old Oil Pull's which were designed for oil in the radiator. (they were a gas engine, but designed to run on "tractor fuel" which is closer to diesel than gasoline - in order to work the engine had to be very hot)
It's of course possible to design engines to be oil cooled, though water-glycol tends to be preferred due to about twice the specific heat capacity, meaning smaller coolant channels, radiators, and fans are required.
I don't think it occurred to anyone in 1905 that a water/glycol mix might be good. They either used straight water with a warning to drain the engine when you shut down in cold weather so it didn't freeze, or they used oil. My 1939 tractor has instructions to start the engine and then pour water in the radiator when it is below freezing.
Not in 1905, no. I believe water-glycol mixes became widely used in the 1920'ies. But without glycol, water is an even better heat transfer agent. Shame about the freezing thing, though.
Is it specific heat that we care about, or rate of heat transfer? Specific heat matters a bit, but if you make your coolant take twice the energy to change 1 degree, the same thing happens on the radiator side and you must release twice the heat to cool 1 degree.
Rate of heat transfer in general if probably more important.
Well, it gets really complex. Yes, specific heat matters, but as you say so does the heat transfer coefficient. And the viscosity. And is the flow laminar or turbulent? Etc.
There are various figures of merit, such as the Mouromtseff number https://doi.org/10.1109/JRPROC.1942.234654 or https://www.electronics-cooling.com/2006/05/comparing-heat-t... for a quick overview.
Some tables of heat transfer coefficients: https://www.engineersedge.com/heat_transfer/convective_heat_...
But, turns out water is just very very good also when you take these other factors into account. Compared to oil, it has, as mentioned, much higher specific heat, it has higher heat conductivity, it has lower viscosity which means less pumping power and more likely to see turbulent flow which helps with mixing.
In the case of the oil pull tractor they needed to run the tractor much hotter than water boils - even if they had known modern antifreeze it still boils too hot. They also didn't know to make modern radiators - they usee very large radiators to make up for lack of surface area. (They also used exhaust to pull air through the radiator instead of a fan). All in all a very ingenious design - but there is good reason they don't make them like that anymore. (My 1939 is a lot more modern - and it lacks electric start)
I gotta hit VTEC I need oil :)
The Volvo modular engine is worth a short too, it ran for 26 years [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Modular_Engine
Their straight five had a nice sound IMO.
What's impressive isn't just the longevity, but how gracefully it's evolved over two decades while still feeling relevant in today's turbocharged, emissions-strangled landscape
I was flabbergasted driving a 2023 Honda Civic Sport during a trip to Thailand, easily one of the best-balanced cars I’ve driven. Makes me wonder if that model is using the same engine they’re talking about here
Depends on the engine. They had an option for a turbo 1.5l l15 and a 2l k20. Plus a few others I don't know were offered in usdm. No idea about Thailand but if it wasn't a 2 liter, I think it was not a k series.
In a very niche form of motorsport, the civic sport is top in class for a lower tier Street class with the SI being top of another lower tier Street class.
It could've been, but it was probably a turbocharged L-series engine.
Google "K-series Cam lobe pitting".
Anyways, nice engines, but you don't need something to be exceptionally reliable to keep it in production for 25 years.
One of the interesting quirks of the Honda K-series is that it spins “backwards”. If you try to mate one to a different transmission (or try to mate a different engine to a K-series transmission), it’s going to give you, uh, interesting results! Lots of people found out the hard way when they used their Fast & Furious inspiration to do JDM swaps :)
You’re thinking of a couple of the older Honda series of engine. K series spin the conventional direction.
Did a BAR swap of a k20a2 into a EG civic. It’s such a fun car to drive, street or track.
I would buy a brand new Toyota 22RE today if they still made them.
So what? The Rolls-Royce & Bentley L-series engine was made from 1959 to 2020, 60 years, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce–Bentley_L-series_V...), and was only replaced because of mergers and change in ownership, not because of its capacities. It of course evolved quite some during that production span.
Engines used in general aviation have interchangeable parts from almost 100 years ago. You could warp a Lycoming engine mechanic in from 1942 using your time traveling phone booth and he'd be able to fix your 172 of any vintage.
Yeah, but that's because general aviation engines are stuck in a time capsule from the 1940'ies, not because they are particularly good engines by today's standards. Exception being Rotax on the low end.
So are the staright sixes from BMW. Running one generation behind B58.
From my experience the K20 is indestructible.
Some Diesel engines like VW 1.9 TDI PD were incredibly reliable. Still they wouldn't be legal today because of EU legislation.
Or the saab H engine, introduced in 1981 and is kicking around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_H_engine
Funny considering the K20A1 started off with a dogshit reputation and chain tensioner issues just like the F-series engines in the S2000 that honda refused to learn from.
But thanks to aftermarket support you can get third party parts to fix any issue with the K-series, and even see people turbocharging to get them north of 1,200hp. We've got a local guy with a k-swapped Acura NSX that is an absolute monster of a car.
Peugeot XUD, built from 1982 until the early 2000s, and then still built today as the DW8 which is basically just an XUD9 with a different head suitable for common-rail injection fitted.
The Rover V8 that powered the P5, P6, SD1, various Landrovers and Range Rovers up to the mid-2000s, TVRs, Morgans, and so on was first built as the Rover V8 in 1964 and only stopped mass production in 2006 - although blocks are still cast and you can buy a brand new one today. If you do, I don't need to tell you that there's no price tag because you already know what you're getting into.
They were based on an earlier Buick design, which makes it all the more hilarious when people freak out about finding an exotic imported engine specialist to work on their Discovery 2 in North America. Go and ask your grandad about old Buick smallblocks...
Even before clicking through, I said to myself "... and it's made by Honda."
I don't know precisely what special sauce they have, but while I've parted with a couple of Hondas over the years due to rust or accessory breakdown (and one, sadly, to a crash; hey, I know the Fit has a reputation as a deathtrap, but it saved my life), I've never had one give me engine trouble.
Their starter has a very iconic sound too; I'm a little surprised marketing has never seemed to catch onto that. You can identify the sound of a Honda starting up in a parking lot.
I just sold my 2005 CRV with the same 4. At 170,000 miles, the engine burned no oil, started first crank every time, moved the car adequately, and got 25 mpg in an suv.
I replaced it with a Corolla hybrid. It gets 60 mpg. I have expectations of longevity for this one, too.
It's V6 but the 1GR-FE is probably the most reliable small car engine of all time. Easily 500k miles.