came from dislocating engine vibration from the chassis, so basically you can assume chassis reliability is broadly driven by engine vibration, which will fatigue the chassis. The total disconnect between the engine and the chassis is pretty much as you would find in a road car. ‘But in the first place we have tried
to create an engine that vibrates as little as possible. Then there is less you have to do to the chassis, and that was a design parameter. ‘If you designed a crank without
the tungsten weight, it would have been a heavy crank. That is why it is an extreme design, with a high level of reciprocating mass.’ The crank was designed by the RML team, but to manufacture it the company turned to specialist company,
Capricorn. Many of the ancillary devices have been designed in-house, and some of the technical know how from the RML Global Race Engine has been carried over. For example, the team stuck with the Life engine management system and a similar water pump system that keeps flow to 25 litres per cylinder. Externally, the engine also looks similar to the Global Race Engine, in as much as they are both turbocharged, in-line fours. However, the RML team itself designed all new internals, and even the all-aluminium block is new. ‘It is all to do with the way we conceived the block,’ explains Martin. ‘Basically, the aluminium in the block is not structural. We used some parts of it to make it strong and take the load without stressing the aluminium, which allowed
Main picture: drilled crank with tungsten weights is an extraordinary piece of engineering, and weighs just 7.8kg. Sump (above) is milled from a solid lump of 7075 aluminium and weighs just 4kg
www.racecar-engineering.com
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