<![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six - Jalopnik Comments]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six - Jalopnik Comments]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Oh, and that motor now has around 25K of track miles, and has never been apart.

jakay11

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> While I was on state paid vacation during the great telecom implosion of 2001+, I spend some time wrenching on Porsche's, VWs, and BMWs.
I vividly remembering scouring around for a 1970's 3L Turbo or Carerra block... to which we put a 2L crank in and then with a few 'mild tweeks' we put the 9000rpm 2.8L motor into a '73T chassis... and then added steel RS flares... a few more tricks to the brakes and chassis, and all I can say is... 'wow' what a track/back-road toy that was!
I need a paper towel now... Thank you.

jakay11

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> The real workhorse is the VW flat-four, particularly the 1200. You add up all miles ever piled on by the Type 1 and all the Porsche motors in the world put together aren't even in sight.

That said, endurance racing history has no greater engine than a force-fed flat-six.

@jakay11: I tend to think a Subaru engine is a better solution...not as peaky and bit easier to get reasonable parts for. It's been done plenty of times, with 2.2s, 2.5s, turbos, and even the H6s. Funny, I just saw an orange Vanagon syncro on the highway this morning and I was hoping there was WRX plant under there churning away.

brandegee

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> @42Fordtrucks: Porsche's flat six is ridiculously reliable and easy to work on. Parts are theoretically more expensive, until you find a discount dealer like Autohaus AZ. I've got 150k on my 3.2 liter and I beat the trash out of that engine. Mechanical simplicity is an understatement, anytime anything goes wrong, which is exactly twice in my ownership history, it's right there in front of you with an obvious solution. Overall, the car is as reliable and easy to work on than anything I've ever owned.

Comrade Teargaskov

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> I have seen quite a few vangons with Porsche's flat six stuffed back there... the question is then how do you upgrade the brakes, the handling, and the chassis to deal? (That gets VERY expensive!)

As for the GT cars? yes they have the 'Turbo' style split crank case and dry-sump oiling, but they also use water cooling on the block, no?
(BTW, the Turbo cars use the same block as the GTs and racers)

Still, how could you say no to an engine that you could flog on a track all day, and then drive home and have no issues?

Yes the older motors require more maintence than the newer ones, but show me a 20+yr old motor that doesn't!

And no, I don't own a 911.

jakay11

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> @bdon: Subie still has a six-cylinder in some models of the Outback.

As for anything being "wrong" with the Porsche motor, the endurance racing record refutes that nicely.

Solo_Racer

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> @bdon: Huh?
@RolloGrande: I'm pretty sure that even wholesale the 911 engine costs more than the rest of the vanagon...

HoubaHouba!

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Great , they got two more cylinders to flop around in the wrong block. I'm with the flat four fans as being a vote for workhorse of the century plus 5 years. Can't they at least make that a 120 degree v and a benz crank, and leave the real work horse alone. Money was the excuse for the flat 6 design flaw, and the morons went with it. Air cooling around cylinders and liquid heads would keep any engine working race hard, and that is the only winner about it's craziness. Even Subaru had a crazy flat six. Much less glorified, that still went the miles, very muych like the vw world, never to catch the real workhorse: the flat four.

bdon

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> @tbennett017:

Benevolent gorilla pushing you...I love that! Remember the Grape Ape?

Wonder why a version of this six wasn't offered/standard on Vanagons, they are criminally underpowered and the answer is right in the family.

RolloGrande

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> There has to be a better animal analogy than workhorse about this engine but I can't think of one.

Anyway, I know ya'll don't really use diesel in the US but VW's 1.9 liter TDI engine would be a great candidate for this title: it's in millions of cars all over the world, easy to maintain, and yes,as loud and smelly as it is dependable.

franzouse

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Woo HOO! I have two of the workhorse engines this week! FIAT twincam and the 3.6L Flat six here... The 3.6 is like having a benevolent gorilla in the trunk, pushing you along.. like starting a toboggan ride..

GrandMarquis_de_Sade

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Hear hear! Not to mention that if you're a competent VW mechanic, you can pretty much figure out one of these engines in an afternoon. The amounts of power coming out of this aircooled engine in, for example, 959 trim, is absolutely jaw dropping.

brandonvalentine

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> It's amazing that company can get VW Beetles to handle so well and go so fast! :P

wonkydonky

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> @Vizzini: Totally agree. My dad had one of these is his PA-18 Super Cub. A damn sight less expensive to repair/maintain and more powerful than the "stock" Lycoming mill.

Brian B

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> @42Fordtrucks: Well, I'm no Porschephile but you can make oodles of power out of these. They also come from the factory making well over 100hp per liter, so that's pretty respectable. Additionally, the handful of owners I personally know have put tons of very hard miles on them with no real signs of wear. Driving them hard and putting them away wet still hasn't produced any serious problems for them. The only issue I know of was on a chipped-Turbo running ~0.3 Bar more boost on an all factory setup, with over 70,000 miles and lots of track use. The problem? A broken coolant pipe joint adapter thing, due to Porsche's seriously idiotic reasoning for soldering the joint. Solder, on the coolant system. Freakin' porsche with their (literally) back-assward ideas.

Hey, I didn't say I think anything else on Porsches are sweet.

Just mainly their engines, and their brakes.

But that is all.

Evander

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Expensive parts? Yeah, I'll give you that one. I'm not so sure about the "very high level of TLC," though. Anything that has that kind of racing pedigree can't be a hothouse flower. And they are pretty solid in road form.

Gotta be a pretty nice horse of some kind.

Vizzini

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> No. Any engine that requires the very high level of TLC to keep running and has incredibly expensive parts is not a work horse.

42Fordtrucks

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Vizzini is right. This was not discontinued in 1998, its still out there on the street in the GT3s! So 44 years or screaming success, not 34!

Murph

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Absolutely. I'm also absolutely biased, but I can live with that.

If memory serves, I think the same basic block has continued to be used in the GT3 variant.

Vizzini

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> Now that there's a freakin' workhorse engine.

Now if they could only drop the cost down about 1250%

Evander

]]> <![CDATA[Workhorse Engine of the Day: Porsche Flat Six]]> i think the next WEOTD should be the VW flat-4 from the OG beetle

osnofla

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