Hello everyone, and welcome. In this video we are talking about "Hot Inside V" turbocharged engines.
Now Mercedes claims they were the first to do this in a production sports car in the AMG GT
and I recently got to test out the Mercedes AMG GT C,
which has a 4 liter V8 twin turbocharged engine; 550 horsepower 502 pound-feet of torque.
It's an incredible car
but what we're gonna be talking about here is their engine layout. So what's unique about the engine is that they place the
turbochargers inside of the V rather than outside of the V like almost everyone else does with turbocharged V style engines.
So a V8, the two turbos resting inside of that V. Now there are numerous advantages of a setup like this.
First, let's walk through how it works and then talk about those advantages.
So your air is going to come in through the intakes, pass through the compressor portion of the turbocharger, from there
it is going to an air to water intercooler
where water which is cooled by the front of the vehicle has a separate circuit which
circulates for this intercooler,
you pass that air through cool it down, and then pass it into the engine. After it travels through the engine goes through the
exhaust portion of the turbocharger, and then out your exhaust out the back. So that's the basic setup of how it works.
And you know one of the first advantages, just looking at it, you can see it's a pretty compact design.
So it's fairly narrow the overall design of it rather than having those
turbochargers out on the side making it wider, that gives you more flexibility, you know inside that engine compartment
with what's to the side there your steering your suspension,
things like that where you've got more flexibility, more space to play with, also makes it more modular to put in other vehicles.
So nice to have a nice small compact packaging with those turbo chargers up top.
Also, another thing you'll notice and I've drawn the color specifically for this is that
you've really divided the engine up into a hot section and a cold section so in blue here
everything is basically cool, and then a hot here everything is warm.
And so you know you've got an advantage there because you're separating it, versus if you were to take these
turbochargers put them on the outside then you've got your intake all up on top
So you have that hot portion inside the V
which is heating up your intake rather than separating it off, having it cooler on the outside
and having everything that is cool basically in front of the engine and to the side.
Everything that's hot on top of the engine and behind, heat of course rises,
so you have that Center hot area where the turbochargers rest,
and that's actually a good thing for these exhaust portions of that turbocharger.
So by having them stay in this warm area,
you know if they lose heat, they're losing energy, which can be used to spin up this turbo.
And so you have a super short exhaust path and then that short exhaust path is also kept warm
because it's within this V and so you lose very little of your exhaust velocity
before it gets into your turbocharger, and so as a result, you have an efficient turbocharger
and you also have a turbocharger that spools quickly because you've got a very short path, and you know from the intake to the
engine itself from the compressor side of the turbocharger to the engine itself a very short path;
it's not traveling all the way to the front for an air-to-air intercooler,
instead using a much shorter path air to water intercooler. And this engine, I've driven back to back with the
Nissan GT-R Nismo and also with the McLaren 570S.
Both of those have significantly more turbocharger lag that you notice,
much more turbo lag in those vehicles versus this one.
I hardly noticed it at all with the AMG GT C.
Very cool that you're able to have an engine with this much power and torque out of a 4 liter V8 and
still not have you know that very noticeable turbo lag. Now you may be wondering,
"Wait a minute what about these two compressor wheels which are resting inside of that V? Aren't those going to get hot?"
And AMG actually has a pretty clever solution for this. So there's an active flap, before the radiator, right above the radiator
where air can travel through a duct, back, and then be deflected downward through that duct through the hood,
deflected downward onto the compressor wheels, the intake side of the turbochargers, to help cool those down.
Now that's only when the vehicle is moving.
When the vehicle comes to a stop, this flap in the front will close, and as a result,
you won't have any of that hot air from the engine
passing forward and then traveling in front of your radiator. Of course that would, you know,
reduce the effectiveness of your radiator if that hot air were allowed to come forward in front of it.
So it closes when you're stopped, it opens up while you're driving, and that allows for that cool air to be
deflected down onto those intake portions of the turbocharger to help keep those cool.
Now one more thing I thought was interesting about this engine is that it has peak torque from 1,900 to 5,750 RPM,
so a nice wide torque band, nice and flat, very cool that they've done that; and it also has peak power
From 5,750 to 6,750 RPM, so very close to its 7,000 RPM redline.
Now, what's cool about this is yes, You are going to have a torque drop after
5,750 RPM but the RPM is going to compensate for that as far as power,
equally, so it means that, you know, you're not going to want to short shift.
You actually can rev this all the way out to, you know the 7,000 RPM redline, because
you're getting peak power all the way to 6,750, so from a gearing standpoint, it makes the most sense
to be in the lowest gear as possible and as high of power as possible, so very cool that it has a
huge, very usable engine rev range.
You know pretty much anywhere above 1,900 you want to be in the lowest gear as possible
to put down the most torque, very cool how they've set that up.
Now I got to drive this Mercedes AMG GT C because I am a part of the Automotive Video Association,
and we recently hosted our first event, which was the Automotive Video Awards, so Performance Car of the Year and
Performance SUV of the Year, this was competing as one of the performance cars of the year, as well as the McLaren 570S,
which I mentioned previously as well as that Nissan Nismo GTR which I mentioned, some other cars in there as well.
So seven guys that all do video you'll probably recognize a good number of them from YouTube,
and so I will include a link to our deliberations.
So we recently picked out of these eight cars which we tested, which was our favorite as a group.
We've got all the criteria, everything like that laid out for you, and you can watch
the deliberation video where we pick the winner. I will include an end card for that so you can check it out, as well as a link
in the video description. Thank you guys for watching, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.