Everything about Straight-2 totally explained
A
straight-two engine or
inline twin is a two-cylinder
piston engine that has its cylinders arranged in a single row. It is often improperly referred to as a "straight twin". A true straight twin (or parallel twin) engine uses a common
crank pin for both cylinders.
Straight-two engine designs are mostly used on motorcycles, eg.
Edward Turner's 1937
Triumph Speed Twin and later British twins. In the past they've also been used in very small cars (eg.
Microcars like the
Fiat 500) and in farm equipment, notably by
John Deere whose large two-cylinder engines were used in their line of farm
tractors up until
1960.
The only current production car to use an I-2 engine is the
Tata Nano, announced 10 January, 2008, which has a 623 cc engine with a single
balance shaft. Most cars now use at least a
straight-3 because of the better power characteristics.
Most of the British
four-stroke cycle inline two-cylinder engines had a
crank angle of 360°, which means that both pistons are always in the same position as each other and move in same direction. This leads to a working cycle every 360°. The mechanical
balance of this design is no better than that of a similar displacement single-cylinder engine, because the forces of both cylinders are compounded; however, the advantage is that the firing is regular, with one cylinder firing each revolution of the crankshaft rather than every second revolution.
Japanese motorcycles, with the exception of
Yamaha, use a crank angle of 180°. This leads to fewer vibrations but uneven firing, resulting in these engines having a distinctive exhaust note.
In
two-stroke cycle engines, the crank angle is generally 180° with a working cycle every 180°. Such an engine will produce fewer vibrations.
Ferrari briefly considered creating an inline two-cylinder engine for
Formula One use in the
1950s.
Aurelio Lampredi worked with
Enzo and
Dino Ferrari on
this design but abandoned development due to unsatisfactory balance. It is believed that all the prototypes built simply exploded during tests.
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