Inverted Vee Conversion

[wireflight]

Low CG -- and I'm thinking that ... with a little effort ... a gearbox could be situated in the valley, making the drivetrain amazingly compact.

Of course, someone will probably take that idea and do it in a commercially expedient but nevertheless improper or inefficient way -- and if they're first to market, doing it the right way becomes cost-prohibitive.

The Germans used inverted-vee aircraft engines in WWII. Some were wildly successful; others weren't -- but I'm not convinced their reliability problems had so much to do with the underlying technology as industrial sabotage. Carbureted homebuilt aircraft have been built with "upside-down" V8 passenger car engines; the last one I saw used an inverted Oldsmobile mill. The problem is not just in finding good technical/development information about these types of powerplants; in most cases, there doesn't readily appear to be ANY such information about them.

I'm thinking if the technology can be made to work well in an engine like the 460 (or a 302W, for that matter), it would be fairly easy to transfer it to the new modular Ford engines.

I can't get into exhaust routing right now, but think how much sense it makes for the intake to be mounted above the exhaust: that's backwards from the normal, natural flow of heated air.