Apparently not – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_balance#Primary_and_secondary_balance

The V4 with a balancer shaft I was thinking of is the Ford Cologne V4.

More on the V6 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V6_engine

A straight 6 has perfect primary and secondary balance. I’m pretty sure a V6 hasn’t but I don’t know for certain.

A straight 4 is not perfectly balanced but is usually acceptable up to a limit of around 2 – 2.5 litres. A V4 is always lumpy. Somebody built one with a counter-rotating balancer shaft to minimise the problem. Sounds an expensive way to make a bad engine layout work when it might have been better to use a different design in the first place.

Years ago a mate had a V4 Lancia which was quite smooth but it was a very narrow angle – 13° rings a bell but I wouldn’t take bets.

Edit: wiki says 13° with later ones slightly narrower and the final 1600 only 11°.

A bloke I used to work with had a Taunus Coupe with a 1300 Pinto. What were Ford thinking? The Pinto’s no lightweight and can’t have had much more grunt than a Kent crossflow.

Moot point.

It is true that the resale value drops without a dealer service history. But at the rate dealers are now charging that loss is almost certainly less than the money you will have wasted taking it to the franchised dealer rather than a proficient independent.

Moggy

A very good point. A mate’s just bought a used Harley-Davidson. To keep up the full service history he took it to a Harley dealer. Oil change – 180 quid.

Abrupt end of full service history.

Ironically the Essex V6 started life as a Saab V4 (and possibly V6).

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, knowing something didn’t sound right.

The Essex V4 and V6 are Ford from start to finish, the V6 originally being designed for the Transit. Saab fitted the V4, bought from Ford, when their old two-stroke was no longer acceptable.

Saab and Triumph were jointly developing engines, the Dolomite slant-four and Saab 99 of that era being basically the same. Like Vauxhall’s slant-four, there was supposed to be a V8 following on. The Triumph V8 appeared only in the Stag and the Vauxhall never entered production.

As a slight aside…
I knew the Me 209 was not really related to the ‘109, despite the deliberate inference. Until I looked at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_209 wiki page, I hadn’t realised just how different and how small it was.

Has anybody got a link to a more authoritative and/or detailed source?

As for the Jaguar they are so boring, driven by old men.

When I had mine I was 23. Is that old?

Porsche 356 – Beetle in a party frock.

I have a feeling that, unlike Concorde, the droop on the FD.2 and BAC221 starts behind the cockpit so isn’t so visible. They certainly both still have droop noses.

The Bristol 188 was designed for research into high speed flight, Mach 3-ish?, but the engines were so thirsty it couldn’t carry enough fuel to be of any use.