Let me be honest with you at the very outset and say that I honestly do not know too much about the intricacies of an engine despite having studied quite a few in classes. Why is that, you ask? Well, because I have never been allowed to rip out enough to understand them fully and I guess it is one of those things where you will have to spoil a little to get better. I just hope even doctors do not feel the same way. Anyway, all that apart I still do understand enough about those engines when someone tells me about them in a detailed fashion.
So without further adieu let us get to the EE20 Diesel Engine. Fuji Heavy Industries Limited unveiled the technical details of ‘EE20,’ the world’s first horizontally opposed diesel engine for passenger vehicles on Feb 19 in Japan for the first time. Fuji Heavy Industries spent about three years to develop the EE20. Now that is hell of a lot of time to go about building just one engine, but I guess it shows how much care has been taken to manufacture it. They almost crafted this engine to perfection with its features that offer a quantum leap from the existing diesel engines.
The features of the engine are its lightness, smallness and rigidity. The total length is 353.5mm, 61.3mm shorter than “EJ20,” the company’s 2.0-liter natural aspiration gasoline engine. The bore pitch is 98.4mm, the same as that of “EZ30,” the company’s six-cylinder engine. The EE20 and EZ30 are produced in the same assembly line of the company’s Ooizumi Factory. The vehicles equipped with the EE20 will be officially announced March 4, 2008, at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show. The Geneva Motor Show already sounds damn exciting with a line up of the best in the world set to compete to steal the spotlight.
The Legacy sedan, wagon and the Outback equipped with the EE20 will be released on the same day. The diesel engine is planned to be mounted in other models. But it has not yet been announced when the engine will be introduced in North America or Japan. So maybe we will find that out on March 4th itself. The EE20 is mounted with a variable nozzle turbocharger developed by IHI Corp. Its maximum engine speed is 190,000rpm. The turbo lag, which is a problem with turbo gasoline engines, was reduced by placing the turbo in the lower right of the engine to shorten the distance to the exhaust manifold. So, wait for a couple of weeks and you will know more.
