Offset bores?
I can't imagine ballancing that was any worse than Honda's V-5 (yes, a V-5) MotoGP bike that used varrying bores and to ballance the rotating assembly. Its funny how quickly this thread has turned into a "look at all this crazy **** Hondas doing

press together bottom end!?!?! sounds cool. guess you could then use proper bearings on the big ends. wonder if it would be stronger than a conventional crankshaft??
do these bike engines run any type of balancer shafts or anything??
Chris,

press together bottom end!?!?! sounds cool. guess you could then use proper bearings on the big ends. wonder if it would be stronger than a conventional crankshaft??
do these bike engines run any type of balancer shafts or anything??
Chris,
Press together bottom end can be useful in the fact that you can use real "bearings" instead of the hydrodynamic 2 pieces ones in conventional motors. They fail though in the fact that each piece is splined where it meets the other pieces and that is your weak link. They're typically in 1-3 cylinder engines of older design, that Honda is the first 4/8? cylinder I've seen that is press together also. They do allow for really cool things to happen in the case of the Kawasaki H1/H2. They were 500/750cc 2 stroke 3 cylinders with cylinders and bottom end cases as one piece, but seperate from another cylinder. Crank was press together also, so you could put together as many cylinders as you wanted. 100% modular engines are neat, sucks you have to make them weak to do it.
Stolen from InsightCentral.net
"The engine block has a unique, offset cylinder design in which the bore center is offset 14mm from the crank center. Maximum combustion pressure occurs at a point where the connecting rod is straight up and down in the cylinder. In this position there is zero lateral force so friction and piston slap are reduced.
As a result of the offset construction, the combustion pressure is used more efficiently since the rod is near it maximum leverage point with the crankshaft."

Every 4 cylinder Honda I've seen coming out now has an offset bore
Edit: if someone reminds me in a week I can dig through my laptop and find some stuff wrote up about cylinder offset






