It’s Wednesday, and I hope by now the theme of the week is obvious. We’ve had three pots, five pots, and talked about two-pots. Needless to say, finding two-cylinder cars on the road (here) are a challenge; I just missed a nice 2CV recently. The closest I can come up with are these two, hiding at the junkyard behind the fence in the “hands off” section. We’ve done a CC on the Honda N600, but they weren’t exactly running cars. Was this one? Behind it is an unidentified kei truck. Bonus points to who identifies it. Now I need to find a one cylinder Isetta. There was one, but it got away…What else should I be scouting for?
That’s a Daihatsu Hijet kei truck. Year to follow….
Correction: I think it’s a Suzuki Carry, Wikimedia below.
I didn’t realize the kei trucks are commonly used outside Japan as non-road-registered utility vehicles. It would be a good CC topic, except you won’t see any parked at public curbs, not in the USA anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_truck
Suzuki Carry pickup. Here’s an interesting US kei truck dealer’s site:
http://www.ulmerfarmservice.com/
The university I work for has some for the grounds crew. Since its a public school, you could kind of call the roads and curbs within public as well. I’ve also seen them brought in by construction companies working on building and renovation projects on campus. They just haul them in on a flatbed, then tool around campus in them. One company even had them painted and pinstriped to match their full size trucks, along with all their heavy construction equipment. Nothing like pink pinstriping on a crane.
The truck looks like a Suzuki DD51T (’91-’98), LHD had 3 cyl. 550cc, RHD 3cyl. 660cc.
I sell these in N. IL. They are street legal in all States but some States require speed limiting
This is a Suzuki Shuttle
Suzuki Truck with Dump Box and 5′ Power Broom
Suzuki Mail Mate
I concur – Daihatsu Hijet. Someone here in Little Rock uses it to commute to work as I’ve passed it a few times on my way in and I’ve noted the Daihatsu badge. There used to be a Daihatsu dealer here, his building was torn down a couple of years ago for a liquor megastore..
Seen a Jaguar V-12 lately? How about the 10-cylinder Viper?
Presumably 7, 9 and 11-cylinder engines make no sense. Odd numbers of four-stroke cylinders just don’t balance. I still don’t quite see why anyone bothered to build a 5.
Isn’t that particular to V-engines? I thought I read before that it made sense to do odd-cylinder inline engines, but even numbers of cylinders were just done by convention.
Don’t some Volvos have 5-cylinder engines?
Yes. I have a friend with a 2001 C70 convertible – not only an inline 5 but a Turbo, too.
My former 1999 S70 (LPT, 190hp) and current 2006 V50 (non-turbo, 168 hp) both had/have the 2.4L five. Pretty good engines, although I had problems with other components on the S70. The 2.4 has a nice engine note when you step on it.
V-10 gasoline engines are surprisingly common since Ford started using them on trucks. BMW and Audi also use a V10s in some performance models and the Viper V10 started as a truck engine as well, although V10 Dodge trucks are rare.
I see an XJ-S V12 in the Portland area every few weeks so still semi common, although the one up the street from me moved a few years ago.
Back on topic, the boat dealer in Tigard had a Kei truck for sale about a month ago and the gas station on Capitol Highway near I-5 had a bright green Subaru 360 Kei truck parked outside for years.
The five is very pragmatic: if you have a two-liter four and a three-liter six in your engine line-up, and you need something in between, it’s pretty cheap to just add another cylinder to the four. Works better than hacking one from the V6, although VW does/did have a VR5 in Europe.
Didn’t the Acura Vigor have a 5 cylinder engine?
Yes, and that engine was carried over to the gen 1 TL.
Yep the VW V5 engine is an odd one, they sold them out here. Theoretically no worse than a 90deg V6 with split crank pins for even firing, and it is not as if the uneven weight side-to-side matters in a transverse application
Paul, is that the Pick A Part yard on 99 by the airport? I’ve bought several things there over the years. Love browsing there and the B&R nearby.
B&R Pick and Pull; shot from over the fence. Haven’t been inside for a while.
You should be scouting for a Suzuki LJ10 Brute.
http://www.lj10.com/mags/fwmoct71/
The government shipyard where I worked had a fleet of the Daihatsu Hi-Jet pickups. Since the speed limit on base is 20 mph, they had the trannies locked out of fourth gear. These rigs had all the modern conveniences…automatic chokes, defrosters, a place to mount a radio…and would carry two people in the cab and seemingly everything you could pile into the pickup box. The narrowness of them was very handy in maneuvering on piers and in drydocks between pallets of stuff, air compressors, other vehicles, etc, etc; and we could park them in rather small spaces. They stood up to a tremendous amount of abuse from drivers who, after all, were driving someone else’s rig. We would fairly regularly lose the one that was assigned to our work group – it seemed that there were only a few different keys for the whole fleet of them, making them easy to swipe – and we would end up having to search around the sailor areas to find it.
When I was in college, our landscaping crews had a fleet of Hi-Jets, for the same reasons you mention. They could drive them between the posts that were designed to keep drunk students from parking on the lawns, and right up the sidewalk. (Somehow they kept the keys out of reach of the students, drunk or otherwise.)
Unusual Cylinder Number Week is a good time for a W123 300D (but not the 240D).
Well there is always the (in)famous GM 4-6-8. If there are stll any around.
Years ago I went to pick up a Suzuki SX750 bike with a mate to use the engine in a go kart, but he ended up selling it within 24hrs to a guy who wanted to collect vehicles with as many cylinder numbers as he could, he had 4, 5, 6, 8 & 12 so snapped up the 3cyl motorbike.
I think to get 7- & 9-cyl engines we will have to go to radials
There’s a guy in England who will happily build you a Kawasaki 5,7, or 9 cylinder two-stroke motorcycle engine. Does them all the time – has quite a reputation for them. The 7-cylinder is something to see – and WIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDE! His latest project was a 4-stroke: an 1800cc DOHC transverse V-8 (two KZ900 cylinder banks on a common crankcase.
Here in Ontario Canada we have Kei trucks on the road. They are legal if they are over 15 years old.
I don’t really know how they manage it, but the ones I’ve seen in use don’t seem that beat up, maybe they live gentle lives in Japan first.
I wouldn’t want to get in a serious crash in one, but who wants to get in a serious crash in anything?
Preview of coming attractions…
The thought of 3 cylinder engines reminded me of the SAAB 3 cylinder, two stroke of the late 50’s, and of the fact that SAABs were very popular in Maine, and that a popular SAAB color was purple-ish, and that Jean Sheperd (Shep) was a great story teller and auto enthusiast, and that he described that car running around Maine like a “bunch of angry turnips”. I visited some friends in Maine in the late 60s, and he was so correct.