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Old 05-25-2008, 05:52 PM
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rickair7777
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A radial had a few advantages I suppose...

You can have multiple cylinders, each of which has good exposure to cooling airflow. Inline/opposed engines have some cylinders hiding behind other cylinders, so it's harder to get good consistent airflow to everybody...the rear cylinders tend to get pre-heated air from the front cyclinders.

Ultimately radials create a lot of form drag...it turns out that you don't normally need each cylinder to have full-frontal airflow from the slipstream. An inline design allows you to minimize the frontal drag, and duct only as much cooling air as you need to the cyclinders (in theory).

Also it's probably easier to start and manage combustion, and lubrication when all the cylinders are oriented in the same direction.

I can't think of any reason why a radial would have more parts though...it should have the same parts as other piston engines, just oriented differently.
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