I used to be watching a typically excellent video from Engineering Explained on the new Bugatti V-16, once I realized one thing attention-grabbing. With a little bit of math, my ears, and a sine-wave generator, I may work out roughly how excessive this exceptional engine revs. The reply? Very.
Bugatti did not share too many particulars on its new V-16, however Engineering Explained’s detective work and images posted by Bugatti Rimac CEO Mate Rimac on Facebook reveal a few of the engine’s loopy specs. A teaser clip from Bugatti additionally options audio of what appears to be the engine operating by means of the gears.

Here’s the place we get into some inexact science. The dominant frequency of the engine exhaust sound from the video at its peak is round 1275 hz. You may get a precise determine with a spectrum analyzer, however absent that, I made up my mind that quantity utilizing my ear and a sine-wave generator, which creates a pure tone. Match the tone from the sine-wave generator and the video, and you have got an approximate determine.

You can calculate the dominant tone coming from a automobile’s exhaust with simple arithmetic. Take engine velocity in RPM and divide by 60 to get a worth in hertz, on this case, revs per second. As a four-stroke engine solely fires twice for each diploma of crankshaft rotation, you are taking that quantity and multiply it by half the cylinder rely. For a four-cylinder operating at 5,000 rpm, the equation is (5,000/60) x 2, which supplies you a worth of 166 hZ. 

Working backwards from 1,275 hZ with out figuring out precise engine velocity, you merely divide by 8—half of the engine’s 16 cylinders—and multiply by 60 to transform revolutions per second into revolutions per minute. That provides us a determine of 9,562.5 RPM.

It’s slightly onerous to find out the precise highest dominant exhaust pitch from the video, and this assumes that the sound clip is the engine operating to its redline. It may not be. But if the sound is consultant—and there no good cause to imagine it is not—we will assume someplace within the vary of 9,500-9,600 rpm.

Sometimes automakers can emphasize different exhaust-tone frequencies with intelligent tuning of manifolds, and the end result are different tones which can be virtually or simply as loud because the dominant tone. These are referred to as harmonics, however to my ears, it does not sound like Bugatti is doing that right here. There’s one tone ringing much more loudly and clearly than the others, and it is round 1,275 hZ.

Can I be 100-percent assured? Of course not. But I’m fairly near full confidence. What is evident past any shadow of a doubt is that Bugatti’s V-16 might be like nothing else.