The

Daihatsu , commonly known as Daihatsu, is a Japanese automobile manufacturer and one of the oldest surviving Japanese internal combustion engine manufacturers. The company's headquarters are located in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture. Historically, Daihatsu was ...

A-series engine is a range of compact two-cylinder internal combustion

piston engine A reciprocating engine, also often known as a piston engine, is typically a heat engine that uses one or more reciprocating pistons to convert high temperature and high pressure into a rotating motion. This article describes the common featu ...

s, designed by

with the aid of their owner Toyota. Petrol-driven, it has cast iron engine blocks and aluminum cylinder heads, which are of a

single overhead cam An overhead camshaft (OHC) engine is a piston engine where the camshaft is located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier overhead valve engines (OHV), where the camshaft is located below the combustion c ...

lean burn Lean-burn refers to the burning of fuel with an excess of air in an internal combustion engine. In lean-burn engines the air:fuel ratio may be as lean as 65:1 (by mass). The air / fuel ratio needed to stoichiometrically combust gasoline, by con ...

design with belt-driven camshafts. The head design was called "TGP lean-burn", for "Turbulence Generating Pot". The engine also had twin balancing shafts, which provided smoothness equivalent to that of a traditional four-cylinder engine - although it also cost nearly as much to build. The engine was developed with some haste in order to replace the two-stroke "ZM" engines used in Daihatsu's earlier

Kei car Kei car (or , kanji: , "light automobile", ), known variously outside Japan as Japanese city car or Japanese microcar, is the Japanese vehicle category for the smallest highway-legal passenger cars with restricted dimensions and engine capacit ...

s, and was the first unit to take full advantage of the new 550 cc displacement limit in effect from 1 January 1976. It was first presented in May 1976 as the AB10. Baobab Street, ''Enjoy'', p. 130 Eventually, even a turbocharged version was produced. Baobab Street, ''Enjoy'', p. 133 The engine was replaced by the three-cylinder EB-series in 1985.

AB-series (547 cc)

The AB-series is a version, originally installed in the 1976 Fellow Max 550 but was eventually used in Daihatsu's entire Kei car lineup. Bore is 71.6 mm and stroke is 68 mm. Unlike export versions, Japanese-market engines have a small catalyzer fitted. The engine (AB20) was also installed in the Portuguese Entreposto Sado 550 citycar, of which about 500 were built in the early 1980s. Daihatsu's close competitor, Suzuki, fitted AB10 engines into their Fronte 7-S for a short period, as their own two-stroke engines could not meet increasingly-strict emissions requirements. Engines designed to be installed in an upright position are denoted AB10, while those intended for a horizontal position (for underfloor usage) are called AB20. The AB55 is a horizontal version equipped with a turbocharger. A downtuned version with at 2900 rpm and at 2000 rpm was installed in Toyota's FG5 forklift from the late 1970s. Applications: * 1976.05–1977.06 Daihatsu Fellow Max 550 (L40/L40V) * 1977.06–1980.06 Daihatsu Max Cuore/Cuore (L45/L40V) * 1980.06–1985.08 Daihatsu Cuore/Mira (L55/L55V) * 1976.04–1980.04

Daihatsu Hijet The is a cab over microvan and kei truck produced and sold by the Japanese automaker Daihatsu since 1960. Despite the similarities between the Hijet name and Toyota's naming scheme for its trucks and vans ( HiAce and Hilux), the name "Hijet" ...

(S40) * 1977.04–1981.04

(S60) * 1982–1984 Sado 550 (Portugal) * 1977.06–1978 Suzuki Fronte 7-S (SS11)

AD-series (617 cc)

The AD-series is a version of the AB-series engine. Due to its larger size, it does not meet Kei car regulations; it was intended only for export markets. Of Daihatsu products, only the

Cuore The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE , also ) is a particle physics facility located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Assergi, Italy. CUORE was designed primarily as a search for neutrinoless dou ...

(often called "Domino" in export markets) was fitted with this engine. Bore is 76 mm and stroke is 68 mm. The only version was an

SOHC An overhead camshaft (OHC) engine is a piston engine where the camshaft is located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier overhead valve engines (OHV), where the camshaft is located below the combustion cha ...

, two-valve, single carburetted unit. Innocenti also built this engine into their Mini 650, built from November 1984 until November 1987.

References

;Works cited {{Daihatsu A Straight-twin engines

AB-series (547 cc)

AD-series (617 cc)

See also

References