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FSI - fuel stratified injection

newtogolf

FIA World Rally Car Champion
Location
london
dont really know what this engine all about. whatever it is, it seems to boost the performance. was looking at the figures for the 1.6 fsi (119mph, 10.5s) and i have to say thats quite impressive for a 1.6 litre engine. thats the sort of performance typical of the older GTIs.

so if im getting a normal 1.4 s, does that mean its not a fuel injection? or is FSI a different type of fuel inject?
 

Neimad

Passed Driver's Ed
All modern petrol engines are fuel injected these days -- otherwise they'd still need a carburetor. FSI engines differ from "normal" injection engines in two ways:

Firstly, they inject fuel directly in to the combustion chamber as opposed to the intake manifold, therefore giving much greater control of the combustion process.

Secondly, typical FSI engines have two engine modes which are known as Homogonous and Stratified. The first is used when the engine is under load and is akin to how most "normal" petrol engines work, the second is used when the engine is not under load (usually less than half maxium engine speed), and basically works by creating a small pocket of fuel/air around the sparkplug whilst the rest of the cylinder contains just air. This means that less fuel is required without causing a missfire due to insufficient fuel/air mixture.

Make sense?

Oh, and I say "typical FSI engines" above because FSI engines such as the one fitted to the new Golf GTI don't use the Stratified charge mode at all, so in essence they are FHI engines. :wink:

Finally, looking at the VW UK website it looks like they have two varieties -- a non-FSI 1.4 (75hp) and an FSI 1.4 (90hp). Personally though, for a car the weight of a Mk5 Golf, I'd advise you go for the 1.6 as the smaller engines will need to be pushed hard (speaking from some experience -- I have a Polo with an 85hp 1.4 FSI and for motorway journeys it can be a bit guttless).
 

newtogolf

FIA World Rally Car Champion
Location
london
thanks for clarrifying all that. makes sense overall.

all i can say is, too late as ive already gone for the 1.4 s a week ago. i am aware that its not gona be the best for performance. a 1.6 fsi wouldve been a bundle of fun. but i dont think il do much motorway driving. also i wanted to go for the cheapest thing i could get. 12k was my limit.

whats it like driving the polo by the way? i was close to buying that, but as the price was beginning to near the golf, i chose the latter.

i would have thought that a 1.4 fsi is good enough for a polo anyway. they have just started selling the polo GTI in the UK. dont know if it will become popular but 14.8k seems a reasonable price.

i would hate to imagine the performance of the 1.2 litre 3 cylinder in the polo. that must be awful.
 

Neimad

Passed Driver's Ed
newtogolf said:
all i can say is, too late as ive already gone for the 1.4 s a week ago. i am aware that its not gona be the best for performance. a 1.6 fsi wouldve been a bundle of fun. but i dont think il do much motorway driving. also i wanted to go for the cheapest thing i could get. 12k was my limit.

whats it like driving the polo by the way? i was close to buying that, but as the price was beginning to near the golf, i chose the latter.

i would have thought that a 1.4 fsi is good enough for a polo anyway. they have just started selling the polo GTI in the UK. dont know if it will become popular but 14.8k seems a reasonable price.

i would hate to imagine the performance of the 1.2 litre 3 cylinder in the polo. that must be awful.

The 1.4 FSI isn't that bad -- I've had a non-FSI 1.4 Polo as a courtesy car and that felt a helluva lot slower than the performance figures suggest (75hp vs. 85hp) -- most likely just the difference in the torque though. Still, for a car weighing over 1000kg a 1.4 isn't going to get you moving anywhere quickly, and once you're at speed it just doesn't have the mid-range to pull away quickly. Of course this is only a problem if you're doing a lot of motorway and/or fast A/B road driving (which counts for 95% of my road-time) -- around town it has more than enough grunt to get you around effortlessly.

The Polo GTI does look like a damn good deal, but since I'm doing so many miles these days I wanted a car with some more space, so like you I opted for a Golf -- I just decided to go for one with a slightly bigger engine -- a GTI :biggrin: I'll decide how sensible a thing that was when the reality of doing 80 miles per day to work and back sinks in. :wink:
 
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