Rodin Cars used the PRI Show in December 2023 to announce that its race-type 4.0 litre V10 will be made available as a crate engine. It was developed to power the company’s radical FZero hypercar and, as such, it also made its first laps on track at Rodin Cars’ private test facility in late 2023. The company is based in New Zealand, where the RC.TEN engine is to be manufactured in-house.
Rodin Cars is owned by technology billionaire David Dicker, and it was he who schemed the V10. It was then drawn by British race engine designer Graham Dale-Jones. Dicker took the design to UK-based Neil Brown Engineering (NBE), which had the facility to manufacture and develop initial examples.
NBE made its own interpretation of Dale-Jones’ design to suit its methodology and manufacturing requirements, and it produced the first couple of examples. This was while Rodin Cars was gearing up its own state-of-the-art engine-manufacturing and development facilities.
The RC.TEN was profiled in RET 145 (February/March 2023), based on the prototype unit produced by NBE. An all-aluminium engine, albeit using steel liners, it has a 72o bank angle, bore of 86 mm and stroke of 68.8 mm, offering 3996.5 cc. Its steel crankshaft runs in six plain bearings and is driven by three-ring, light-alloy pistons through titanium conrods.
The direct gasoline-injected RC.TEN has four valves, one plug and one injector per cylinder. The valves are 34 mm intake, 29.5 mm exhaust and at an included angle of 29o. They are operated by gear-driven, twin overhead camshafts. The ignition is distributor-less and the engine is run by a full-engine management system.
In its initial twin-turbo guise, using a compression ratio of 10:1, the RC.TEN officially produces maximum power of 1013 bhp (755 kW) at 9500 rpm, exploiting a plenum pressure of only 1.75 bar. A naturally aspirated version will follow. The RC.TEN was exhibited at PRI by fellow New Zealand company Link Engine Management.