Page "Internal combustion engine cooling" Paragraph 27

The Czechoslovakia based company Tatra is known for their big size air-cooled V8 car engines, Tatra engineer Julius Mackerle published a book on it.

Air-cooled engines are better adapted to extremely cold and hot environmental weather temperatures, you can see air-cooled engines starting and running in freezing conditions that stuck water-cooled engines and continue working when water-cooled ones start producing steam jets.

Also the possibility of working at higher temperatures air-cooled engines have may be an advantage from a thermodynamic point of view.

The worst problem met in air-cooled aircraft engines was the so called " Shock cooling ", when the airplane entered in a dive after climbing or levelled flight with throttle opened, with the engine under no-load while the airplane dives generating less heat, and the flow of air that cools the engine is increased, a catastrophic engine failure may result as different parts of engine have different temperatures, and thus different thermal expansions.

In such conditions, the engine may get stuck, and any sudden change or imbalance in the relation between heat produced by the engine and heat dissipated by cooling may result in an increased wear of engine, as a consequence also of thermal dilatation differences between parts of engine, liquid cooled engines having more stable and uniform working temperatures.