Isotta Fraschini produced a long series of engines with the name Asso (Ace in English). The Asso XI R.C. was a liquid-cooled V-12 engine with maximum power output in the range depending on the degree of supercharging. There were two variants, differing only in their supercharger speed: the
R.C.40 ran at a little over 10 times the crankshaft speed and enabled the engine to maintain a
rated power of to an altitude of whereas the R.2C.15 held to with a supercharger gearing of 7. All variants of the R.C.40 had much in common with construction of the earlier Asso 750 R.C., though they had two, rather than three, banks of 6 cylinders and 4 rather than 2 valves per cylinder. The
cylinder barrels were machined from
carbon steel with flat-topped heads and
valve seats. Each barrel had a separate sheet steel water jacket. Cast aluminium head blocks were bolted to each of the two banks of cylinders, providing valve ports, guides, coolant passages and
camshaft supports. The pistons were also aluminium castings. The
crankshaft was a 6-throw design with 8 plain bearings and a double row
ball thrust bearing between the front two. The
connecting rods had bronze bush
little ends and white metal
big ends. The
crankcase was cast in two parts, the upper one with the housings for the crankshaft bearings. ==Variants==