Until now boxer engines have pretty much been the exclusive preserve of the automotive world – the original VW Beetle, many Porsches and, of course, nearly all things Subaru.

But that could be set to change.

A backstreet mechanic in Uruguay and a lawyer from Argentina have developed an eight-cylinder boxer engine reckoned to have serious potential for agricultural and construction machines.

Known in technical terms as horizontally-opposed engines, traditional boxers have a single crankshaft with pairs of pistons running to and fro with cylinder-heads and valves at the outside.

Where the JLA Robust engine differs is that it has no cylinder-head and no valves. Pairs of pistons run towards and away from each other in what is in effect, a single cylinder, driving two crankshafts on the outer edge of the block.

Without valves to create back pressure for compression and combustion, opposing pistons in effect act as the head for each other.

It uses the same basic Suck-Squeeze-Bang-Blow principles as a conventional four-stroke engine.

• Intake – The fuel and air mix is drawn in through ports around the cylinder lining, exposed as one of the pistons retracts on its downstroke.
  
• Compression – Both pistons start their travel towards each other, compressing the gases.
  
• Ignition – Although the pistons never reach top-dead-centre at the same time, the fuel/air mix combusts at the point where they are closest, triggered in the petrol variant by a spark-plug and in the diesel version by maximum compression.
  
• Exhaust – As both continue on their downstroke, one piston exposes the exhaust ports which, like the intake ports, surround the cylinder. The gases are expelled and the cycle begins again.

• Without valves, rocker-shafts, push-rods and a cam-shaft there are approximately 30% fewer moving parts in the JLA Robust than in a conventional design. Of course that makes it dead easy to fix and there’s less energy drain as a whole so you should be getting more power at the flywheel.
  
• Boxer engines are popular with high performance car makers because of their power and torque characteristics. A 1950cc JLA engine can crank out 230hp at 6000rpm and will hang on right down to 1300rpm where torque levels peak at 760Nm. According to its makers, these parameters are very easy to adjust to suit different applications. They believe that a 2-litre boxer will match the performance of a conventional 3-litre block.
  
• Because of the firing order and the layout of the cylinders there is a combustion stroke for every 90deg turn of the flywheel compared to one very 180deg in a standard motor. This is said to make it much smoother running.
  
• A flat block with horizontal cylinders has a low centre of gravity and as such can be used to stabilise a vehicle and improve handling.

The JLA engine is a long way off production and is undergoing testing with different injection systems as well as different fuels – diesel, petrol, biogas and bioethanol.

The company had its innovative idea on display at the recent Agritechnica show in Germany to gauge the reaction of potential customers. Apparently there was particular interest from mechanics working in Eastern Europe and beyond who want a simple field-fixable power-plant.

When the engine seized in his pick-up, Argentinean lawyer Carlos Juni thought it would be a relatively straightforward job to get it fixed or replaced. But finding a replacement V8 block for his 1948 Studebaker was to prove a real headache.

At the end of his tether he found a backstreet mechanic in neighbouring Uruguay who was prepared to completely rebuild the motor. Spending many nights in a workshop together they got talking about the fundamental design flaws and complexity of today’s modern engines and frustration of not being able to fix them.

Between them they hatched a plan for a simple, high performance design that could run on both petrol and diesel and could be fixed by anyone with a set of spanners and a screwdriver. The JLA Robust was born.