I got all that except for the intake air being heated by the
headers. Might be great for efficiency but wouldn't the resulting drop
in density reduce maximum power? I do remember Smoky Ys' engine but I
never got an answer to the obvious question. If it's so great, why
doesn't everybody do that? It would be so easy and cheap to do.
Tracy
One of Smoky's things was to coat the inside of aluminum heads with water
glass, to prevent the transfer of heat into the coolant. This is/was the
reverse of most thinking, particularly in racing engines. The idea was that
even the relatively small area involved would remove too much energy from the
mixture prior to ignition.
Our Genius (the Wile E. Coyote
definition) Leaders in Washington have just mandated 35 MPG for all cars.
Why they didn't "drop the other shoe" and mandate goodness and mercy for all
of earth, along with 74 degrees everywhere and a free Coke every day, and good
health and happiness. But the year isn't over yet, and once they see other
great ideas like this they can scrape together another dose of Opiate for the
masses.........sound familiar?
With its very large combustion chamber the rotary will lag behind the
piston engine in efficient burning of the mixture, and has always had
that excess HC problem. The early rotaries had doubled side seals, and I see a
return to that, along with a dykes shape self pressurizing side seal. So that
the highest drag is limited to the area of highest cylinder pressure. I
suspect the work on insulating ceramic coatings will be getting far more work
than in the past. It is common in racing engines, as is Teflon plates on the
thrust sides of pistons, as well as ceramic coating on the domes. In the short
term no new materials research is required.
In the IMSA GTP series, BF Goodrich sponsored a pair of Lola 616 Chassis
with Polymotor research engines. They had steel cranks and fasteners and iron
camshafts. Everything else was ceramic or plastic.
Close to 300 HP. In the 80s...........
So why are we so late to the
dance.....Again?....... The computer and bean
counters. Followed by big corps with committees of lawyers calling
the dance instead of a gifted car nut with the disposition of a stepped on
snake.
Here is just one of thousands of examples:
A friend who races a Ford probe in GT-3, and kicks our butts every
weekend, works in Detroit as a drive-line engineer for GM. ??? yet races a
Ford. There are few engineers left in his division. Drive line problems are
called in to an engineering company in India. They then produce whatever the
Indians say is the answer to that problem. A few years back when the price of
aluminum began to climb, somebody got the idea of making pistons shorter. So
the bean counters with the fast computers come up with the cash savings, and
it is a bunch. And what could be better than trying it on one of the highest
production numbers engine in the building, instead of the lowest, to limit
damage should a problem crop up?
So with not nearly enough testing, GM shortened the piston skirts
on every Small Block V-8 they built that year. As though the old retired
engineers who had done all of the work on this engine had been imbeciles, And
GM had just now discovered this fact, and had now corrected 55 years of giving
away huge amounts of aluminum for no good reason.
So, they put 2 new engines in very nearly every vehicle with that short
piston. Near the end of the first year, the ones that had seen hard use, as in
pickup trucks were coming back with a knock when cold. It was not such a
big deal for the new suicide door equipped pickups with no pillar for striker
plates, because they went into production without passing an important test
for retention in an accident, so they were in the dealer to get Government
mandated, improved door latches anyway. So a new engine (with the new longer
piston idea) was just one extra day.
So why is GM in deep dodo? They need a Clarence Kelly Johnson car
nut to build cars.
So where is the work on the coaxial injector/spark plug being done? And
shouldn't the tiny air compressors used on Formula one cars to power the
valves be connected to blow in a whopping dose of air along with that fuel?
Well I think so. If you don't like that can we bleed combustion
pressure from the other housing through the new injector to improve
heat, atomization and reduce NOX.
So rather than making a fuel/air mixture elsewhere and dragging it past
the plugs at 100 MPH and complaining about HC problems, let us inject our
burning mixture into the hottest possible compressed air we can make, and do
it between the current plug locations. You cannot detonate it when all of the
fuel is in one location. And if it cannot detonate how much boost could it
stand? High boost with no inter-cooler?
Throw me in that brier patch.
That rotor is only turning 2,000 RPM. There is plenty of
time............We can do this.
For airplanes we would leave off the heated air part, and suffer the
slightly lower mileage and higher power.
Lynn E.
Hanover