I remember Detroit telling the Feds that the new emission controls were unobtainable with the technology of the day. Honda then told the government that it could meet the new standards. Needless to say, Detroit found a way to meet the standards too. Eventually the piston engine will all but disappear as new technology arises, but it ain't dead yet, nor do I expect it to be for many years to come.
I agree.. The stuff you put inside the engine, fuel and air, has it limits.. A lot, if not the majoritet, of the energy released upon combustion, will be lost in heat and driving the cooling system.. I read somewhere that s gasoline car, maximum uses 33% of the energy, obtained of the combustions, to power the cars movement.. And in that's without loss in transmission etc.. Lowest calculated was 16%..
It's because the octane is fixed. You can run high compression at the lighter loads to avoid PI and increase efficiency. But at WOP (wide open pedal) there isn't enough octane to support the higher CR.
Mark, could you imagine having direct injection heads for the 350. Talking about gas mileage and performance! I'll never forget when our 72 conv GS with a 200R4 got 22 mpg on Power Tour. I was tickle to death!
That's why most of the recent development has revolved around the Atkinson cycle engine. Varying the dynamic compression (and now the mechanical compression) is the means to run super lean mixtures and control the temperature with automatic EGR due to cam overlap. It's all about addressing the heat loss issues from here on out, I believe. I bet there will be advances in materials and coatings to help with that. You would think they would design an exclusively E85 burning engine to maximize on the octane and heat-absorbing properties of the alcohol.
I saw a car once that had both a variable compression ratio and a variable spark plug gap. It came into the shop as a "problem child" that a bunch of other shops could not fix. What happened was the ceramic part of a spark plug had come loose from the metal threaded piece. Often it would stay together, but sometimes the center of the plug would slide out about a 1/2" on the compression stroke. Then the car would run on 7 cylinders. We found the problem by watching it run with the hood open. It was the funniest thing, watching that plug slide in and out. Duane
I remember my dads ‘52 Evinrude FastTwin outboard had that, to go faster you just cranked in more timing
All joking aside, I bet that 95 years ago, when the modern distributor appeared, there were people who complained that taking away that lever ruined the driving experience. And front brakes! Fuggedaboutit!!
I'm very familiar with steering column mounted spark control. I've logged many starts and many miles in Ford model 'A's
...just when we thought engineers had done all they could with inline 4 cyl 4 strokes...not only variable compression, but rod angle and 2nd order harmonics. Wow. Time will tell if others think gains warrant complexity... ...started with his methanol vid and became a fan... ...as for "advance lever," my BSA A10 had one. One quickly learns its purpose/value...
The problem with any fuel containing alcohol is that alcohol (Ethanol) contains far less energy then gasoline. Gasoline has 114,000 BTUs of energy per gallon, the corresponding number for Ethanol is 76.100 BTUs. The engine will require almost twice the amount of Ethanol to produce the same amount of energy as an equal amount of gasoline. Translation: The more Ethanol in the gasoline mix, the worse the fuel economy.
Yes, true. I actually ran ethanol in my Silverado for a while, just to see what the deal was (flex fuel silverado 5.3). It was more expensive due to the mileage difference... ran really well, and cleaned out a lot of junk from the motor. I think ethanol as it stands today is a loser (except for cheap race fuel). It is net loss fuel- requires more energy in the process to make it than it generates. I wish the government would stay out of subsidizing energy when they have no real understanding of the issues, but here we are. The farmers are loving the subsidies. I think it's unethical to use good growing land for fuel production when there are hungry people in the world.
The goal is to reduce combustion temperature to lower NOx (nitrogen oxides) Emissions. VW is now running the Miller Cycle and not the Atkinson (like a lot of japanese cars). And EVERYTHING they do is because they have to lower emissions. All new Gasoline engines come with particle filters like diesels. They have controlled variable oil pressure to reduce load to the engine. newest oil we have is 0w20 and it feels like water when hot. Goal is to reach the WLTP 2 standards for CO2. Because if you do not all the car makes get heavily fined. most engines we have now do have oil squirters inside to cool down pistons...now they even added a valve to shut the oil passage off if it is not needed to cool so there is less load on the oil pump. lots of crazy stuff...
Kinda reminds me of the 4 wheel steering that was the techno rage awhile back, yah don't here much about it anymore. Was it to complex? Not much of an advantage? Unreliable?
