Why did they have to develop such a stupid system? They should have devoted that development money towards computer controlled electric valves.

Imagine having an economy engine when you are puttering down the road that suddenly becomes a dragster engine when the guy beside you nails it. No more compromises on camshaft selection because you'd have unlimited profiles. You could even affect the compression ratio of the engine by affecting duration and lift. Need more compression, use max lift and short duration on the downstroke, and close the intake valve as soon as the engine starts the compression stroke. Lower compression, close the valve halfway up on compression.

Couple it with direct injection and the fuel could be sprayed in at high pressure after the valve is closed, right before the spark plug ignites.

The electric valves would also be more compatible with the concept of DOD than using some complicated oil-dependent mess. Get a clog in the oiling system, experience a drop in oil pressure as the engine ages, and DOD will lose effectiveness. How about the guy that uses crap oil with the 100,000 mile warranty? Oil-based DOD was a bad idea that should never have taken off.

I'd really like to see this come about. You could make the engine 25 percent smaller and get more power and far more efficiency. Bet you could have a gain of 10MPG or better with better power than today's engines have by doing electric valves, direct injection, DOD and smaller engines all together. Maybe even 20MPG better.

What would cool electric valves?

Plus the amperage required would be more than current electrical
systems can provide.

Then the noise to the other electronics and audio systems.

Desdromic valving and an electric servo to initiate or turn
one cyclinder off would be better. Look up any Ducati engine
cross section showing their valve set for desdromic valves.

Rev limiting too with electric solendoids. Raise time okay, but
droping out and the huge spring needed, which adds to the
amperage load.

Even the direct gasoline injection has problems. No pre-ignition,
so can go very high compression ratios, as no fuel to pre-ignite.
But the issue is the pre-chamber and that squirt of air to get
the very rich flame out into the main CC. The air compressor
is the issue.

As with most of the ones I've seen, the solution addes a level
of complexity that then becomes a problem.

How's about a mixture of gasoline and diesel with a direct
injection without the pre-chamber?

Very high compression ratio for a gasser, but within the norms
for diesel.

No spark plug, or ignition system.

No pre-ignition, as no fuel in there to do so, till injected.

Inject diesel, but not enough to produce all the power desired
till the gasoline injected, which I'd guess burns off the diesel
as a cleaner.

Good questions and observations!

Cooling the valves could be accomplished several ways. A water jacket could be designed to cool the entire top of the head, or could still use oil to do this. If they can make electronics live inside tranny fluid, should be able to do so in motor oil as well.

Power wouldn't be a real issue either, as they have already been investigating increasing the power systems. And, they have developed a generator that fits in with the torque converter and takes its feed directly off the engine for charging hybrid batteries, or reverse flow to add power to the drivetrain from the batteries. I just don't see power as being a limiting factor. Valve opening speed would be an issue, not sure how they would work that or even what the limits would be. Of course, I'm developing this in my mind with total funding of 0 dollars, by myself at the moment. Imagine what I could do with a team of engineers and millions of dollars at my disposal to develop electric valves.

On the gasoline/diesel mix, I have read articles where they were talking of making "diesehol", mixing diesel and ethanol. I think it was a 70 percent ethanol mix with the diesel. I didn't absorb the details on it though, would have to do a search.

I didn't even consider that you can increase compression on a gasoline engine with direct injection, didn't know that was possible, or even a possibility. But, yeah baby! Every atmosphere of compression you can add, according to DD2000, adds about 30-35 horses to an engine of about 350 cubes, all else being equal. If you could make the engine 18 to 1 compression, along with the rest of this, they could porobably get the same power from a 2 liter engine that they see from a 6 liter engine now, and have even more economy. It's almost as if there is no downside to this line of thought.

My point is, it isn't an impossible thing to work out. It would take time, money and experimentation, but could be done, and if they could get it to work it would allow the automakers to jump way over the current CAFE standards. Or, they could do what they have been and just barely meet the CAFE standards with 500 cubic inch engines. Imagine 600HP from an 8.1 with 25MPG. Yes, it would be complex, but no more complex than electric fuel injection looked in 1986. Look at how we looked at fuel injection then, vs today. Just 20 years later, fuel injection is now not only the norm, but people are forgetting what carburetors are. I wish I could, I hate carbs.

Going to a higher compression ratio will require beefier components from
the block down to the rings.

With that goes high rev'ing, or will increase the wear'n tear going
high rev'ing for this setup.

Cooling will become an issue, or have to increase the sizing of
that system.

All combustion is a 'burn', not an explosiion, which is what is
going to become an issue with gasoline at these ratios. Why the
stuff I've come across has some sort of 'poison' to the gasonline,
to slow down that burn rate in such a high compression chamber.

Goes back to the pre-chamber, but then guessing they had problems
and went with the air injection to clear it out into the main CC.

Agree, if they could make this work, huge economies and power
gains possible.

Have worked on designs for some robotic actuators and electrics
(at that time) didn't have the proper attributes. By the time the
spring rates high enough to attain the speeds, their weighting
and force works against the electrical solenoid, increasing it's
sizing and current requirements even more.

VERY light weight stuff that is conductive & can be magnatized
were not available back then (circa 70's to 80's).

Yes, but once again, these are the things that a multimillion dollar research budget could figure out. What is the highest compression that could be used with this to maintain reliability, power and economy without requiring 20 pound pistons and 200 pound cranks? What chamber shape for the heads would be best, considering that right now the biggest obstacle to head design is the fact that you have to have the valves operate along a linear path? With electric valves (EV), you could have the valves anywhere you needed them instead of being limited to a straight line as with overhead cams or pushrod engines.

With these valves, you could have a flattened X shaped engine that is 2 feet tall and 2 feet long, and 4 feet wide. With the correct front suspension, this would allow very exotic shapes on the front end since you would not be limited by engine shape as much. Or, such an engine would be well suited to a mid-engine car.

I wouldn't worry so much about the redline either. Right now, you have to have a lot of valve spring pressure not to hold the valve closed, but to hold the lifter against the cam because the cam does NOT have the ability to pull the valve back, and if you don't have enough spring on the valve then the valve won't close properly. Since EV would have the ability to both open AND close the valve, and not just open, why would you need a spring at all? I'd only have a spring for engine protection, strong enough to pull the valve back in the event of a servo failure. The spring rate would not need to be nearly as strong as it is for a camshaft since the valve could be moved back and forth with the servo. They've already developed some pretty light valves, you would just need to figure out a way to drop heat enough that the valve would not cook the servo, and you could probably do that with a combination of methods and materials.

I know I'm not an engineer, so hopefully my post isn't too far off base on what is possible. I do know that if you throw enough money at a problem, you can usually solve it. Hell, they throw enough money at it you can even solve the problem of death. The trick is to have enough money and time to throw at it, which nobody's had yet.

Speeder wrote:

Hell, they throw enough money at it you can even solve the problem of death. The trick is to have enough money and time to throw at it, which nobody's had yet.

I've figured this out, and it was free.

Anyway, I do think that research is being directed more into electric engines and alternative fuels. There will probably always be internal combustion engines, but with the world oil situation and our lack of will towards imperialism (which I'd support), the research dollars are more likely spent looking at all electric motors, and batteries.

Still, you've got a good idea about engine configurations. Mid engine cars and trucks would be great.

Speeder wrote:

Imagine having an economy engine when you are puttering down the road that suddenly becomes a dragster engine when the guy beside you nails it.

A lttle off topic but...with the new diesels you can drive with an economy tune and when needed switch on the fly to the performance tune. My truck dyno'ed at 240hp to the rear wheels, with my current set up it should dyno at around 440hp to the rear wheels. All I have to do is hit the switch "on the fly".

[quote="Makoi"]

Speeder wrote:

Hell, they throw enough money at it you can even solve the problem of death. The trick is to have enough money and time to throw at it, which nobody's had yet.

I've figured this out, and it was free./quote]

I mean physical death in this world.

Don't forget that in addition to higher compression, but also
more advance as there is no fuel in there to pre-ignite.

Don't need spark plugs and the attendant stuff (wires,
coil, dist, etc). So more room for larger dia valves, but
that space taken up by the injector.

Advance is managed by when the fuel is injected, so
a crank sensor needed.

No knock sensor needed.

Wonder if it would burn cleaner? But much hotter
if too lean.

Similar to diesel, except it would burn more completely
than diesel, so thinking combo gasoline/diesel. Maybe
bio-diesel a better choice. Or even more alcohol.

http://www.coatesengine.com/

Hey, that's really neat. I was thinking back on the Wankle rotary engines while reading this thread above. Then, you post this link. That's great. I can't wait to see what Speeder will formulate from this. Jim, maybe you should get in contact with Jacques Nasser, I read he might be taking over Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford. The budget money might become available!

Seen those valves before.

Okay, but over time a tough thing to keep clean and
tolerances tight from the abrasive carbon/deposits
that *will* get on the sliding surfaces.

Why the curren valve stem out of the combustion
chamber works so well.

Why mentioned desdromic valves. No springs, no
rockers. Traditional valve but at the stem end a
closed ring for the cam to ride inside of. The
cam opens and closes without a spring. Really
can't over rev'm either.

Did a report on various valve config's for a college
report. Strength of materials and design class.

Didn't think desdromic valves would ever catch on,
but Ducati has made it work on a production product.

Check out this rotary engine link

http://www.freedom-motors.com/

Several years ago they ran a set of these heads on a stock small block Ford. The compression ratio was high, on pump gas, with a high rpm limit. Check out the following link:

http://www.projecttransam.com/coates.htm


Not to upset anyone, but the recipocating engine is old technology. Has anyone seen information on the DynaCam engine? This engine has incredible torque.

Looked at the Dynacam engine, and it essentially uses at least one cylinder to act as a supercharger for the other cylinders, or uses multiple cylinders, or uses an oversized cylinder per cylinder to compress air into the intake. The problems I see with this are, removing cylinders removes more power than can be gained by compressing air for the remaining cylinders, and how do you prevent the compressed air from being pumped right back out the intake manifold? To prevent this you would require a very complicated intake process. While this may work, and may make a lot of torque, I doubt it would be a feasable engine for anything other than science experiments. If you look it up on the net, there is no information on this engine other than discussion boards, and the links that are supposed to go to the company website are dead. I think this is dead tech. http://www.dynacam.com/index.htm

The other link goes right back to the rotary valve page already posted.

Now for something a little different, http://www.araoengineering.com/Chevy/chevysmb.htm

Now, I like those Arao heads. The Dynacam has ben through some litigation. Another cpmpany is producing gensets (electrical generators) using this engine design for power.

Some functional prototypes use engine oil pressure to do the actual work of moving the valve open and keeping it closed. Think of a electrical solenoid operating a hydraulic valve inside a automatic transmission. The solenoid only opens and closes a small pilot hole, then lets the in rushing oil pressure do the rest of the work.

Picture a modified fuel injector solenoid at the top of the above diagram directing oil pressure from to one or the other side of the valve oil pressure "shuttle". Oil pressure will hold the valve normally closed, then when the solenoid is activated, oil pressure will be directed to open the valve. The trick will be how fast the switching oil pressure can operate the valve to open it and again to close it, and keep the oil free of impurities that will clog the whole works up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camless

http://www.me.sc.edu/research/AARG/camless.html

Do a GOOGLE search for "camless engine" to read more

Camless engines are allready working in some diesel engines as I understand it.

Imagine ebing able to upload a tbi™'s peanut cam into the trucks PCM for towing the boat on Saturday, then uploading the equivalent to a 230°/240°cam profile for Sundays bracket racing??

That would be awesome. Heck I think I would have a different PCM tune for when idling at stoplights and when underway driving. Lopey idle and effecient crusier, depending on where the throttle is.

peace
Hog

Not just the Isuzu V6 I've talked about, but the current Lexus LS series.

Has both port injection and direct injection.

Main system is direct and port to suppliment when higher flow
rates needed. My guess is that the direct injection pump can't do
both higher PSI and high flow rates.

Up the compression to elimenate the spark plug and dynamicly
change the timing without fear of knock.

They've super polished the rods/journals and cylinder with an
soft abrasive finish on the cylinder walls to get back that cross
hatch for maco oil reservoirs. Electrolizing (hard chrome) plating
does the same, but an even harder coating. Reduces the friction
and allows for higher compression without undue wear.

All this IP exists today and wonder why they don't utilize them.