This is REALLY interesting stuff.
They worked with a company called cargine and developed individual valve actuators to eliminate camshafts and gain the ability to fine tune each individual valve profile to gain 30% more power and torque while decreasing fuel consumption by 30%.
EDIT: why the fuck aren’t the [video] tags working?
Didn’t the Lotus designed ZR1 engine the Corvette had years ago have solenoids that actuated the valves?
Take of the s in https. Video tags don’t work with SSL encrypted links.
Great video.
Fuck i’ve been talking about this for years! You literally can program in a cam profile. I thought GM was working on this with Ferrari a while ago, but that would explain why it wasn’t feasible.
Cool stuff :tup:
Great vid
If anyone wants to develop thier own version here in the states, here is a sweet pneumatic cylinder company to work with…
Although this is a great idea, I am skeptical of the long term reliability of something like this.
Here are a few reasons.
Electrical components fail and although being designed to operate in an environment complete with hot oil, hot gases and air pressure, over time these will fail. The question really is what else will fail as a result. Which brings me to my next point.
Electrical wiring can fail. Rubbing through, shorting to ground, corrosion, heat changes resistance of conductive wire, EMI can affect a signal quality etc. If you are signalling these to turn on and off using a dedicated frequency and timing then everything needs to be shielded to avoid EMI and signal degradation. At 9000rpm signal degradation could mean improper valve timing and improper valve timing could translate into expensive repairs.
This system relies on air pressure. Thus requiring external supply lines, these lines could crack, leak, become brittle, disconnect etc. Over time these would have to be inspected diligently. The average car owner is not diligent on maintenance.
This technology still relies on a valve. Just as using a camshaft has restrictions so do having a valve. It is your limiting factor not the camshaft. It is your bottleneck. Air having to travel through a port and around the head of a valve is one of the largest restrictions in engine breathing. This has a key role in volumetric efficiency of the engine as well as how and engine responds to turbo charging. That is just the intake side. If we turn our focus to the exhaust side it is even more apparent that here lies an opportunity for improvement. While the incoming air charge needs to flow over the radius of the valve head the exhaust side needs to push against the flat portion of a valve changing the direction of flow more than 90 degrees in order to remove the exhaust gases from the cylinder. This is part of why there is a ratio of valve size between the intake and exhaust, exhaust valves need to be a little smaller in order to avoid shrouding. This is a limitation due to physical dimensions in the combustion chamber. Running larger valves on the exhaust side of an engine without properly clearancing the combustion chamber can do more harm than good as you reduce the area that the gas has to flow around that valve.
All of these components and extra factors lead up to more complication. The bulk of the increase in power and decrease in fuel consumption can most likely be directly correlated to the loss of mechanical friction and resistance in the engine. The benefits here are that you are able to do just what they wanted, get away from mechanical parts, reduce mechanical losses and infinitely tune the valve timing. You are still restricted by pumping losses inherent with using current port and valve configurations.
That being said I will always err on the side of simplicity and like this concept more: http://www.coatesengine.com/
It like anything has its downside but I think the technology and idea have the potential to really improve internal combustion, you know before we eventually abandon that technology.
Wow… Cool shit.
Sort of the same idea as a roller barrel throttle body that some Indy and Formula One teams were using. Remove the throttle valve and increase over all flow and engine response.
FWIW, they’ve clocked 60,000 kilometers on the (around 37k miles) on this technology in the saab 9-3 they’ve retrofitted.
Saw this last night. I thought it was pretty awesome
What ever happened to the Larsen Radax Engine? That seemed absolutely incredible.
Cool stuff.
yeah i also watched this last night. the whole series on Koenigsegg is awesome.
what is Driven / Drive?
They have some great features on youtube and it’s nice to see a serious car show NOT try and replicate Top Gear’s shtick and style and go a whole different route with their content.
They did the Singer overview as well. Very great channel concept and their test drives are good quality as well. There should probably be a thread or section on this forum dedicated just to reviewing their videos
I think it’s the same guys as Jalopnik. I really like their videos.
Yeah I saw that, long term testing is awesome but in the scheme of things so far that’s a standard warranty. What we haven’t heard was anything they have had to replace or issues they have run into perfecting the product. They did say that they are also on a newer version which tells me that they have replaced actuators at least once. Time will tell and I hope it works out.
The economics of it may make it a wear/maintenance item anyway. Don’t know for sure, just sayin.
yeah 60,000km’s on a single test car that has been upgraded in that term and is as closely monitors as this one doesn’t really suggest that it’s ready for primetime.
That said, i think these guys do a wack of CF manufacturing for other companies too… i mean, they must… where else would any of the money for all this come from?