thoughts on Crower 6-stroke?

[MazdaMatt]

Article on Crower (of Crower Cams) 6-stroke engine

Anybody have any thoughts on this? Leave it up to an old fart with a machine shop to beat the pants off of millions of dollars in research into new engines. Sounds like a regular engine, minus the cooling equipment, plus a water injector and modified 1/3-speed cams.

suck - squish - bang - blow/squirt - steam - puff?

I wonder how this would work in a rotary?

[dcb]

Originally Posted by MazdaMatt

I wonder how this would work in a rotary?

Could work with a custom rotary with a three lobed epitrochoid. Edit, though it won't be putting any cooling on the hot section, oops.



Though I'm not yet convinced that the crower is more efficient than a really well designed water injection system. I haven't researched it much yet though.

[MazdaMatt]

The idea of water injection is just to fog the intake so there is already moisture in the combustion?

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

As I understand it, the idea is to use some of the heat energy, that would otherwise be lost.

[MazdaMatt]

yeah, the crower squirts water in after the "blow" stroke (does that sound dirty?) and that generates another power stroke (due to steam). The steam carries away all that cylinder wall heat with it and the process starts over. Sounds phenominal to me. Not to mention, this engine could live in an air-tight engine bay with 0 openings to create drag.

[dcb]

If you can squirt (perhaps direct inject) some water in right after combustion begins then you could also get more work out of the fuel input, and with less engine revolutions, maybe.

[MazdaMatt]

I wish I had the time, skill and money to do these things... oh well. Drive slow and wait for the big corporations to release the next generation of cars...

[metromizer]

News of this came out back in Feb '06, I was initially excited, but with 'no time on the dyno' and not having seen any updates since (Other than re-prints and re-posts of the same article, I searched again today and nothing) I am not real optimistic, but I hope this goes somewhere.

Guys like Bruce have this... something about them. I've never met him, but I have been fortunate enough to work for, with or just spend some time with several guys like him. Very inspiring to say the least.

[jamesqf]

In one way it's neat, but in another it seems pretty pointless. Why tinker with raising the efficiency of an IC engine, when a Stirling engine is thermodynamically even better? All you need to do is marry it to the proper hybrid system.

[MazdaMatt]

two words... existing technology. Two more... existing infrastructure. how about existing markets...

The point is, it isn't a huge stretch. You could take any motor production line, change the head design (add the water injectors), change the cam and pullies, add a water tank and you now have +40% efficiency. You're not trying to reinvent the car, you're just aking it work better. I see it as being even easier to do than electric hybrid, nevermind stirling, and it stays helpful at high rpms and high speeds, unlike electric.