Clean burn chamber and super easy starts

[Chashowlett]

Starts with two fingers and the compression is 180. Both plugs have spark when they are out of the head and grounded. I am going to play around with the gaps, that could give a millisecond delay to see if the quench will light from both ends and burn towards the center i.e.; shooting for a swirl. In 89 while working on the restricter plate Qualifing motor for Daytona, I took a center punch to the chamber and angled a bunch of dimples towards the exahaust port and got 6 hp after many nights of trial&terror. After everybody started on the Swirl chamber kick, Chevy scallops the small block heads in 95 called it Vortec...whatever

 

[blsnelling]

Placebo affect?

 

[1Alpha1]

The human mind is a powerful thing.

 

[Chashowlett]

You dudes are so smart , someone want to explain how the saw I just tore down gets oil to the crank? Under cooked crank. Explain that one power thinkers .

 

[Stihl 041S]

What did you expect..........

 

[bikemike]

P-51 had dual plugs. Disconnect one Mag and loose about 200 rpm. They tuned them that way anyway.

Very true. It wasn't a performance thing on those. It was for saftey any more than 200 rpm change was a indication that you had a bad ignition component. Those were beautiful birds and the sound is 1 of a kind

 

[Chashowlett]

More like redundancy. My grandfather worked and retired from Pratt&Whitney, when I was a kid in the 60's he told me when they were competing for the contracts for the P-51 (my favorite plane of all time) , and there's a brand new, never flown example hanging from the ceiling at the Boeing Museum.Anyway in 43 Pratt&Whitney competed for the power plant for the P-51 and the Feds spec'ed x amount of horsepower at x altitude and the only way they could achieve the ratings was to use Nitrous Oxide on top of Supercharing....how did they deal with detonation with no electronics..,,,ya, it was all mechanical but still gotta be scary especially when someone is shoot at you and your life depends on the machine. Those were the real dudes

 

[Stihl 041S]

More like redundancy. My grandfather worked and retired from Pratt&Whitney, when I was a kid in the 60's he told me when they were competing for the contracts for the P-51 (my favorite plane of all time) , and there's a brand new, never flown example hanging from the ceiling at the Boeing Museum.Anyway in 43 Pratt&Whitney competed for the power plant for the P-51 and the Feds spec'ed x amount of horsepower at x altitude and the only way they could achieve the ratings was to use Nitrous Oxide on top of Supercharing....how did they deal with detonation with no electronics..,,,ya, it was all mechanical but still gotta be scary especially when someone is shoot at you and your life depends on the machine. Those were the real dudes

The engines from crashed P-51 were used in tanks. Then they used engines and components that failed for aircraft were used also. And some components were cast iron instead of aluminum for the tanks.
And the Part Packard played is more interesting......they built most of the Merlin engines. When the first examples were sent back to Rolls Royce for evaluation they made more HP than the Rolls examples.

Packard just got prints from RR. No jigs, fixtures, tooling or gauges. In 40 months Packard had produced 60,000 examples. Today they wouldn't have the permits yet. Lol

 

[Ted Jenkins]

The engines from crashed P-51 were used in tanks. Then they used engines and components that failed for aircraft were used also. And some components were cast iron instead of aluminum for the tanks.
And the Part Packard played is more interesting......they built most of the Merlin engines. When the first examples were sent back to Rolls Royce for evaluation they made more HP than the Rolls examples.

Packard just got prints from RR. No jigs, fixtures, tooling or gauges. In 40 months Packard had produced 60,000 examples. Today they wouldn't have the permits yet. Lol

The most impressive story about the P 1610 and the P 1710 was when Packard and Rolls Royce got together to produce a high performance engine that had to produce impressive HP at 30,000 feet was how fast they made it happen. They took a concept from the drafting table to the finished product installed in a fuselage in six months. The sad part of the story is where are they today? I grew up on a Air Force base right after the war. My best friend and I had acres of retired WWII birds behind a couple of hangers to play in. Most everything was eventually scrapped for metal value. Those parts would be worth millions today. We had numerous P 51s in varied states including remnants of the guns. A friend of mine kept searching through junk until he made an operational 50 cal machine gun. His dream was to get a hold of a hand operated one instead of the remote operated. There were two P 51s parked close to each other so we used sling shots and threw rocks at each other to simulate combat. Our converted hangers eventually were used for crop dusting service which was where the money was.

I remember several aircraft mechanics trying to perfectly tune duel mags on many engines to get peak performance. When the mags were pretty much perfect the engines sang beautifully. If one or both mags were off just a little the engines ran OK, but they just could not make music. In my early dirt bike days duel ignitions were used with varied results. I also remember some of the problems such as too much spark heat created a melted engine. As other AS people have stated it is hard to reconcile that one mag could effectively operate two spark plugs. The spark would not be as hot with two spark plugs as with two complete mags, but if for some reason two plugs create a better running engine well that should be a great accomplishment. Thanks

 

[Stihl 041S]

The most impressive story about the P 1610 and the P 1710 was when Packard and Rolls Royce got together to produce a high performance engine that had to produce impressive HP at 30,000 feet was how fast they made it happen. They took a concept from the drafting table to the finished product installed in a fuselage in six months. The sad part of the story is where are they today? I grew up on a Air Force base right after the war. My best friend and I had acres of retired WWII birds behind a couple of hangers to play in. Most everything was eventually scrapped for metal value. Those parts would be worth millions today. We had numerous P 51s in varied states including remnants of the guns. A friend of mine kept searching through junk until he made an operational 50 cal machine gun. His dream was to get a hold of a hand operated one instead of the remote operated. There were two P 51s parked close to each other so we used sling shots and threw rocks at each other to simulate combat. Our converted hangers eventually were used for crop dusting service which was where the money was.

I remember several aircraft mechanics trying to perfectly tune duel mags on many engines to get peak performance. When the mags were pretty much perfect the engines sang beautifully. If one or both mags were off just a little the engines ran OK, but they just could not make music. In my early dirt bike days duel ignitions were used with varied results. I also remember some of the problems such as too much spark heat created a melted engine. As other AS people have stated it is hard to reconcile that one mag could effectively operate two spark plugs. The spark would not be as hot with two spark plugs as with two complete mags, but if for some reason two plugs create a better running engine well that should be a great accomplishment. Thanks

Allisons and Merlins were for sale after the war for $100-$200 at times. My friends last full Allison rebuild was $235K he said.

Many were sold as scrap.

Very sadly....

 

[1Alpha1]

I had an early 1970's Suzuki TM-400R Cyclone dirt bike. I raced it several times, and then went to town on it, doing some serious modding.

One of the mods was to add another ign. coil and run dual spark plugs on it. I had a 44mm Mikuni carb on it. It was actually too big, but I was able to jet it and make it work. The dual plug mod was to make sure all the fuel burned completely.

Anyways, there's some pics of it in the Reader's Rides Forum. The thread is titled Motorcycle Pics. If you fiddle fart around enlarging the picture, you can clearly see the two spark plugs.

 

[Stihl 041S]

I had 2 plugs on a works 250 Kawasaki.....one to start it and get it warm. One to run on. Early 70s......

 

[Little Al]

The engines from crashed P-51 were used in tanks. Then they used engines and components that failed for aircraft were used also. And some components were cast iron instead of aluminum for the tanks.
And the Part Packard played is more interesting......they built most of the Merlin engines. When the first examples were sent back to Rolls Royce for evaluation they made more HP than the Rolls examples.

Packard just got prints from RR. No jigs, fixtures, tooling or gauges. In 40 months Packard had produced 60,000 examples. Today they wouldn't have the permits yet. Lol

The Packhard V1650/1was based on the Merlin XX & they built 55,523 units, the total production of the UK factory' s when production ceased in 1950 was 112,000 units the Packard with the mods issued from Derby did produce slightly more power but that was because of the updates being on the US built moto

More like redundancy. My grandfather worked and retired from Pratt&Whitney, when I was a kid in the 60's he told me when they were competing for the contracts for the P-51 (my favorite plane of all time) , and there's a brand new, never flown example hanging from the ceiling at the Boeing Museum.Anyway in 43 Pratt&Whitney competed for the power plant for the P-51 and the Feds spec'ed x amount of horsepower at x altitude and the only way they could achieve the ratings was to use Nitrous Oxide on top of Supercharing....how did they deal with detonation with no electronics..,,,ya, it was all mechanical but still gotta be scary especially when someone is shoot at you and your life depends on the machine. Those were the real dudes

Water injection was the usual cure for detonation

 

[Little Al]

Allisons and Merlins were for sale after the war for $100-$200 at times. My friends last full Allison rebuild was $235K he said.

Many were sold as scrap.

Very sadly....

The ejector exhaust stub gave the Merlin It"s distinctive"Crackle" RR's policy during WW2 was to spread it"s works over a few miles radius of Derby My grandfather had some farm buildings more or less in the middle of nowhere about 10 miles from Derby It comprised of 3 large sheds. RR took them over & the purpose was to strip recovered crashed/damaged Merlins, the village folik renamed it "Sptitfire" the engines were stripped parts checked any with no damage with in tolerance were returned to Derby for reuse damaged part were sorted Ferrous /Non Ferrous & sent up the road to a small foundry to be melted down &cast into ingots & returned to Derby to be recast into parts years later when return to agri all manner of parts were turned over during ploughing

 

[Stihl 041S]

A mold maker I know said Vincent Motorcycle cases were made from the cases of recovered engine cases.

Seems very Kool that they would. I hope it's true. Lol

I know he was in on casting the of the engine for the 100th anniversary model of The Wright Flyer using period methods.

Molds and castings are his thing.

 

[LegDeLimber]

Are you using resistor type spark plugs?
With open air and a gap of about .025"
I could be persuaded that there is a ballast resister effect happening, and that could give a spark across both plugs.
Ballast resistors are seen used in series with some (paralleled ) semi-conductors to prevent current hogging by one device.

Take a set of NON-resistor plugs and open the gaps to about .180~.200" or just cut the ground straps off and de-burr the spark plug shells. We don't want anything to cause one plug to fire easier than the other.
You need that minimum gap in order to resemble the resistance across the spark gap under compression when the plug is installed into an engine.

Next, set up the plugs with solid mechanical clamping and ground paths.
We want to try to avoid any bouncing that could give an aberrational result.
With everything in a good solid setup and Non-resistor plugs
IF you still get two sparks.
Then you'll have my attention.

And because this is getting above my pay grade now.....
I'll ask for someone to tell us IF there's any way a "ringing" effect of the ignition coil might cause a secondary spark that would favor the plug that didn't fire on the initial spark. (something to do with the condition of the air/gases in the gap of the first plug to fire?)

This would be so close behind the intended firing that the naked eye probably can't tell them apart.

Just my random thoughts on things.
It's been many years (late 1980's) since I had my nose in the books about this stuff.
Hopefully someone with a formal background can shed some light on it.

 

[LegDeLimber]

Just a bump. Is there any news on this?

 

[JonCraig]

I'm going to say that if it were that easy to get all these benefits, small engine designers would already be doing it--especially considering the EPA restrictions of the last 15 years. If all it took was another plug (even if it required another separate coil), that would be cheaper than redesigning products for strato, etc.

 

[B440]

Dodge does it with their Hemi engine. Two plugs per cylinder.

 

[Ted Jenkins]

It is unlikely that two plugs in a chain saw motor is making a difference. That being said there exist a possibility that there is a benefit. A V-12 with two mags is quite different than a chain saw motor. A Dodge V8 is still quite a bit different than a small 2 stroke. I remember working for a large corporation on some R&D projects where as we had a flow bench. One thing that was very evident was as the air and gas pressure change so does the spark characteristics. Example certain plugs would make very nice blue spark at normal atmosphere, but as the pressure increased the spark started acting erratic. To make this concept a true research project would have two mags each with its own CDI box. Then as soon as that aspect is completed then start changing each unit with timing. Then for sure one could rule in or out the concept as being viable. Thanks