Anyone ever heard of this before? Looks really cool to me.
http://www.coatesengine.com/eGallery/pages/RotaryValveSystem.htm
As I understand the picture, there's a hole in the top of the combustion
chamber. You stick a ball over the hole. The ball has channels bored into its
circumferance. The ball spins around on the overhead camshaft. As the ball
spins around, it alternately seals the chamber or the channels line up and it
allows mixture in (for the intake ball) or exhaust out (for the exhaust ball).
So the "valve" is just a ball spinning around. No springs, no lifters, no back
and forth motion of any kind. You still have dual overhead chain driven cams,
but with no springs and no back & forth motion, there is almost no resistance
at all and almost no limit to how fast it can spin.
Plus you get to set the valve timing / duration / lift any way you want with
none of the current limitations about hitting the pistons on a high compression
engine, or about getting enough lift at high RPM without valve float.
They claim some impressive improvements to power output and lower emissions.
They're talking about doubling the engine's RPM range. Of course you'd have to
modify the intake, ignition etc. to handle the revs and use a big differential
ratio but basically what they're saying is that the revs will no longer be
mechanically limited by the valvetrain, and the valvetrain will have almost no
mechanical losses.
Neat stuff!
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