| Author | Message | ||
     Tcskeptic |
http://www.coatesengine.com/csrv.html To my un-mechanical brain this looks very cool. Is there something impractical or pointless about it that I'm overlooking? | ||
| Slaughter |
Bearing wear is an issue when you look at the valve seal as a bearing surface. There IS real goodness to the system though. Not sure just how much flow you can get through a given head size compared to 4-valve head. There are engines running with the Coates system and run apparently well. Not sure about performance applications. Would be really cool to see the end to valve/piston collisions or RPM limits driven by valve train considerations. | ||
| Sparky |
I've seen spherical valve engine prototypes in Design News going back to the mid-80's. The big gotcha then was, like Steve said, perfecting the valve sealing surface. Maybe they are making progress? I don't know. I haven't been keeping up -- guys at work haven't been leaving their old Design News around much these days.  Perhaps newer innovations in rotary-valve science may one day benefit the rest of us. After all, Mazda didn't overcome the Wankel lobe seal problems and create a truly high-perf engine in a relatively small package overnight. | ||
| Tom_b |
the valve seal problem is probably fixed or at least being improved. like sparky stated about the wankel design, or teflon edged rotors on roots style blowers. i would think just less moving parts would make it more effecient | ||
| Slaughter |
If you could flow enough volume - there's a bunch of research in the past decade on self-lubricating ceramic bearings. So, I s'pose it's do-able. Having smacked pistons/valves more than once, I look at the Coates system as really interesting. | ||
| Ezblast |
I - also for similar reasons. |
