Cool piston tech

[oilhammer]

Secondary air injection and exhaust gas recirculation are both still in wide use today. And some that did go away, came back.

 

[dieselover2]

It isn't always a given that an add-on engine modification has an equal chance of showing up on the assembly line. A close friend of mine spent at least 5 years developing a 2nd stage device that the factory injector is piggy-backed onto. His theory that increasing surface area contact of the fuel to air at the molecular level would improve both power and combustion efficiency was documented on two different gasoline engines. He got an appointment with Bosch in Germany, taking with him his recorded engine laboratory test data done under varied conditions of octane, temp, rpm, fuel to air proportion, valve timing, injector timing,etc. He was a perfectionist and left no stone unturned. He presented it to Bosch's engineers, found them to be keenly interested in his invention, and returned home to the U.S. with what appeared to him and his lawyer to be a promissory agreement, pending actual road driven digital data from a x-country trip in U.S. With that he called Bosch back, got another appointment to see them and returned back to Germany with his lawyer in tow and his x-country data co-signed by an internationally certified engineering test drive group. Unfortunately, he was never invited upstairs where the real decisions are made and returned home disgusted and empty-handed. His take on it was that they might be interested in buying his patent pending out-right for not much more than he had in monetary investment, which I recall was about $200,000 USD, not including his labor. As others have pointed out, vehicle mfg's are paying their own engineers to step around patent pendings, so why should they pay shade-tree inventors a percentage of their sales?

 

[Figster]

It isn't always a given that an add-on engine modification has an equal chance of showing up on the assembly line.
.....snip.....
As others have pointed out, vehicle mfg's are paying their own engineers to step around patent pendings, so why should they pay shade-tree inventors a percentage of their sales?

There is a WHOLE lotta "not invented here" syndrome alive and well in the auto industry. Achates power is a case in point. I've been following them for quite a while and they have plenty of data showing that their opposed piston diesel engine is more efficient than the standard 4 stroke diesel and can be made today to meet the future Ultra low nox and PM regs for California. The only somewhat commercial variant of it being developed (that I know about) is a combat engine for the Army.

 

[jimbote]

 

[jmodge]

Thanks for posting that, interesting avenue to dig into

 

[turbobrick240]

It's an interesting idea, but the Speed of Air group seems very gimmicky/snake-oily. We'll see if it ever catches on.

 

[Zak99b5]

Dude in that video is selling it as well. He tries to come off all skeptical, but then is Fully convinced they are the bees knees just by what the fat guy says, looking at and gathering zero data.

 

[jmodge]

My Jetta is actually very quiet. Maybe my pistons got dimpled

 

[turbobrick240]

Science.

 

[dieseldonato]

That garbage has been around for many years. Mercer energy bit into it and had the pistons done on 2 G399 cat natural gas engines running generators. Didn't increase efficiency, or reduce any emissions. No reason to believe it does anything for a diesel either. Besides that if it did work every oe would be using it. Meeting emissions was one of the biggest packaging, cost intensive things they had to deal with. If simply putting a bunch of dimples in pistons would have yielded anything real reductions it would have been done.

 

[jmodge]

That garbage has been around for many years. Mercer energy bit into it and had the pistons done on 2 G399 cat natural gas engines running generators. Didn't increase efficiency, or reduce any emissions. No reason to believe it does anything for a diesel either. Besides that if it did work every oe would be using it. Meeting emissions was one of the biggest packaging, cost intensive things they had to deal with. If simply putting a bunch of dimples in pistons would have yielded anything real reductions it would have been done.

Killjoy

 

[lemoncurd]

Besides that if it did work every oe would be using it

logical fallacy detected
argumentum ad antiquitatem

If simply putting a bunch of dimples in pistons would have yielded anything real reductions it would have been done.

idk... if you watched the video linked right above your comment, it seems theyre doing more than "putting a bunch of dimples in pistons"
the ring is different, it has a coating, CR is different, etc.

hell, if it was just putting dimples in your piston, everyone would be pouring ball bearings into the intake manifold right off the lot!

 

[dieseldonato]

logical fallacy detected
argumentum ad antiquitatem


idk... if you watched the video linked right above your comment, it seems theyre doing more than "putting a bunch of dimples in pistons"
the ring is different, it has a coating, CR is different, etc.

hell, if it was just putting dimples in your piston, everyone would be pouring ball bearings into the intake manifold right off the lot!

The coating is new, there weren't any coating used on the g399 engines, however coating pistons isn't new, nor is coating the combustion chambers. Changing compression ratio also wasn't done, although I can see rhe basic benefit, lower combustion temps/ pressures leads to lower n0x emissions. One of the reasons cooled egr was introduced first. Displace some oxygen and get a colder combustion event. Not as efficient and won't make the same power vs an engine that doesn't have egr. Hence why egr is turned off at a certain throttle/load.

 

[turbobrick240]

I don't see guys lined up around the block to buy these miracle pistons. Maybe they need to throw in a set of Ginsu™ steak knives with each purchase.

Here's some conversation over at BITOG. I like the Honda design.

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/dimpled-pistons-available-today-for-some-engines.380869/

 

[dieseldonato]

Even if it was proven miracleware, what would be the ROI for rebuilding a perfectly good engine? 400,000 miles?

Depends on the engine, use, upkeep. 400k would be a pretty short life for an otr engine . Don't quite know how miles translates to hours in equipment, but on average somewhere between 8-10k hours would be a general idea for rebuild. (Application dependant.)

 

[turbobrick240]

I don't think they'd ever recoup the cost. A set of 6 for a 5.9 Cummins is like $3500. You can get a set of Mahle coated pistons with the Total Seal rings for a third of that. The big mfrs aren't afraid to use unconventional piston designs if they can find an advantage. The Volvo wave top piston is a good example.

Technology award for wave piston design that lowers fuel consumption

The Volvo Group’s new truck engines are more fuel efficient as a result of their intelligent piston design. Waves have been added to the piston crown to improve the use of oxygen. The engineers behind the innovation have now received the Volvo Technology Award 2017.

www.volvogroup.com

 

[shoebear]

Whatever you think of the Speed of Air technology, they are about to release them for the 1.9 and 2.0 TDIs. Bookmarked to begin at the relevant comment, but the whole video is worth watching.

I'm convinced this is revolutionary tech and not snake oil -- but their pistons are expensive (at least for now). If I ever rebuild a TDI, I will look into the cost and decide then whether to use them.

Later in the video (start at 26:42), he says they just got EPA certification for the Duramax pistons as an emissions reductions device. They are pursuing certification for the rest of their applications as well. If you install their pistons in a Duramax, the expectation is that you can delete your DPF and DEF injection and still be legal. I think they still need to pass CARB certification before you can actually do that legally.

 

[turbobrick240]

Haha. The only people who will ever be able to legally delete the emissions devices on road going diesels are the military and emergency response vehicles.

 

[dieseldonato]

Haha. The only people who will ever be able to legally delete the emissions devices on road going diesels are the military and emergency response vehicles.

And they use regular old pistons in those engines....

 

[Mozambiquer]

Whatever you think of the Speed of Air technology, they are about to release them for the 1.9 and 2.0 TDIs. Bookmarked to begin at the relevant comment, but the whole video is worth watching.

I'm convinced this is revolutionary tech and not snake oil -- but their pistons are expensive (at least for now). If I ever rebuild a TDI, I will look into the cost and decide then whether to use them.

Later in the video (start at 26:42), he says they just got EPA certification for the Duramax pistons as an emissions reductions device. They are pursuing certification for the rest of their applications as well. If you install their pistons in a Duramax, the expectation is that you can delete your DPF and DEF injection and still be legal. I think they still need to pass CARB certification before you can actually do that legally.

No, you won't be able to "legally " delete that, as that is modifying the original emissions control devices.
But, if it is actually useful for that and causes the engine to meet or exceed the EPA requirements, it could possibly be certified for new vehicles, but I doubt the exact would do that without it having the dpf/scr systems.

 

[shoebear]

If they can prove to the EPA and CARB that - say, a 2015 Duramax - can meet the 2015 emission standards with a rebuild using their piston kit without the after treatments, I think they can be legally certified to run that way. That is what Speed of Air is working on, and I guess we'll see what happens. I'll be here cheering them on and rooting for their success.

Concerning use in new vehicles - I agree with turbodieseldyke - the EPA/CARB will take those gains as the new baseline and then create new, unreasonable demands with an impossible deadline to meet them. With those folks, the goal isn't clean air, it's forcing the end of ICE vehicles and cheap power generation. When 99.9% of Earth's population is dead and the rest are back in the stone age, they'll be happy.

 

[turbobrick240]

If they can prove to the EPA and CARB that - say, a 2015 Duramax - can meet the 2015 emission standards with a rebuild using their piston kit without the after treatments, I think they can be legally certified to run that way. That is what Speed of Air is working on, and I guess we'll see what happens. I'll be here cheering them on and rooting for their success.

Never gonna happen. I believe there could be some minor improvements to fuel efficiency, power, and emissions, but nowhere near the claims. It'll be the big new thing until it fizzles out.

 

[Zak99b5]

Well, I installed speed of air pistons in my car. My hair grew back, and my wife dumped her boyfriend.

 

[Zak99b5]

They also add a gapless ring (wonder why the oil is cleaner?) and heat barrier coating to the top. Over on BITOG someone compared a set of Speed of Cash Leaving Your Wallet pistons to Mahle pistons, coated, plus gapless rings. The dimples made the fancy pistons cost 3X as much ($1200 vs $3700). I don’t remember what engine they were for, though.

 

[dieseldonato]

The fact of the matter remains, this isn't new "tech" and it's never once gained any traction beyond novelty. It is funny it seems to crop up every 10 years or so, then fades away into the sunset again.

 

[Rob Mayercik]

If they can prove to the EPA and CARB that - say, a 2015 Duramax - can meet the 2015 emission standards with a rebuild using their piston kit without the after treatments, I think they can be legally certified to run that way. That is what Speed of Air is working on, and I guess we'll see what happens. I'll be here cheering them on and rooting for their success.

Call me skeptical on convincing CARB to allow anything but what they want - I remember hearing the story about CARB forcing Honda to add catalytic converters to the original CVCCs even though the cars were meeting the emissions specs without them. Some day I gotta figure out if that was true or just urban legend, but frankly given the way CARB operates it's entirely believable.

In any event, if they do pull it off my hat's off to them...

 

[oilhammer]

CARB forced a bunch of crap on California-only Volkswagens in the '70s and '80s. And they could do it, because at that time, Volkswagen sold a significant chunk of the US sales in that state... more than any other. Some examples: 1974 Beetles, Ghias, and Things got a dual-preheated intake manifold, which meant the entire intake manifold, muffler, rear tin, was all specific to JUST those cars. 1974 Transporters with automatic transmissions got L-jet EFI. Manuals, and the rest of the country regardless of transmission got dual carbs for '74 (1975 all the Transporters got Bosch L-jet, as did the Beetles). My 1979 CA spec Transporter had electronic ignition (no points, like everyone else had), no EGR (curious... as the others DID), a completely different CA-only exhaust system with a specific catalyst that cooked the left cylinder head to death, and lambda feedback control (49 state Transporters did not have lambda control, and had a tiny little catalyst attached right ahead of the muffler).

Bunches of other CA-only stuff from that era... like the often made-fun-of 1980 CA-only Corvette, that was automatic-only, and 5.0L smogified V8 that managed a whole 105hp ... LMAO!

Don't see that anymore, because other states were allowed to adopt these CARB standards, and it became more difficult to make two versions. But there are still certain cars that were sold primarily [new] in CARB states that were not sold elsewhere. Like the Altima hybrid, or the RAV4-EV, etc.

 

[adjat84th]

They also add a gapless ring (wonder why the oil is cleaner?) and heat barrier coating to the top. Over on BITOG someone compared a set of Speed of Cash Leaving Your Wallet pistons to Mahle pistons, coated, plus gapless rings. The dimples made the fancy pistons cost 3X as much ($1200 vs $3700). I don’t remember what engine they were for, though.

What are the downsides to "gapless" setups, why don't OEMs use them if they have such great benefits?
Fisher Motor Works did a BMW with the fancy pistons, and (likely most importantly) gapless ring setup and saw 200C decrease in EGT across the rev range, substantial increase in torque (though they also saw an increase in compressor surge), and a claimed 20% increase in fuel economy.
I'd rather see the datalogs from their testing vs dyno charts, but they were very interesting results either way.

 

[oilhammer]

I've often wondered the same thing about the gapless rings... because I do not know of any OEM that uses them in their engines (but there may be some exotic exception?).

 

[turbobrick240]

Too bad they aren't still doing the Mythbusters show. That would be a good one. Two brand new engines run side by side in dyno cells with full instrumentation.