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Interesting engine developments


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This has been around for a while now. Looks good as computer generated graphics but so are all the other Weasley idea’s that pop up every now and then! The fuel source is often the biggest stumbling block, just like EP they have a looooong way to go to knock off petrol/diesel powered ICE’s! Oil Co”s control just about everything!

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They talk about exceptionally close tolerances and fits to eliminate sealing problems. If it was that easy, we'd have the design in our engines right now. But the problem is - trying keep those exceptionally close tolerances after a few hundred hours of operation is nigh on impossible. The rotating components need bearings to spin on, and bearings spinning at breakneck speeds develop wear and movement in short order.

This engine is no different to Ralph Sarich's Orbital engine - it looked great in theory, and in the prototype - it ran quite happily on short tests - but when it came to the crunch and it was put through long-term, all-conditions testing, it failed on the sealing angle, it failed on the emissions angle, and it failed on the heat dissipation angle.

Even Ford thought they could make it work, but in the end they all gave up. BHP poured $50M into the Orbital engine, and ended up with little to show for it, because of the Orbital Engines "insurmountable", inherent design problems.

Ralph Sarich did make money out of a side project, air-assisted fuel injection, for which he sold the rights, to a number of manufacturers, mainly outboard engine companies.

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