It's been awhile since I've posted here or even tried to keep up with what has been posted. But here is another thing that has been left out on this research but, it's stuff I have researched already myself and would like to share.
One thing that happens in a combustion engine when the sparkplug fires (creates an arc) is that it turns a stoichiometric air/fuel mixture at 14.7:1 into carbon which helps to short out the spark and it is a near dead short. It is very hard to ignite a lean mixture or a rich mixture but, for opposite reasons which I'll explain in a bit. Don is doing exactly what I did years ago but, I did it for automotive street engines and racing engines. I measured E & I with an open sparkplug gap with a current sense resistor on the lead and I also measured E & I at across a current sense resistor replacing the plug gap. But things didn't seem to add up. It wasn't until I started measuring E & I on my race engine under load (transbrake) that things stared to make sense because I totally forgot about burning a fuel makes carbon which conducts electricity. Playing around with the jetting on the carburetor from 11.5:1 and 18:1 fuel ratio (O2 Sensor in the header collector) this is what I found.
At 18:1 I was getting lean misfires with the plugs showing a whiteish powder. At 11.5:1 I was getting rich misfires with the plugs looking black with carbon but, they were also wet. So being lean meant there was not enough carbon being created and rich meant that the fuel which is nonconductive diluted the carbon. On the lean mix voltages were getting as high as 55Kv and the rich mix was down to around 24Kv. Because I was using my old AC/Delco engine analyzer I didn't/couldn't measure ignition current on the car. It is my belief that as the fuel is being converted into carbon that the carbon actually helps to create something like a carbon arc light. If you haven't seen one they have a very intense light and burn hot as hell.
Now to replicate an actual spark/cylinder combustion on a workbench that one can see to me would be very dangerous, I won't do it unless it's in an engine. But I'm trying to make a test rig using the gas discharge devices I used in the military that I mentioned. I know that when the voltage on them reaches their ionization level they are almost a dead short just like in a actual combustion chamber. I'm going to put a bunch of them together in series, 7,500 volt ones to start with and neon lamps tapped off them and add a current sense resistor. If it works the way I hope, cascading down the row, the last neon light to blink is the voltage output. I'll report back once it's built and tested, in about a month.
Ray
One thing that happens in a combustion engine when the sparkplug fires (creates an arc) is that it turns a stoichiometric air/fuel mixture at 14.7:1 into carbon which helps to short out the spark and it is a near dead short. It is very hard to ignite a lean mixture or a rich mixture but, for opposite reasons which I'll explain in a bit. Don is doing exactly what I did years ago but, I did it for automotive street engines and racing engines. I measured E & I with an open sparkplug gap with a current sense resistor on the lead and I also measured E & I at across a current sense resistor replacing the plug gap. But things didn't seem to add up. It wasn't until I started measuring E & I on my race engine under load (transbrake) that things stared to make sense because I totally forgot about burning a fuel makes carbon which conducts electricity. Playing around with the jetting on the carburetor from 11.5:1 and 18:1 fuel ratio (O2 Sensor in the header collector) this is what I found.
At 18:1 I was getting lean misfires with the plugs showing a whiteish powder. At 11.5:1 I was getting rich misfires with the plugs looking black with carbon but, they were also wet. So being lean meant there was not enough carbon being created and rich meant that the fuel which is nonconductive diluted the carbon. On the lean mix voltages were getting as high as 55Kv and the rich mix was down to around 24Kv. Because I was using my old AC/Delco engine analyzer I didn't/couldn't measure ignition current on the car. It is my belief that as the fuel is being converted into carbon that the carbon actually helps to create something like a carbon arc light. If you haven't seen one they have a very intense light and burn hot as hell.
Now to replicate an actual spark/cylinder combustion on a workbench that one can see to me would be very dangerous, I won't do it unless it's in an engine. But I'm trying to make a test rig using the gas discharge devices I used in the military that I mentioned. I know that when the voltage on them reaches their ionization level they are almost a dead short just like in a actual combustion chamber. I'm going to put a bunch of them together in series, 7,500 volt ones to start with and neon lamps tapped off them and add a current sense resistor. If it works the way I hope, cascading down the row, the last neon light to blink is the voltage output. I'll report back once it's built and tested, in about a month.
Ray
