Plasma Ignition Systems?

[swatson454]

Is .44 vs .42 a major deal?

Why yes. BSFC gets you across the line first. Not hp... silly camper

The CDI vs long-duration vs coil-on-plug etc. for various uses discussion sure has my attention though. Plasma or not.

[dieselgeek]

"...unless there is something very wrong with what you are trying to ignite."

That's the crux of the matter. Not every combustion event is a textbook affair. In-cylinder pressure monitoring such as nitro2's TFX equipment shows that most are more or less 'normal', some are slow starters, some fizzle and generate barely more pressure than would motoring the engine and some just don't happen at all. The number of misfires and sub-optimal burns in what may appear to be a perfectly fine running engine can be a substantial percent and if a "lightning in a bottle" ignition system can give such events a kick in the pants to get going, the power gains can be substantial.

my $.02 from a little experience: WAAAAAAY too much time being spent discussion the spark itself, versus the accuracy of when that spark is launched. Most guys here are using 1-trigger-per-spark event which is, frankly, crap for accuracy.

[turbotrana]

Guys trying to do something very unusual, like igniting fantastically weak mixtures, or drowning the thing with gallons of nitro are certainly going to have some rather special problems of their own creation.

But the vast number of typical engines from stock to pretty wild should not have radical combustion problems, unless something is seriously wrong.

The idea that you can fit some magic super power ignition on an already healthy engine and pick up any significant power from it seems to me like an act of pure faith.

That was my view, and I was really hoping that running plasma would help me get past my current lean burn limit and go enough beyond the stock ignitions ability to fire a lean mix to regain the light throttle BSFC lost with a cam change. If that was all it could do and maintain current output, it'd be worth it. Unfortunately Turboranas experience of being unable to run any leaner kills that theory.... although it may be the engine wanted less or more timing to run leaner, there are variables that could affect his results... and when I feel like throwing away $3k on an ignition system and a bunch of trial and error dyno sessions I'll reconsider running it. Until then I have found lots of You Tube impressive videos and claims online but no actual factual real world results other than the 10hp David Vizard picked up... and notice power DROPPED on the top end.

If this is the ignition of the future, it's got a ways to go it would appear.

As for lighting a fuse with a big match or a little one - I think that analogy is limited in the sense that if the bomb can be exploded quicker, it has the opportunity to burn more completely in the available time it has to do useful work, also as you said, ultra lean burn requires an ultra powerful ignition... which is why I cannot understand Turbranas results. Prof M Ward was getting A/F ratios in the 30's to 40's and one of the key ingredients was a potent CEI ignition had had designed himself.

I was pretty disappointed with my results also. I expected something, but nothing (in the sub 3000 rpm rev range I was interested in).

And the spark the box produces is brilliant and loud, it just does not produce the goods.

I still have it. Paid $600, will sell for $300. I know it doesn't do much for me but maybe someone else can experiment with it. I am in Perth Aust.

[Bazman]

Guys trying to do something very unusual, like igniting fantastically weak mixtures, or drowning the thing with gallons of nitro are certainly going to have some rather special problems of their own creation.

But the vast number of typical engines from stock to pretty wild should not have radical combustion problems, unless something is seriously wrong.

The idea that you can fit some magic super power ignition on an already healthy engine and pick up any significant power from it seems to me like an act of pure faith.

That was my view, and I was really hoping that running plasma would help me get past my current lean burn limit and go enough beyond the stock ignitions ability to fire a lean mix to regain the light throttle BSFC lost with a cam change. If that was all it could do and maintain current output, it'd be worth it. Unfortunately Turboranas experience of being unable to run any leaner kills that theory.... although it may be the engine wanted less or more timing to run leaner, there are variables that could affect his results... and when I feel like throwing away $3k on an ignition system and a bunch of trial and error dyno sessions I'll reconsider running it. Until then I have found lots of You Tube impressive videos and claims online but no actual factual real world results other than the 10hp David Vizard picked up... and notice power DROPPED on the top end.

If this is the ignition of the future, it's got a ways to go it would appear.

As for lighting a fuse with a big match or a little one - I think that analogy is limited in the sense that if the bomb can be exploded quicker, it has the opportunity to burn more completely in the available time it has to do useful work, also as you said, ultra lean burn requires an ultra powerful ignition... which is why I cannot understand Turbranas results. Prof M Ward was getting A/F ratios in the 30's to 40's and one of the key ingredients was a potent CEI ignition had had designed himself.

I was pretty disappointed with my results also. I expected something, but nothing (in the sub 3000 rpm rev range I was interested in).

And the spark the box produces is brilliant and loud, it just does not produce the goods.

I still have it. Paid $600, will sell for $300. I know it doesn't do much for me but maybe someone else can experiment with it. I am in Perth Aust.

Did you play with the fuel mix and timing to see if the plasma wanted more or less?

[turbotrana]

I played with fuel mix heaps, not so much timing. I would take it to slight lean misfire on cruise with a switch inside the cabin to switch on and off. No difference.

[maxc]

I played with fuel mix heaps, not so much timing. I would take it to slight lean misfire on cruise with a switch inside the cabin to switch on and off. No difference.

Open up your plug gap?

[chevy luv1]

If you need more proof that plasma works go to http://www.strokerengine.com/plasmastorm.html Before I could even recommend this system I had to tested it for myself. I chose a 540 big block street motor that is very fuel burning efficient. I used a VHE-60 system and saw increases in torque which is more difficult to increase than horsepower. I did not have time to test with a lower octane fuel, but would expect to have seen further power increases. The following is the torque only
RPM w/o Plasma w/ Plasma Change. I compared these results with the engine tested by Terry Walters and saw the same gains of 9lbs-ft
3000 660 666 +6
3200 676 682 +6
3400 680 689 +9
3600 680 689 +9
3800 673 680 +8
4000 682 687 +5
4200 697 701 +4
4400 701 707 +6
4600 704 709 +5
4800 709 713 +4
5000 710 714 +4
5200 703 706 +3
5400 690 688 -2 thanks to John Nijssen

[nitro2]

The relevant combustion problems are not 'radical' but rather systemic.

Clint Grey/nitro2 or a few others could tell us quite accurately, but if one was to capture say 100 cylinder pressure diagrams in succession from an average well-tuned race engine, the I.M.E.P. of the best would likely be at least 15% higher than the average. In other words, if every event was 'right' (i.e. perfect), the engine would make 15% more power. Not all the variations are directly combustion related of course, but the effect of ignition characteristics re same is substantial.

As an extreme example, many years ago I put an early design CD system on my big block Camaro. WOT performance was a little crisper, but it misfired like crazy at part throttle cruise. If I disconnected the vacuum advance it ran fine, just as it did with the CDI off and the vac. reconnected. It seemed that the very short duration spark just wasn't reliably 'finding' a combustible mixture in the lean low-density mixture...

There are definitely large cycle to cycle variations in combustion and IMEP on most engines. A spark is not an accurate way to generate the combustion process, no matter how accurately timed the spark is. The spark may start at say 40 BTDC but it takes quite awhile in terms of crank angle degrees to get the combustion process going, its not instantaneous. Generally, barely noticeable combustion pressure starts at 10-15 BTDC. Thats 25 to 30 degrees of crank rotation to start a flame kernel and get it to develop just past the "embryo stage" if you will. A lot of things can happen during this time. Any combustion cycle that is not as good as the best combustion cycle (for a particular engine), is simply a combustion cycle that didn't pan out correctly - this would be most of the combustion cycles.

A diesel engine is a different story due to the different combustion process. On a diesel with consistent cycle to cycle injection, each combustion cycle looks just about the same as all the rest of the cycles, at a set load and speed. Variability is slight. On high end diesels it is possible to get inconsistent injection and that will of course generate cycle to cycle combustion variability, but thats the fault of the injection process, not the combustion process.

A better spark would have to alter the 25 to 30 degrees I mentioned above. It is common knowledge that once you have a good enough spark, a better spark won't make a difference, but in fact neither the "good enough" spark nor the "better than good enough" spark is actually getting the job done well.

[maxc]

http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mellor. ... 21002007FC