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Motorcycles » rec.motorcycles.tech » E3 Diamondfire spark plugs
| E3 Diamondfire spark plugs [message #470750] |
Mon, 10 October 2005 00:22 |
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Anyone heard of these / used them? The claims are pretty bold.
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| Re: E3 Diamondfire spark plugs [message #475503 ] |
Mon, 10 October 2005 18:00 |
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Masospaghetti wrote:
> Anyone heard of these / used them? The claims are pretty bold.
"Mouse milk!", shouted the automotive engineer to the inventer of
"breakthrough technology", and walked away in disgust...
How much does an E3 cost, anyway? $6.00 or $7.00 apiece, like a
Split Fire? Nippon Denso Hot-U's only cost $2.50 each.
Spark plugs with multiple ground electrodes have been around forever.
I've seen them with four or six radially arranged ground electrodes and
ground electrodes that looked like the nail-removing claw of a hammer.
How many of you guys use Split Fires? I've never ponied up $28.00 to
change my plugs and never will...
The easiest one to fabricate looks to be the ND Hot-U
plug which has a channel up the center of the ground electrode where no
spark would ever fire to anyway. Sparks "prefer" to jump to and from
cooler sharp points, and the tiny amount of heat energy increases local
temperature, so the sparking moves around. Eventually the sharp edges
of the center electrode erode away, and the plug fires at a higher
voltage.
When I tried Nippon Denso Hot-U spark plugs for the first time, I
noticed that the engine mysteriously behaved as if it had a slightly
hotter spark plug. The Hot-U's ran hotter and stayed cleaner in my
dirty-running 2-stroke engines.
Maybe the Hot-U actually does have a bigger flame kernel? Quien sabe?
So the E3 folks say that there's a bigger flame kernel to pop my
popcorn machine and that combustion pressure is increased by their plug
with its special ground electrode?
Well, you get a spark in a 2-valve per cylinder engine around 45
degrees before top dead center when the ignition is fully advanced.
And then cylinder pressure rises really really really fast, but not as
fast as like, say, during an explosion.
And all the combustion that's going to take place has finished by 45
degrees after top dead center. And the engine is well into using the
pressure of burning gasses to drive the piston down so fast you can't
even see it.
That's in an older, less fuel/heat efficient 2-valve engine.
The newer, more fuel/heat efficient 4-valve engines have more
turbulence in the combustion chamber, so they need less ignition
advance. Full advance on my GS-1100 engine is only about 32 degrees
BTDC and combustion is done by 32 degrees ATDC.
So, at high engine RPM, the combustion event takes place in some
milliseconds of time less than it would occur in a 2-valve engine, and
less heat is tranferred uselessly into the metal parts of the engine
instead of driving the piston downward.
This does mean that it's necessary to cause the cylinder pressure to
rise more rapidly in the 4 valve engine than in the 2 valve engine.
But, what the heck. High RPM 4 valve per cylinder engines have been
around since 1910! And they didn't have any spark plug with a
bizarre-shaped gimmicky ground electrode. That 1910 Miller engine had
conventional spark plugs. And combustion chamber pressure rose fast
enough to twist its crankshaft muy pronto...
Honda 50cc and 125cc GP engines of the 1960's ran at up to 20,000 RPM
with no trick spark plug, other than the fact that tiny engines used
tiny spark plugs.
The truth about ignition is that an engine requires no hotter spark
than that which is necessary to light of the mixture, and then it takes
time for the mixture to burn, so the ignition event has to be advanced
in order for combustion to take place in less available time.
So, what if your ignition advance curve is all set up to get X number
of degrees of full advance, starting from X number of degrees static
timing BTDC and you install a set of plugs that increases the speed at
which combustion chamber pressure builds up, and the pressure builds up
so fast (and so early) the starter has to struggle to crank the engine
over (especially when the engine is hot)?
The starter might crank the engine real slow and maybe even be unable
to crank the engine when hot!
Not understanding what the effect of more rapid combustion chamber
pressure is, you'd be mystified and you'd be scratching your head and
asking about why your battery suddenly seemed so weak and you'd be
troubleshooting your charging system, when it was just the static spark
was advanced from installing those E3's...
So you might find yourself having to figure out how much to *retard*
the static ignition of your engine.
How engines work. How little things cause major problems. What a trip.
Wouldn't it be easier just to stick with a more conventional plug or
try the Hot-U's?
Another interesting point that the E3 site mentioned was the
orientation of the flame kernel to the airflow inside the combustion
chamber.
Many years ago, the engine gurus were chanting about how all the tuners
of "fast" racebikes were "indexing" their spark plugs so the
open side of the ground electrode faced toward trhe intake valve.
Since cylinder heads are cast aluminum and there is some slight
difference in the thickness of the head and when the machine cuts
threads in the spark plug holes the threads don't start and end at the
same point in all the cylinders, when you screw the spark plugs into
the head, all the ground electrodes would point in different
directions.
So we were all supposed to run out and buy a spark plug indexing tool
in order to install the spak plug with the ground electrode open end
facing toward the intake valve.
WTF? When the spark plug fires, isn't the gawddamned intake valve
*closed*?
The gurus of spark plug indexing insisted that an indexed plug would
run cleaner, and, besides, they had bought all of those spark plug
indexing tools from the machine shops and they needed to sell them.
I haven't seen a spark plug indexer in about 20 years now. It appeared
that I would need one for each cylinder of every machine I had...
Or, maybe I just didn't understand how that particular "mouse milk"
soultion worked. You have to milk a lot of mice to get a drop of milk.
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| Re: E3 Diamondfire spark plugs [message #475521 ] |
Tue, 11 October 2005 00:40 |
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All aircraft engines employ four multi-ground electrodes. The reason is to
prolong the life of the plug, since erosion is divided amongst the four
ground electrodes instead of one. Sparking may favor one electrode for
awhile, but soon that electrode gap widens and then the spark will favor
another with less gap. Eventually the plug has to be replaced, but that
may need to be done at the 2000 hour overhaul, if not longer.
One of the most interesting features of aircraft engines is the dual plug
configuration. With two plugs per cylinder, if one fags out you still have
the other. That's nothing short of brilliant. You see, Lycoming and
Continental, Pratt & Whitney and Kenner all had their shit together light
years ahead of boats, cars, trains and Hondas. My bike has one lousy plug
in its cylinder just like Krabby's and I curse it daily because of it.
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| Re: E3 Diamondfire spark plugs [message #475525 ] |
Tue, 11 October 2005 02:58 |
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Nomen Nescio <nobody [at] dizum.com> wrote in
news:a0d532f0c9c5d74a81272e5630beb257 [at] dizum.com:
> All aircraft engines employ four multi-ground electrodes. The reason is
> to prolong the life of the plug, since erosion is divided amongst the
> four ground electrodes instead of one. Sparking may favor one electrode
> for awhile, but soon that electrode gap widens and then the spark will
> favor another with less gap. Eventually the plug has to be replaced,
> but that may need to be done at the 2000 hour overhaul, if not longer.
>
> One of the most interesting features of aircraft engines is the dual
> plug configuration. With two plugs per cylinder, if one fags out you
> still have the other. That's nothing short of brilliant. You see,
> Lycoming and Continental, Pratt & Whitney and Kenner all had their shit
> together light years ahead of boats, cars, trains and Hondas. My bike
> has one lousy plug in its cylinder just like Krabby's and I curse it
> daily because of it.
>
>
You sir are quite the ignorant one. Dual plugs are not just for
redundancy. I have worked on engines that required the use of two plugs,
two distributors, etc. In those cases it was because of the large pistons
and the desire to burn the gasoline completely without waiting for the
flame front to cross the entire surface of the piston.
You can curse the darkness or light a candle. You seem to prefer the
former.
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| Re: E3 Diamondfire spark plugs [message #503723 ] |
Sat, 05 November 2005 05:18 |
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Nomen Nescio wrote:
Buh bye, idiot troll.
*PLONK*
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