Square Four Engine

Watch this for kicks:

Another mouth breathing lug with too much free time on his hands.

concours said:

Another mouth breathing lug with too much free time on his hands.

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I hope you aren’t referring to Greg?

lazyeye6 said:

I hope you aren’t referring to Greg?

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Why would you even THINK THAT?

Let me help you...

Another Uselesstube video of people spending time/effort/money doing things that have no use. At all.

In that case it is time for a Will It Start video!

Seems to me it was a very worthwhile experiment that proved three things:

1. Round pistons are better than square.

2. Rubber o rings do not appear to be an ideal choice for pistons rings.

3. The guy has WAY to much spare time !

Looks like something a certain German auto/ motorcycle manufacturer might come up with - cue a precocious child “ Look what I can do “

I’m glad the guy did it just to prove that it wouldn’t work. Kind of like the old videos of people inventing all kinds of things to try to fly. Now we can rule out rubber compression rings.

1973x75 said:

I’m glad the guy did it just to prove that it wouldn’t work. Kind of like the old videos of people inventing all kinds of things to try to fly. Now we can rule out rubber compression rings.

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Fire

Rubber....


Yeah.
Self expainatory.

"Seems to me it was a very worthwhile experiment that proved three things:"

Anyone even considering doing it had to know Honda tried and it failed.

1973x75 said:

I’m glad the guy did it just to prove that it wouldn’t work. Kind of like the old videos of people inventing all kinds of things to try to fly. Now we can rule out rubber compression rings.

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Agreed, but I wish he would have continued with other ring ideas just to see. For instance, the material used in rotaries, even "U" shaped two or four rings made of metal maybe with springs inside like so oil rings have.

Doubtful that any of it would work, but they did so much work to get there that I would have liked to see them try more.

Of course, it's a crazy idea anyway just from the PITA machining just to get it to run, and he did drive the car so we can't say it didn't work - just was short lived and worked poorly!

Onder said:

In that case it is time for a Will It Start video!

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*IF* you didn't watch to the end and *IF* I understood your comment: It did start and he did drive the car.

concours said:

Why would you even THINK THAT?

Let me help you...

Another Uselesstube video of people spending time/effort/money doing things that have no use. At all.

Click to expand...

If nothing else, it should put an end to the question: "do piston rings rotate in service?"

On a serious note, assuming the ring issue could be solved I suspect the big issue would be seizures. A square piston is going to expand in strange ways and accommodating that will be difficult.

The guy correctly stated that the pistons need to be tapered, like normal pistons, but he didn’t mention that normal pistons are not round, they are actually oval.

The amount of taper and ovality is minor, and crucial.

In my mind square pistons complicate this topic by a huge factor.


And…

I gotta state the obvious, an ‘experiment’ is usually a hypothesis test (a controlled test to either prove or disprove the hypothesis).

This guys hypothesis was that he could make it run. Not run good, just run!

That is an inadequate hypothesis when we already have existing (round pistons) engines that run better than their inventors could have possibly imagined.

When we have good existing solutions, a sensible hypothesis has to be that it is IMPROVING upon existing designs in some way.

This ‘experiment’ didn’t solve any problems or improve upon what they already had.

Hence my earlier comment… dude got too much spare time on his hands !!

Piston slap generator?

I did not watch it. That would be a waste of time for me. Obviously I don't belong here.

'Because I can' is never a good reason for doing anything. Heat distribution is important in motors. When a round piston is heated, it expands predictably.