Singh Grooves

[kamesama980]

Lemme just say: they are already cut in the head. so no "I think you should..."

I openly admit I probably have way more than I need but hey, I was tired when I did it and I have yet to hear of anyone saying it hurt anything. rather than trying to explain, I'll just use pictures.




I tried a dremel but that was a little hard to get nice clean grooves so I moved to a small (1/2" dia) 3-sided file which did wonders. In addition, I've replaced the valve stem seals, wire-brushed the bejesus out of the valves, lapped the valves, not quite polished the piston tops, and cleaned everything. I'd shave the head to increase compression but I don't have a knock sensor and it's already pinging on a few occasions because I've got the ignition really advanced.

This is the trucks engine in case anyone didn't guess. it's a pushrod 2.5l 4 cyl. rated 90 hp and 130 ftlb. With the ignition advanced to 20* btdc it's getting combined 26 mpg and almost 29 mpg hwy without overdrive (don't do any pure-city driving). It's drivable from idle in any gear and I haven't yet had to downshift because it couldn't maintain speed from hills, loading, or both.


if you look around the album (here) you'll see pics of my storage (bed w/ tonneau), work bench (tailgate), and shelter (broken picnic table umbrella) tied to the truck

[GasSavers_BEEF]

what do they do?

I ask because I don't know. Most of my experience with motors is all external. other than a camshaft I don't mess too much with internals. so why the little grooves?

[kamesama980]

for those of you don't know what they are, heres the original inventors site: http://somender-singh.com/ Supposed to help power and mpg a little while reducing pinging a lot using turbulence, 'flame jets', or whatever you want to call it. basically you put the little notches in the squish areas of the head (or possibly piston) and it shoots little jets of Air/fuel at the spark getting them to move around and mix better then after ignition, the flame front moves through them and it helps clean out ring-land.

[R.I.D.E.]

The groove just left of the top looks like it might mess with your head gasket.

regards
gary

[lunarhighway]

so do you have any before/after FE results?
how proven is this technique? have any other people tried it? a quick look around the web gave some pics that indicate it's a known mod, but there's also lost of debate about it.

given the nature of the mod it's reasonable to assume it might affect the combustion, but i need more convinceing this is a good idea before i start grinding up a low milage engine!

[thornburg]

Originally Posted by kamesama980

for those of you don't know what they are, heres the original inventors site: http://somender-singh.com/

Does anyone know of a readable & understandable site that talks about this? The "official" site seems to be full of technobabble and bad English.

Yes, I tried google, and I see a lot of forums, but I was hoping for a Wikipedia type "neutral" informational page written with some knowledge and reasonable readability.

[GasSavers_Binary]

This is just an observation so I may or may not be right here, but if it were me, I would see what I could do about a stronger than stock head gasket, ie wire-lok or something similar. Only because now you have 6 pressure points that compression is focused at right at the head gasket rather than an evenly dispersed load, these points, in my eyes, will be the weak spots in your head gasket now.

You may also have pre-ignition problems because now you have sharp edges in the cc, that will possiby tend to get hotter than the rest of the material around them, possibly hot enough to ignite the mixture w/o spark causing ignition at the wrong times... like I said, I could be wrong, and I hope I am, because that would be great if that worked out for you. Good luck!

[dkjones96]

This reminds me of the flame tunnel people put into racing flat-head engines.

[kamesama980]

going backwards...

DKjones: prolly is the same as the flame tunnels in flat-heads. There's at least one example on singhs site of a flathead briggs & stratton getting about 50% more grass cut per tank with one groove.

Binary: I'm not too worried about preignition from sharp edges. I wore them down a little with the dremel so now they aren't any sharper than the edge of the valves. the ignition was advanced around 12* past stock without a knock sensor with only very occasional pinging under just the right conditions.

I see what you mean about head gaskets... not overly worried tho, I'm using a fel-pro set, not an ebay 90% off gasket set. it's already together so I'll worry about it if it's a problem later on.

Thornbug: English doesn't have to be your first language nor do you have to be good at it (at least with that excuse) for you to be intelligent. It does help make americans think you're intelligent tho. If you want laymans terms, look at my second post.

Lunarhighway: no results yet. work and GF have kept me from finishing it... hopefully in another day or 2 tho. There are a bunch of testemonials and both seat of the pants and dyno results

RIDE: I thought so too so I put a little spec of JBweld there and in another one that was close. I finished cutting them all after the sun went down, a poor choice indeed.

[R.I.D.E.]

I read about them a couple years ago. Just after I had contacted Popular Science about my concept engine. They shot me down but printed the article on Singh.

They look a lot like the cuts that radiated out past the prechamber on Mercedes diesel cars in the early eighties. I never thought he would get a patent on them, since they looked soo similar.

And Roger on the old flatheads, my 37 Ford had some neat stuff and had one of the highest compressions on any stock Ford flathead, at 7.5 to 1.
Ford had the crankshaft offset from the centerline of the pistons. Top ring was almost at the top of the pistons, like the Head Land rings, and the piston was steel not aluminum, trying to keep expansion rates close to the same. the 37 Ford also had cast iron heads, but was still a 21 bolt head. One water pump for each head, and the points were tricky, dual points with each one doing half the work of normal points.

regards
gary

regards
gary