The reason they insulated the engine was to keep it from radiating heat, which wastes heat energy.

The engine was probably not running 90% of the time, and without the insulation it would actually have cooled off during the glide phase and absorbed more heat when it was running.

I wouldn't really call that a car with only 3 wheels it classifies as a motorcycle in Virginia. Actually my Karmann Ghia may end up with the 2 in front 1 in rear wheel configuration, depending on how many of my IVT (Infinitely Variable Transmission) drive prototypes I can get made for a reasonable price.

The current record for a 3 wheeled vehicle is over 10,000 MPG.

The record i remember was a 1970 Opel kadett wagon (better aero than the sedan) that got 124 MPG around 1970. It was stock except for radial tires, disconnecting the vacuum operated secondaries, and blocking the gas pedal to limit throttle opening.

Average speed was just over 26 MPH.

The secret to high mileage is capacitive storage of energy for acceleration and regenerative braking with significant downsizing of the engine, with forced induction for high sustained loads.

I will be travelling to Va Tech next Thursday to have an initial meeting with the Engineering class that is going to prototype and CAD my design. I am hoping to approact 90% efficiency from wheel to wheel, using a hydraulic accumulator for storage. That requires the drive-transmission-motors to approach 96% efficiency. Accumulators are 97-98% efficient.

At 82% its commercially viable, at 90% its a World beater.

We should know within months. The world market is 3.6 billion individual drive components, and that is just passenger vehicles.

Potential applications are in the thousands, including many low power sources of energy as well as storage of electrical energy that could change the power generation strategies worldwide.

With efficient enough motors, pumps, and accumulators, you could store off peak electricity and resupply it during on peak hours, reducing the necessity to have generation supplies designed for on peak demands, that is underutilized during off peak hours.

No electrical storage system can come close to that kind of efficiency, and it probably never will reach those percentages. Current hybrid electric cars only recover about 30% of the braking energy potential.

regards
gary

that is definitely one reason why they insulated it, the other is keeping the heat inside the combustion chamber, reducing thermal losses here leads to more power and better efficiency... It also appears that they needed the high temps to heat the intake charge as someone pointed out the carb box has an air inlet into the top of the valve cover.

Anyway interesting stuff, I wonder what kind of CR and timing they ran on it... I suspect it is nearly undrivable on the street (probably another reason why these old legends always disappear into obscurity surrounded by conspiracy theories) something like sailing a one man sloop across the atlantic I suspect.

RIDE, I'm very curious if you can get your idea built. I know you probably don't want to share too many details but t least keep us appraised of how it turns out. I've thought of a similar concept after reading about 2wd motorcycles: https://thekneeslider.com/archives/20...accoon-update/ But never formalized any designs or even how to get it to all work.

Hmm...now that you mention 2wd motorcycles, that reminds me of 2wd bicycles, which really need a decent transmission for the front wheel...

That's for power, droplet fuel takes up less space in the combustion chamber, so you can get more mixture in. Makes for "volumetric efficiency" but not fuel efficiency.



Bear in mind, that theoretical thermodynamic efficiency of a spark ignition engine is calculated on the basis of inducting liquid gasoline and air at standard temperature and pressure... calculated with the specific heat capacity of those at standard temperature and pressure. So, mess with temperature or pressure or modify the mixture of things inducted, or modify their state or phase, and you have a NEW equation for thermodynamic efficiency, or a NEW answer to your equation with the NEW figures plugged in. Since part of the expression is an EXPONENTIATED by the SHC ratios, the figure can change quite dramatically for small changes in SHC.

So those people that tend to scream "It's against my holy creed of Thermodynamics!!!" a) don't understand it in the first place, to them it's voodoo science, to be believed in rather than studied or thought about, b) sound as ridiculous as if they were saying "You can't pour ice cream!!!" sure you can, warm it up doofus. c) are gonna be really, really put out when anyone figures out a practical way to rig the odds of the statistical probabilities that thermodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases are based on. (Yeah, best not mention laser cooling or magnetic refrigeration, you'll be scrubbing brain out of your pants for weeks.)

Opel
 

Yeah thats a cool car. if you look close the air from the radiator is being funneled into the engine black and then the air is tapped off at the top of the valve cover. I might try that myself. would require a good air filter just before the crankase so you dont suck dirt inside the engine.