Stelzer engine

submitted by [deleted] from en.wikipedia.org

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[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Haha I misread the title and thought this was a Seltzer-water engine, like powered using the carbonation in the water. That's kind of disappointing, I wanted to see a car run on carbonated water.

Jokes aside that is a pretty interesting design. Only 1 moving part to run a combustion engine, pretty impressive.

The wiki article talks about it being discovered in the 60s and then some manufacturing of it in the 80s... I wonder what happened with it? I bet there is some big downside to it, like it's extremely noisy or something... I wonder though

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

From our tests i can tell you this:

  • It's a bitch. Almost nowhere to be electronically adjustable. Even with different piston designs

  • the exhaust: you'll need a BIG one

  • extremely hard to implement in four-cycle-variant

  • eats oil like a bitch

Here are the positive sides:

  • starts even completely wet (if you use the right trick)

  • easy to implement as a generator

  • starts almost instantly

  • rpm only limited by material and fuel support

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Interesting! Can I ask, why do you need the big exhaust? And why does it eat so much oil? Do you control the RPMs with a fuel input valve?

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Electronics and diesel. Big exhaust comes with a "overly" wet fuel-air mixture. If you dream of actually using it. Like i do.

Otherwise it doesn't start that easily.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Cool info, thanks for bringing this engine design to my awareness. Doubly cool that you've actually used it before.

[–]Extract 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Did you actually manage to implement anything functional with it, beyond theory?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We tried a generator. It even works. But there are other engines better suited for our use case.