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How I Did It

It is very important to build, shape and control the combustion chamber. With only one spark plug you must build up pistons tops to form a squelch area across from spark plug to cause charge to squirt toward plug cavity. I have used, more or less, flat surfaces of pistons to come together, to form a squelch area, some as close as .025 and some .125. Forty thousands clearance is about right, if you have enough squelch area to give the charge proper turbulence to mix and spread the burn evenly to all areas of combustion chamber. With 2 plugs you should have a figure 8, shape, for the squelch area. With 3 plugs you will have 3 cavities and squelch area to cause charge to squirt toward 3 plugs. With 4 plugs you should have a shape like a 4 leaf clover with cavities and plugs between the cloverleaves. You are, promoting and enhancing the burning, and mixing, of the charge, when pistons come together. At 100 or 10,000 R.P.M., 150 pounds or 300 pounds of compression pressure, hot or cold engine, when the pistons come together the turbulence is created. It can be a lot of work to get the combustion chamber correct. I like the C.D.I. spark with earth magnets at 100,000 + volts with the long duration it gives.

I used ductile iron pistons and drilled holes to form screen pattern in top of piston. I brazed holes, the top, and inside of piston. This brass moved the heat away and the iron held the clearance. I started at 150 pounds compression pressure at idle speed, and after a lot of hard work I was up to 200 P.S.I. at idle speed. I had removed the pistons many times and with a torch brazed (welded) the cavities on piston top to raise compression pressure. I had trouble getting exact compression pressure readings, because when I would rotate engine with a pony engine the true pressure would be higher than the gauge pressure. The cylinder was not firing and I did not have the hot exhaust gases and back pressure to cause piston to trap more volume.

When engine is idling with a very lean mixture and high compression pressure, if you load and hold rpm from rising, detonation can occur if you go to a very rich mixture. You have put in more calories than you need and have raised the heat of compression temperature. We do not want any detonation. It can cause nitrous oxide problems. I sometimes would put many washers on long reach, spark plugs to adjust compression pressure. I used transmission oil instead of heavy motor oil so I could go to high rpm quickly. The tests were short and my goal was as much compression pressure as possible at different rpm levels. When the combustion chamber is correctly shaped, engine will idle when cold with a lean mixture. The spark can be delivered about 25 degrees before top dead center, with a 5 degrees lead of exhaust crank and 180 P.S.I. compression pressure at 800 rpm. When the combustion chamber is not correct you will have a lot of problems. You will have to run 35 degrees advance with a very rich mixture and engine will run like a cold engine with much unburned fuel in the exhaust. You can change exhaust power valve, pipe nozzles, crank advance, power cylinder port shape, and timing holes, charging cylinder holes, throttles, and many other things, but all that work will not fix the problem. It is the combustion chamber shape. The more spark plugs you have the better. When testing and you have 6 or 8 spark plugs, you can pull off some wires and see how well it runs on one spark plug.

When testing the engine for the first time, start out with a simple set up and low compression pressure. For testing, I used part of a constant spray fuel system off of a car. I would rotate the test engine, turn on fuel pump, and when the engine started running I would disconnect from the pony engine. The test engine would speed up or slow down depending on how much fuel was being sprayed in. All throttles were wide open. You can then adjust spark timing and cut back on fuel air throttles and purge air throttles. When engine is running, the purge air is over powering the fuel air volume and you put in a small amount of rich fuel air volume, late, but just in time, to the power cylinder. Now you can start hooking up exhaust system, raising rpm, raising compression pressure, checking for pollution, install the fuel system, add water vapor, and get some experience with this new engine and new combustion chamber. I cut and shaped a lip around the top of the fuel air pistons. This lip around top is the highest part of piston top. When piston accelerates from bottom dead center the heaviest part of charge, water, oxygen and fuel should slide toward the cavities and not get lost sliding down the side of piston.

This information will get you started. You are looking forward and I am looking back. No one in a third world country should be working on Kramer engine problems that were solved 30 years ago. You will read these words, ponder, make sketches, drawings, wood models, talk to other skilled people, and you will understand this engine more. I did the blocks, cranks, pistons, gear case, and oil pans with primitive sand castings. I cast a one, two and a three-piece block. For production a two-piece block is what is needed. You will use the same machined casting for both sides of the engine. For assembly, you push in the two crankshafts, slide on another half of engine block, and bolt connecting rods to crank throws. For casting, you would select the power cylinder, ceramic, steel, centrifugally spun ductile iron or others, and cut slots, two holes, across from each other for purge air. Do the same for fuel and air slots only turn cylinder ninety degrees. Two fuel air slots will be across from each other a little closer to the end of the cylinder. Cut the hole for the purge air over the exhaust piston top and do any other pattern work. Place the 3 cylinders in the core box. I used a small hole in cylinder and nail in core box to hold power cylinder in position. You would then make up the core with the sand. By holding the long core by the power cylinder in your hand you could see the big cylinders on each end, and hard sand sticking out here and there to form passage ways for purge air over exhaust pistons. You can see the two hard sand shapes, like a horseshoe around the cylinder for air and fuel air-passage ways 90 degrees apart. By very skilled pattern work you can lay two cores side by side to observe how core can kiss through to mold. You would have very little drilling, grinding, and cleaning up of tubes and ports. You would then place core in sand mold and pour aluminum.

I had to put an iron rebar in center of core to prevent sand cracking at end of power cylinder. The mold is long and includes the whole side of the engine with main bearing location and metal to fit oil pans. Two of these castings machined the same, and bolted together create an engine block. I cut grooves around cylinders [no leaks], put water through block to cool spark plugs, cast ceramic pipes in the two exhaust ports, and a lot of other things, that would seem to be needless. However when you are testing and trying to get to 300 + P.S.I compression pressure, high R.P.M, and high temperatures it will not hurt to have more than you might need.


LOUIS KRAMER