- 15 hours ago
We just want to light the fire, that's it! Kevin and Mark dive into all the different ways internal combustion engine builders have found to light the combustible air/fuel mixture. There has been spark, open flames(!), a thing called "hot tube" and more. Even compression can light off the charge, and we'll talk about that too. From magnetos to coil and points to fully electronic coil-on-plug ignitions with upward of 60,000 volts, we try to cover it all. Join us for the latest Cycle World podcast!
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00Oh, the countdown is over, Kevin. The excitement builds.
00:00:03We're doing another Cycle World podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer.
00:00:07And that Kevin is Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.
00:00:10This week we're going to talk about the history of ignition sparks.
00:00:15Open flame, oh my gosh. Hot tube ignition, what in the hell?
00:00:20Heck, heck.
00:00:22And yeah, the climate of the spark is a terrible place to be.
00:00:28It's hard. It's hard under pressure to bring, get your ions and everything sorted out.
00:00:35We've spent a lot of time on ignitions because it's everything that moves us in the world of motorcycles.
00:00:43There's practically no diesels out there doing glow plugs and compression ignition.
00:00:48So we love our sparks and we've gone from, you know, pretty nice little ignition coils.
00:00:54Let's start at the bottom of the barrel, Kevin, for me, which was 70s Yamaha ignition coils for their road bikes.
00:01:01Probably some of the worst coils, the weakest coils that were ever put on motorcycles.
00:01:06Well, that was Gordon Jennings. Big flag for a long time was replace those coils.
00:01:15Kmart. He was a big proponent of the Kmart coil because they had some good windings in them.
00:01:20And we'll talk about windings, but...
00:01:21Well, he said they had a lot of copper.
00:01:23Yeah, heavy.
00:01:25Yeah, a lot of copper conductor in there.
00:01:27All those RDs with them, you know, hose clamped to the frame tubes.
00:01:33Ooh, painful. Yes.
00:01:36But those were low voltage. You know, they were probably in the 7,000 volt range maybe.
00:01:41And then you start scaling up and high energy ignitions on more modern vehicles.
00:01:47And then we go to, you know, coils on plug and you get rid of that dumb wire and you get rid of that.
00:01:53The wire, we will discover in this podcast, is a great radio broadcasting antenna in certain situations.
00:02:01And so getting rid of that wire and putting the coil on top of each spark plug, well, that's pretty good.
00:02:08Yeah. They did it in aviation first.
00:02:11Yeah.
00:02:11They had the coils right on the cylinder head.
00:02:14Oh, well, I've had, you know, hate to bring up my Ford again, but if it's a drinking game, it's a drinking game.
00:02:20But the Ford 460, that's called EEC4.
00:02:24That's the Ford Electronic Engine Management Fuel Injection.
00:02:28It's not complicated fuel injection.
00:02:30It's batch, batch injection, meaning that essentially the one bank fires and the other bank fires.
00:02:35It's not port injected, you know, by a cylinder at demand.
00:02:41It's just sort of like, here's some gas over here.
00:02:43And it's a little bit better than a car.
00:02:44But this spark's pretty good.
00:02:47We've got a pretty good high winding.
00:02:49But, you know, in all these years of doing car stuff with long ignition wires and, like, you want to bundle them up and make them look tidy and clean, like, that's actually, that can be bad on a high energy ignition system.
00:03:01Because you can get kind of a coupling.
00:03:05What did you call it?
00:03:06Induction.
00:03:07Induction.
00:03:07Exactly.
00:03:08That's the word I was looking for.
00:03:09So they, one acts as the broadcast antenna and the one next to it acts as the receiving antenna.
00:03:17Yeah.
00:03:17I mean, you're getting, especially on engines that have, like, the 7 and 8 on this one are kind of, they fire quite close together.
00:03:26And so you can get an actual misfire out of it that it's unpleasant, not just some random spark in a cylinder with inert gas and a valve open, which you wouldn't probably notice as much.
00:03:39Well, I know what Kevin's going to say.
00:03:42He's going to say, like, 1875.
00:03:471862.
00:03:48Baron von Helm.
00:03:50Tell us.
00:03:50No, it was 1860, roughly.
00:03:55In Europe, they were building gas engines.
00:03:58And it was the early days of internal combustion.
00:04:04And the great thing about it was you didn't have to have a firebox over here with a hot exhaust from it heating a sealed box full of water, which turned into steam.
00:04:17And then you led the steam at some pressure elevated above atmospheric to, through a valve box, and it would push on one side of the steam engine piston and then on the other.
00:04:31So it was a, better than a one stroke.
00:04:35So that was, that was the original idea that people started with.
00:04:47And the earliest internal combustion engines looked a lot like steam engines.
00:04:51They had a horizontal cylinder.
00:04:53They had external flywheels whirling about.
00:04:55And you could, the connecting rod, big end is going around and around.
00:05:00It's got a grease cup on it.
00:05:02And you're tempted to kind of try to give it a twist as it goes by.
00:05:07Best not to.
00:05:08Ow, my knuckles.
00:05:09Grease cups, I mean, there's a lot going on.
00:05:11First, you said gas engine.
00:05:12And I think you mean like acetylene or something, right?
00:05:15City gas, yeah.
00:05:16City gas.
00:05:17And then, so that's what he meant by a gas engine.
00:05:19And then the grease cup, who among us knows a grease cup?
00:05:28A grease cup, I had one on my Austin Healy.
00:05:31That was the first grease cup that I'd ever encountered.
00:05:33I had a 1959 Austin Healy 106.
00:05:37And it had a grease cup on the side of the distributor.
00:05:40And I was, I'd never seen this dial thing, knob, on a distributor.
00:05:44And I was like, what was this?
00:05:46Knurled, yeah.
00:05:47Knurled, yeah.
00:05:47It was a nicely knurled little thing, and I unscrewed it.
00:05:50And I looked inside, and there was this petrified old brown.
00:05:54Yep.
00:05:54It actually was pretty sticky.
00:05:55It had really long chains in it, whatever, whoever packed that last.
00:05:58But I figured out it was a grease cup.
00:06:00And I'd heard of it, but I'd never seen it.
00:06:02So there you go.
00:06:02And you pack it with grease, and you just screw it on a little bit.
00:06:06And then you just give it a turn every, you know, whatever the interval is,
00:06:10500 miles to grease that bushing in your distributor or on your horizontal engine.
00:06:16It reminds me, your horizontal engine, city gas, early internal combustion engine reminds
00:06:21me of those vacuum engines, the little kits you can buy that are gas-powered that's usually
00:06:27a flame.
00:06:28I think they call them flame lickers.
00:06:30But it's a little vacuum engine, and it has, like, an external valve that's controlled
00:06:36by the flywheel in the back.
00:06:37And then there's a little flame that's burning, like, alcohol or something.
00:06:42And that thing goes and lets the heat and so forth in.
00:06:47And away it goes.
00:06:49It just runs on that little flame.
00:06:51And I think that's a no-compression engine, right?
00:06:53Because it's a vacuum.
00:06:56This is the thing with those engines that ran on city gas.
00:06:59The advantage of them was you didn't have to have a firebox, a fireman, all these people.
00:07:05You just had to connect this to city gas and have somebody in your plant who knew how to
00:07:10start the thing.
00:07:11And it would just sit there and chuff away all day and provide your plant with whatever
00:07:16motive power was needed.
00:07:18But it had no compression, so it was hideously inefficient.
00:07:23What happened was the piston comes down about a third of the stroke, pulling a bit of a vacuum
00:07:29above the piston.
00:07:30And then a port opened, and the piston pulled in a mixture of air and city gas.
00:07:39And then that port closed.
00:07:42The piston went down further and exposed the flame port.
00:07:46And at the flame port, there were two flames, one to be sucked in when this flame port opened
00:07:54and set the charge on fire, crackle, crackle.
00:07:57And the second one was to relight it after some accidental auspuff took place that blew the
00:08:05flame out.
00:08:07Auspuff.
00:08:08That's German for exhaust.
00:08:10Yes.
00:08:11But it's so descriptive.
00:08:12Auspuff.
00:08:13It is good.
00:08:14It's like those hoopie cushions.
00:08:16Anyway, the sucked in flame ignited the charge, and roughly the last third of the piston stroke
00:08:26was for power.
00:08:28Well, not having been compressed, there was very little power.
00:08:34But it was wonderfully versatile because you could install one anywhere, and you didn't need
00:08:39a fireman to operate the system.
00:08:42Okay.
00:08:44The next thought was, well, this is pretty dreadful.
00:08:50What are we going to do to ignite the new auto four-stroke engines, which also could burn city gas?
00:08:59And the answer was the hot tube ignition.
00:09:05Imagine a small tube made of platinum, which has a high melting point, closed on one end,
00:09:15passing through an insulating thimble into the combustion chamber where the closed end was
00:09:22exposed in the combustion chamber.
00:09:25The outer end was kept hot by a pilot flame.
00:09:30Now, this was the type of ignition.
00:09:32It's a kind of glow plug because the platinum tube remained hot enough to ignite the charge.
00:09:41When it came with piston, it came up on compression, adding more heat.
00:09:47Kabam!
00:09:48It would burn.
00:09:50But this is the type of ignition that the journalist Ixion, who was actually a canon of the Anglican church,
00:10:00but he wrote for motorcycle magazines for 50 years.
00:10:03He said that in 1898, when he was riding his first motorcycle, it had hot tube ignition,
00:10:10and it never failed to catch fire if it tipped over.
00:10:14So, the thing is that the steps in ignition systems have been taken for necessity.
00:10:28Hot tube was a great advance over this non-compression engine because it allowed you to operate a more efficient engine
00:10:36with compression stroke because peak pressure, rule of thumb, is the compression ratio multiplied times 100.
00:10:51So, obviously, with a 12 to 1 compression ratio, or 13 to 1, which is prevalent among motorcycles today, modern designs,
00:11:03and the 3 to 1 of the early compression engines, including the Model T,
00:11:10big difference in peak pressure.
00:11:13So, eventually, what happened was that hot tube ignition was outrun by engine development.
00:11:25Engines began to spin fast enough that they ran too quickly for the hot tube process to work.
00:11:35And so, people hit upon the idea of a spark ignition.
00:11:42I think the people had done plenty of experiments with igniting inflammable vapor with a spark.
00:11:51And the first system had the contact breakers in the combustion chamber,
00:11:58and this was what's described in the automotive history books as low-tension ignition.
00:12:05Because what you had was a battery or other current source sending current around a coil wound onto an iron core.
00:12:19And when that current rose to its peak value, it caused magnetization of the iron core.
00:12:30And the magnetic field of the iron core stored energy.
00:12:36In the circuit leading to this coil were these contacts inside the cylinder.
00:12:44And when the spark was desired, the ground contact opened.
00:12:50And because there was no capacitor, as there is in a coil and battery ignition, when the points open, the current just says,
00:13:05oh, I'll go here.
00:13:05And it goes into the capacitor rather than arcing and burning the contact points.
00:13:10But in this hammer contact system inside the cylinder, when the circuit was broken, it pulled a little spark out.
00:13:23And that was good for a while.
00:13:25But only until, well, things were getting bad in 1901.
00:13:29And what had happened was, along came the De Dion, Bouton, manufacturers of small internal combustion engines that would run up to 3,000 or 3,500 RPM.
00:13:47And these engines were sold all over the world.
00:13:50And they were the seeds of the internal combustion movement worldwide.
00:13:54Well, they needed a better ignition than hot tube.
00:14:00And they needed a better ignition than hammer contacts.
00:14:06So at a point in 1901, summertime, I think, the people at Bosch, Robert Bosch himself, a living person at the time,
00:14:23told his employee, Gottlob Honnold, develop a self-powered thing that makes a real spark.
00:14:32We could sell the daylights out of those things.
00:14:36Well, he had been to Otto von Bismarck's Higher Technical University.
00:14:44And he knew all the latest stuff about iron cores and wire and insulation contact points.
00:14:54And it only took him a short time to come up with this perfectly workable, rotating coil, magneto.
00:15:04Now, what magneto means, magneto dynamic, meaning that the electricity is generated dynamically by, in this case, a coil whose poles are rotating in a magnetic field.
00:15:22When you see those old-time tractor magnetos that have the big arch, black horseshoe-shaped things on them,
00:15:28that is the type of magneto that they invented.
00:15:34And the rotor had a coil wound on it.
00:15:38And the Bosch symbol is a cross-section of that rotor to this day.
00:15:46Makes sense.
00:15:47Yeah, the Bosch, well, the Bosch magneto of that era was really the one that everyone adopted.
00:15:52Yes.
00:15:53It was on American bikes, and, you know, they were just everywhere.
00:15:57When World War I broke out, England had no magneto manufacturing because they'd just bought German magnetos.
00:16:06So they got in touch with this fellow, Ernest Ansley Watson.
00:16:11And they said, can you, you know, like, come up with working magnetos that we could make here because we can't start our airplanes if they don't have an ignition, or our tanks, or our trucks.
00:16:27Big problem.
00:16:29Weep.
00:16:29And he, too, got busy, reverse-engineered Bosch magnetos, and then made some improvements of his own.
00:16:38And very soon, the secrets of the Bosch magneto were widely known.
00:16:44But this was the problem, the Achilles heel of the wound rotor magneto, the one that has a coil that rotates.
00:17:00Is that it throws its solder, it vibrates itself to pieces, it rubs through its insulation, suddenly you've got a duff rotor.
00:17:15And those early motorcycle road race teams carried dozens of magneto-wound rotors in spares.
00:17:24So, but they couldn't come up with a magnet material that was strong enough to make a rotating magnet.
00:17:35So then along came Alnico 5, was sort of the first big step up from soft iron that had been magnetized by holding it, pointing north and banging on the end of it, which was the original method.
00:17:54And, you know, you don't pick up paperclips with it.
00:17:59Exciting.
00:18:01So around 1952, here comes the rotating magnet, magneto.
00:18:07And it was a huge improvement because no more wound rotor failures, no more commutator that conduct the current generated in the wound rotor so that it could be sent to a coil to step up the voltage.
00:18:28So then in the 1920s, coil and battery became a viable alternative.
00:18:39And those things have been with us pretty much ever since.
00:18:43Except that in the present time, people, auto engine designers, under pressure from national governments who didn't want to import large amounts of expensive oil from places of low political stability,
00:19:03wanted to reduce auto fuel consumption.
00:19:09So they ran lean mixtures and they found that if it were leaner than 18 to 1, that a spark would not ignite it.
00:19:19And there were all sorts of inventions that were, they were plasma jet igniters.
00:19:24And there were all sorts of frightening high tech things.
00:19:28And then somebody came up with the idea of the turbulent jet igniter, the TJI, which is now used in Formula One.
00:19:38And what it does is it has a little, the igniter itself has a set of contact, of plug gap in it.
00:19:50It has a little device for admitting fuel into this, like a pre-chamber that connects to the main combustion chamber with a series of small holes.
00:20:03The rich mixture inside of this pre-chamber, sounds like CVCC on the Honda Civic, doesn't it?
00:20:12Is ignited, flame squirts out of the little jets to all corners of the combustion chamber and lights it up quite quickly.
00:20:24The reason that it's important that they get a quick light up is that lean combustion is slow.
00:20:34This is where backfiring comes from.
00:20:36If an engine is running quite lean, there may be little wisps of still burning mixture when the next intake takes place.
00:20:47Bang! Through the carburetor.
00:20:50I backfire.
00:20:52That's what a backfire is.
00:20:53So, in Formula One, they are now able to fire their lean mixtures, because Formula One is really a hybrid economy car class,
00:21:05at 50 or 55 degrees, which compares favorably with the years of extremely large-bore, short-stroke Formula One engines
00:21:17that were firing up in the 60s.
00:21:19That were firing up in the 60s, 60 degrees BTDC and earlier.
00:21:27Now, MotoGP, Motorcycling's High Zoot Road Racing Series, decided early on that they weren't going to watch helplessly as bores got bigger and strokes dwindled away to almost nothing.
00:21:45So, the piston was just vibrating up and down, as in Formula One, and they set a limit, 81 by 48.5.
00:21:56And next year, 2027, when they go to the new formula, 850 cc instead of 1,000, they're going to keep the same stroke,
00:22:08which will tend to keep the RPM race under control, and go to a smaller bore.
00:22:14And turbulent jet ignition is a sort of wonderful thing.
00:22:21I'd love to see an animation or a high-speed photography of those jets.
00:22:27But it's sort of like what goes on in a diesel.
00:22:33It squirts the fuel into air that has been compressed until its temperature is enough to ignite the fuel.
00:22:42So, you have all these radial jets.
00:22:46Initially, they cool the air around them.
00:22:49Then the air heats them back up.
00:22:50They ignite, and then you have combustion.
00:22:56Yeah, Bosch has a nice illustration that will pop up that shows the diesel action taking place
00:23:04and the radial shooting of it across or around the cylinder, kind of shooting out of the center of it.
00:23:10It's a nice piece.
00:23:13Thank you, Bosch, for illustrating these things.
00:23:16This history of ignition is a series of responses to changing conditions.
00:23:23The hot tube replaced the flame jet because that engine was hopelessly inefficient.
00:23:31And spark ignition, low-tension spark ignition, replaced the impractical hot tube
00:23:40because you didn't want your motorcycle to catch fire every time it fell over.
00:23:44And then the proper ignition, developed by Gottlob-Honold, patented in January of 1902, I think.
00:23:57And those things were wonderful because if you could get close to an ideal mixture,
00:24:06a hot spark from a magneto would ignite it.
00:24:11And you could rev the engine up all you wanted, and it would still ignite it.
00:24:18Well, that's something about magnetos that's kind of nice is that the faster you rev a magneto, the more pop.
00:24:25The higher the primary voltage, yes.
00:24:28Whereas in a coil and battery system, the primary voltage is fixed as equals battery voltage.
00:24:34Primary voltage, by primary voltage, I mean the voltage going to the primary coil.
00:24:41The way a step-up coil works is you have the soft iron core.
00:24:46You have the primary winding, which is few turns of heavy wire.
00:24:52And then you have many turns of fine wire wound on top of that.
00:24:56It's determining your end voltage, the difference between the number of windings and the-
00:25:01The turns ratio, yes.
00:25:03The turns ratio.
00:25:04So like a transformer in an vintage stereo is something I've looked at.
00:25:08You'll see in the illustration it'll show a few windings and a lot of windings.
00:25:13Yes.
00:25:14That's the magic physics at work here, the wonder of our future.
00:25:20But the thing about coil ignition is as you go higher and higher in RPM, you're running
00:25:27out of time to charge that high windings, the high voltage, which is why you would have
00:25:34dual points and dual coils and other things for battery-type ignition is you're still trying
00:25:40to get that amount of time available to get the most out of your ignition coil.
00:25:46Now, the great thing about the magneto in the early days when carburetors were not even
00:25:55carburetors yet, they were just the arm off of a cotton shirt, kept soaked with gas with
00:26:02the intake fluid passing over it, evaporator carburetors, wick carburetors.
00:26:10Um, mixture control wasn't all that great mixture homogeneity was non-existent, but the great
00:26:18thing about a magneto type spark or a coil and battery spark is that it has a high voltage
00:26:27initially that jumps the points gap, the plug gap, followed by a 40 volt conduction phase.
00:26:36Now, if at any time during that, uh, uh, fairly long discharge, a, a merry little breeze of
00:26:49correct mixture passes through the spark plug gap, it will ignite it.
00:26:54And two strokes have a mixture in homogeneity, simple two strokes, like the ones that were erased
00:27:03so intensely between 1970 and, uh, 2001.
00:27:10Um, the magneto type, uh, with a long duration spark was a great advantage, but it was not an
00:27:23advantage for people's TV and radio reception, nor was it an advantage in early, uh, Ducatis,
00:27:30which had, uh, some, uh, cross talk problems in their, uh, ECUs because, um, um, as, um, Mark said
00:27:43earlier, the ignition wire going from wherever the magneto is to wherever the spark plug is,
00:27:51is a radio frequency antenna that's broadcasting.
00:27:58And, uh, when, uh, when the din of complaint about this rose sufficiently, this became a problem
00:28:09and engineering came to the rescue.
00:28:11They said we, all we need, if we have a good mixture strength is the initial high voltage
00:28:21spike, and then we can put a gap or a resistance wire or what have you, or we can even put the
00:28:29ignition coil on top of the spark plug.
00:28:33So there is no radio frequency antenna at all.
00:28:37And, uh, it'll run fine, but it is absolutely dependent.
00:28:43That type of ignition is dependent upon having good mixture control.
00:28:48Right.
00:28:48One instant spark that happens.
00:28:50So my practical application of the antenna has come in, in various forms.
00:28:54The ignition wire as antenna.
00:28:56Oh, we had a, a land speed, uh, an Indian land speed guy.
00:29:00I'm forgetting his name, but he brought, uh, some kind of real fast scout 101 thing.
00:29:06To try on our dyno, to run it.
00:29:09And the dyno has a computer and a screen.
00:29:11And, uh, at the time, I believe it was a CRT.
00:29:14It was, this was a while ago.
00:29:15So it was a, you know, a fancy light bulb, a big tube, not a flat screen.
00:29:20And, um, we were trying to, we were trying to rev that guy up.
00:29:23And, uh, as the RPM went up, the screen started to bend.
00:29:29The image on the screen was being pulled because it's shooting electrons at the screen to make,
00:29:33you know, it's scan scanning very rapidly to make the color and the, you know, the things
00:29:38that we're looking at and the RF inside of the dyno, a metal room, by the way, was so
00:29:43intense that it was starting to pull the screen and make it wave.
00:29:46And we couldn't get a clean signal because the clean, you know, the signal on the high
00:29:50tension, uh, is, is absorbing all of this other extra, extra business because it's,
00:29:55the signal is ringing back and forth.
00:29:58As Kevin pointed out, you're getting this high voltage spike, but you're also getting
00:30:02this other business.
00:30:03It's still making the spark kind of go, you just sit there and, and do its thing.
00:30:09So that was one case on the dyno.
00:30:11And then, um, I went through a great meticulous restoration of a 1966 Jaguar Mark two.
00:30:17So an inline six, a 3.8 liter inline six.
00:30:20And the distributor on that car is underneath the intake manifold.
00:30:23So it's sort of in a, a metal house and then the, the fenders come up very close.
00:30:28So it's like kind of a metal box.
00:30:31And, um, you know, I was dutifully hand making my plug wires with Packard ignition wire, solid
00:30:36core copper, and using the old champion screw on ends.
00:30:40So I'm screwing into the wire and it's screwing the screw into the, the copper.
00:30:45And then on the other end, you put a, like a little disc and you, you fray out the, uh,
00:30:49copper and you have the nut on the wire and then you screw that into contact on the distributor.
00:30:54Cause that was period correct.
00:30:55And I was restoring the car period correct.
00:30:57But I was like, Hey, you know what?
00:30:58These ignition points, things pain in the ass.
00:31:01I could still get good ones.
00:31:02The copper, uh, standard ignition ones that were, were high quality.
00:31:06So I have a few sets of those in, uh, in stock as it were.
00:31:09But I went with the, uh, the Petronix, which is like a little magnet you drop on the, the
00:31:13rotor, the six lobe rotor that would trip the points and make the spark happen in time.
00:31:18As you time your distributor.
00:31:20And then it has a, a pickup for that haul effect.
00:31:23And, um, man, it idled great.
00:31:26And I set my timing and I started driving and it would break up at, I don't know, 2400 RPM,
00:31:32something like that.
00:31:33As soon as it revved up, it broke up and it would misfire like crazy.
00:31:37And I went, I tried everything because I had no idea.
00:31:42I was like, well, I got to do this.
00:31:43I got to do that.
00:31:44I'm checking compression.
00:31:45I'm checking valve timing.
00:31:48Like what happened, you know, what's happening.
00:31:50And ultimately I switched, you know, I said, well, I have, I always carry a spare distributor
00:31:55because this is how crazy the world is.
00:31:57I carry a complete spare distributor with points in it.
00:32:00In case the electronic unit that I'm using fails, I can drop it in rough time it and drive.
00:32:07Um, and anyway, I'd swap back to points and it ran great.
00:32:10And then I figured out what was going on.
00:32:13So then I use the Petronix and I switched to suppressor wires, which is just a, it's basically
00:32:18a long thin sausage of carbon inside the wire, tightly packed inside the insulation.
00:32:25And it suppresses the, all the other business.
00:32:27So you just get your high volts, like whatever you're able to squeeze out of your Lucas sport
00:32:31coil or your Kmart coil, 15,000, 20,000, 25,000 volts.
00:32:36It's half of what we get out of modern, uh, super hot ignitions if we want it.
00:32:41So, um, they make a lot of RF and there's lots of different solutions.
00:32:47Don't bundle your high performance wires together in a long chain.
00:32:51I learned that also because they, they crosstalk, they do talk to each other.
00:32:54The ignition on that four 60, there are three wires that go to the, um, the TFI, which is
00:33:01the thick film ignition.
00:33:03It's basically the amplifier and it's wrapped in foil and it has a drain wire.
00:33:08So the foil is meant to keep out the stuff that's outside, like your ignition wires for
00:33:12these like delicate signals that are going back to the ECU and this wrapped in foil.
00:33:16And then the drain wire is meant to take anything and put it, anything that comes in to drain
00:33:22through the foil, drain to ground, not into those wires.
00:33:26And I had to move the TFI, which is a podcast in itself because they overheat because they're
00:33:31on the distributor, move it to the fender on a fin cooling thing and peeling open the
00:33:37entire wire harness, take off the shielding and buy woven shielding, copper woven shielding.
00:33:44That's like a Chinese puzzle.
00:33:45So it's very thin and then you push it and it gets big enough to run the wire through.
00:33:49And I got my ballpoint pen and my welding rod, tape the wires and ran it through the hose
00:33:53there, my drain, and lo and behold, no more misfire.
00:34:00Yes.
00:34:00It's a real job, man.
00:34:03You're making your own coax.
00:34:06Yes, exactly.
00:34:08Yeah.
00:34:09Well, there's a point that I want to add here.
00:34:12And that is about what's happening when the ignition's leading up to and after the ignition
00:34:21spark.
00:34:23Uh, what happens is the system sends a bunch of, it pushes electrons that are already in
00:34:30the wire, like water in a pipe.
00:34:32It pushes them toward the, uh, center wire and they pile up there and they, their presence,
00:34:40uh, being negative generates a, an electric field from there to the ground electrode that
00:34:49rapidly reaches a high value and the voltage, um, all those electrons that are ready to take
00:34:57the dive through space, which is an insulator at, uh, normally are, are waiting there.
00:35:03They're, they're like the, the, the mad, uh, troopers on the helicopter who are murmuring and
00:35:11growling, ready for, ready to leap out at the LZ.
00:35:15Um, and how does the gap become conducting?
00:35:22Well, the accounts that you read say, uh, there are transient electrons present in the atmosphere
00:35:29at all times.
00:35:30And that high electric field causes those electrons to accelerate toward the ground electrode.
00:35:39And when the electric field becomes large enough for those electrons in one, um,
00:35:50mean free path, that is the distance that a particle in air can travel with before it hits
00:35:56something on average, if that mean free path allows it to gain enough energy from the electric field
00:36:03that's building up, they have, they are able to ionize atoms in their way, knock electrons off of them.
00:36:16And so you can see that this is a, is a, uh, a mad cascade process.
00:36:22It's a chain reaction and the gap is ionized in this way.
00:36:29And suddenly those electrons roar across and that is the initial spike.
00:36:35Well, transited electrons present at all times in the atmosphere.
00:36:40And then I thought to myself, I was at a friend's house.
00:36:44He had a prototype of his, uh, x-ray imaging tube operating and he had it in his living room.
00:36:57We'd gone there to dinner and he said, I want to show you something.
00:37:01Come over here.
00:37:02So the tube has got some noise on the face of it.
00:37:07And he said, just wait a minute.
00:37:09He said, a cosmic ray will come crashing through here pretty quick.
00:37:13He said, you won't have to wait long.
00:37:15And it did.
00:37:17Suddenly the screen was just a mass of disturbance.
00:37:21And then it went away.
00:37:22What happens is these tremendously energetic particles from space called cosmic rays,
00:37:29but they're actually particles like protons that are carrying a fantastic amount of energy.
00:37:35They hit the atmosphere and they ionize the daylights out of it on their way down.
00:37:40And, uh, why don't they tickle when, when they hit us, but they don't, they're really small.
00:37:51And so cosmic gray showers and natural radioactivity in the earth and, uh, ultraviolet can,
00:38:04intense ultraviolet has an ionizing effect.
00:38:07So these transient electrons are produced in that way, but mainly by cosmic rays from above.
00:38:15I've loved that.
00:38:16That's my smooth running engine at work.
00:38:18There is running on cosmic rays.
00:38:20I can say that for real now.
00:38:22Yeah.
00:38:22That's cool.
00:38:23I really liked that.
00:38:24I do too.
00:38:25I also liked the origin of the blue spark because the hot, you know, something over 10,000 volts,
00:38:30you, uh, you're getting, uh, you know, oxygen and nitrogen to emit a blue light from the heat.
00:38:36Yeah.
00:38:37Characteristic.
00:38:38Yeah.
00:38:38Because each time that, uh, an electron is, is raised in energy, it rises to a higher orbit
00:38:46around the atom of which it is a part.
00:38:48And when it jumps back down, it emits a characteristic frequency.
00:38:53And that's what, uh, spectrometry is how, uh, things can be identified by the energy, uh, the
00:39:02discrete energies that they emit when electrons make that step down one, two, what have you.
00:39:09Um, you can lose your mind trying to understand some of this stuff.
00:39:15It's so wonderful.
00:39:18The spark is blue.
00:39:20That's my, that's where I stop right there.
00:39:22The spark is blue.
00:39:23When the spark is blue, it tells you good.
00:39:26Cause it's otherwise it's orange or yellow and it's like not good.
00:39:29And the bad ones are white.
00:39:31Yeah.
00:39:32And feeble white sparks.
00:39:34Yeah.
00:39:35And so this is a good time to talk about the, the trouble of, uh, igniting a spark in a cylinder
00:39:41because it's not the most hospitable place to make an arc after all, is it?
00:39:47And, uh, when the spark comes, the air in the cylinder has been compressed quite a bit, 13 times, 13 to one.
00:39:56And so, uh, that makes the mean free path shorter, which means that they have to dump the current onto the, uh, center wire faster.
00:40:07And that's where we get capacitive discharge, capacitive discharge, CDI, uh, which can produce a much more rapid rise time than a conventional coil.
00:40:22There are fast rise time coils, so-called pi wound, uh, that have, uh, can build up the current very rapidly.
00:40:31But it's necessary to really dump it on there so that, um, you can ionize the gap and make a spark go across.
00:40:41But even when the spark has passed and it has ignited a flame kernel, it's like a small business startup.
00:40:50It's losing heat to what's around it.
00:40:53It has a lot of expenses and it is releasing heat, that's its income, by burning the fuel-air mixture.
00:41:03And you hope that the income exceeds the expenses such that the flame propagates and you have light up.
00:41:13That's one of Malcolm Smith's aphorisms.
00:41:16You know, he was really good about certain things.
00:41:17One of them was weight is the enemy.
00:41:20And then his, uh, his, his great business advice was don't spend more than you make.
00:41:26And it's, and it's, you know, we ignore that a lot.
00:41:30Well, racing in particular tempts you.
00:41:34And looking at-
00:41:35Well, who in the paddock shows up and leaves the paddock with more money than they got there?
00:41:39Yes.
00:41:39It's a rare, it's a rare being, very rare.
00:41:43That was what, uh, one, um, European told me at, at, um, Monza one year.
00:41:54Um, he said, I will tell you, he said, there is maybe one or two people who leave here with more money than they arrived.
00:42:04And the rest are paying for this.
00:42:07But, uh, the, the flame kernel is the classic small business.
00:42:14So, you want it, uh, to be robust, not weak and white.
00:42:20My poor little thing, I can't do it.
00:42:24Well, you know, you were talking earlier about, uh, uh, magnetos and how, uh, the mixture was hard to light
00:42:35because the mixture wasn't very good.
00:42:37And so you needed that ring or in the two-stroke, you had all these inert areas of, you know, exhaust still floating around the cylinder.
00:42:45Exhaust residuals.
00:42:46Exhaust residuals, not getting house-poofed.
00:42:49And, um, it reminded me of, of all things, uh, a 1937 small horsepower Rolls-Royce I looked at.
00:42:58So it was a Thrupp and Maverly body.
00:43:01It was one of the more elegant bodies that they put on that era of car.
00:43:04And the small horsepower Rolls was made for gentlemen drivers of the era.
00:43:10Uh, and I'm sure, surely women as well, because there were a lot of enthusiasm.
00:43:14But, you know, the gentry, uh, that idea that you had a driver who was maintaining your car and driving your car,
00:43:21it was sort of beneath you to drive your car, except for those, you know, sporting types.
00:43:27But it became more common, uh, for people to want to drive their cars and Rolls responded with the small horsepower,
00:43:34the 20, 25 and all these versions.
00:43:37So it was an inline six, a ridiculous carburation, updraft carb on one side of the block that traveled through a tube,
00:43:44through the engine block between, uh, between the internals and the connecting rods.
00:43:50And then it went out the other side of the block.
00:43:52And then it went up into the distribution, the intake manifold and, and went in.
00:43:56But the spark of that era, because batteries were such trash, you know, they really didn't have great batteries.
00:44:03The batteries were garbage.
00:44:05They did have coil ignition, but they also had magneto and everything was kind of running all the time.
00:44:11And then you had your, your, uh, manual spark on your steering wheel that you were doing by hand.
00:44:16And none of this automatic timing stuff, we were going to talk about timing.
00:44:21I think this is a good place to start, but they, you're, you're moving a lever just like you were on your old Velo set was like my 37 Velo had a magneto.
00:44:30You had to, you moved the lever.
00:44:32So you'd retard it completely to start it.
00:44:33Because if you didn't, the thing would backfire so hard, it would shoot the piston in the wrong direction, which pushed the, the kickstart lever up against your breaking knee or whatever it might be.
00:44:44Yep.
00:44:45All of that.
00:44:45The other thing that I loved about the, the mixture.
00:44:49So on a 37 rolls, you also controlled the mixture, the carburetor mixture on, uh, the steering wheel.
00:44:55With a lever.
00:44:56Yeah.
00:44:57With a lever.
00:44:58There's beautiful, this big steering wheel in the middle.
00:45:00It was this like nickel plated stuff with a names stamped in, but the carburetor mixture was strong or weak.
00:45:08Yes.
00:45:09And like, and now if you're making a choice and you're driving that car, well, I don't want that weak stuff.
00:45:14I want that strong stuff.
00:45:17And you, they changed the, I think that was on Spitfires.
00:45:19Was it Spitfires?
00:45:21I believe the strong, there was a, there was a, the verbiage for mixture was strong and weak on a World War II era aircraft, or maybe it was World War I.
00:45:30This is a, this is a, this is an internet story, I'm sure of it.
00:45:34But the, uh, pilots were moving it to strong and we didn't want strong.
00:45:38With, uh, U.S. aircraft in World War II, it was, it was a rich and lean.
00:45:45Yeah.
00:45:45Rich and lean.
00:45:46Um, but then that's, that's like, I see these people at the races in the two-stroke days trying to get another quarter degree of, of advance, trying to get the engine to go with it.
00:46:01And they, they've already got the edge of the piston feeling like light sandblasting, which means that they're standing on detonation store stop, step.
00:46:11Don't go there.
00:46:13Well, that was the long, for a long time, you know.
00:46:17But, you, would you rather be thought of as advanced or as retarded?
00:46:22Yeah.
00:46:23And I think that linguistics actually comes into it because retarded, in the case of the two-stroke in the Magneto days, was a big advantage on top end.
00:46:34Yeah.
00:46:35Pull the timing back because flame speed is so high up in the high torque region that you can't run the same timing that you have at six, seven, a thousand.
00:46:47This was the great evolution of spark because, you know, you could manually adjust your spark.
00:46:53And like on a Vela set, anything, anything with a adjustable, adjustable spark, you could run down the road and then, you know, you'd retard it a little bit to start it.
00:47:05And you could be sitting at a long light or the railroad crossing and you're at idle.
00:47:11So you're, you can pull back your timing and, and adjust that until the bike seems happy.
00:47:16Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
00:47:17Yep.
00:47:18Because you're lighting it at the right time.
00:47:20So you're, why is ignition timing varying?
00:47:23So it's varying because of the speed that the engine is spinning.
00:47:27The violence of the mixture at higher RPM is going to be different than at lower RPM.
00:47:32And all you're trying to do by lighting it 10 degrees before top dead center or 15 or 20 or as much as 50 or 60, as Kevin's pointed out, is that all you're trying to do is that somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees after top dead center, you get peak cylinder pressure.
00:47:49Yep.
00:47:49So if my, if my pencil is, here's the, here's the con rod, the big end, and here's the center
00:47:55of the crank, if it fires vertically, the pressure just pushes straight down and you don't get
00:48:00what you want out of it.
00:48:02If it's here and it's zero, no motion.
00:48:07Yeah.
00:48:07But as soon, as soon as it's going past top dead center, you're getting a leverage factor.
00:48:14So you're getting this lever here and bang, it's pushing, it's pushing down.
00:48:19You have the lever on the crank and at 10 to 20 degrees, you want 1300 PSI there because you're going to take the most advantage of it through the mechanical advantage of the crank.
00:48:30If it fires late, then you're not, you're, you're not getting the expansion in the piston.
00:48:37You're not getting 1300 PSI.
00:48:39You're getting some fraction thereof.
00:48:41And it's only, and it's only acting for a very much shorter number of degrees for the power stroke.
00:48:47So from 20, say 20 after top dead center to 20 before, that's it.
00:48:54That's your happy zone.
00:48:55That's where you're going to make the most amount of force from the pressure rise in the cylinder.
00:48:59That is spark timing.
00:49:01There have been so many inventor engines built that were called more complete expansion engines.
00:49:11One of the reasons, well, the reason that the exhaust valves open before bottom dead center is because you don't want to pump the exhaust out.
00:49:23That's worked.
00:49:24It appears as friction.
00:49:27So you open a little bit before bottom center to let the pressure of that remains in the cylinder blow the exhaust out.
00:49:36And then, uh, the piston comes up on the exhaust stroke and pumps out much less and does much less work.
00:49:46Uh, this is gas exchange work.
00:49:50And the thing about the four stroke cycle is that it's a very practical machine, but think it is, it needs the heavily built robust power piston to compress the mixture.
00:50:05And to perform the power stroke.
00:50:09But then you use it for the light duty, um, housekeeping task of wafting the exhaust out and sucking in the new mixture.
00:50:20And what happens when you're operating on low throttle and the, the intake stroke is taking place is that mixture flow is very throttled.
00:50:33So you're putting energy into generating turbulence in a throttled orifice, namely, um, at the, at the butterfly.
00:50:45And this is costing you.
00:50:48This is, um, pumping loss.
00:50:51There's also exhaust pumping loss, which is the pressure that is exerted on the piston crown as it pushes exhaust out through, uh, an unthrottled, uh, exhaust valve.
00:51:05So, as I say, it's all very practical.
00:51:12It's been worked out to do everything in an optimal way, but still, you'd kind of like to have that heavy duty power piston doing the job that it's built for and let something lighter do the gas movement.
00:51:28Get to work, Kevin.
00:51:30Well, lots of people have tried.
00:51:33Yeah.
00:51:35Lots of people have tried.
00:51:36So with the evolution of ignition systems, you know, we had manual and you can just pick what you wanted and then, you know, like on motorcycles, uh, automatic timing device or ATD.
00:51:49So you had your magneto gear and you put it on your, your, your, your unkeyed taper, cause you just put it wherever you're going to set the timing, which is crazy.
00:51:58And, uh, so you'd set your magneto, set your points and you'd get your magneto on time at inches, you know, whatever the measurement is before piston top dead center or use your degree wheel.
00:52:09Cause that works a little bit better.
00:52:10And you'd go through this process and then you'd set your, your gear on and you'd have to set it at max advance cause it's a spring and weights mechanism.
00:52:20So the weights would swing out against the spring and rotate the relative position.
00:52:26Advance the cam with respect to the shaft.
00:52:28Yes.
00:52:29Yep.
00:52:29And, uh, you would, you would get your ignition advance that way so that you would have 10 degrees at idle, let's say 10 degrees before top dead center.
00:52:37And then as you motored away, the weights would progressively swing out at best to have some kind of ignition advance curve to in practice.
00:52:49What I've observed with a strobe on most of my automatic timing device motorcycles is it just sort of flops over to max advance at some like 2,500 RPM.
00:53:01Just kind of depends.
00:53:03It just kind of goes out and there's no long progression or big, beautiful ignition curve.
00:53:09And that's where, um, you know, I mean, cars were there for a very long time, weights inside a distributor and advancing the, the timing, you know, in a distributor on a motorcycle as coil ignition kind of went on to triumphs and all of that.
00:53:22Um, the Norton commando had, had that, and then we got electronic and early electronic drove me crazy.
00:53:31Cause I didn't know I bought a 75 Leverda three CL it's a 1000 CC triple, a 180 degree triple.
00:53:38So one piston up, two pistons down a little vibratory, but you know, spirited, uh, good running, uh, Dell Ordo carburetors.
00:53:46And the ignition in that was an early Bosch electronic from 75.
00:53:51I didn't know.
00:53:52I just said, Oh, cool.
00:53:53It's electronic.
00:53:53I don't have to mess with ignition points, but I had it on the dyno and I'd put a pipe on it, this beautiful stainless high flow pipe.
00:53:59And I picked up 20 horsepower from that pipe and jetting changes.
00:54:03And as the story goes, always hold up your fingers.
00:54:07If you've heard it before, um, it's, uh, I was on the needle exchange program with, um, Ron Wood racing, Elliot down there was helping me out.
00:54:16Cause they were the Dell Ordo guys for all those flat track guys.
00:54:18And so I could get all the needles.
00:54:20I could get different slides with the different, uh, uh, accelerator pump ramps.
00:54:25And I jetted the daylights out of that thing.
00:54:27I had all the different pilots.
00:54:29I did all this work, but I couldn't get rid of the stumble at 3000.
00:54:32And so when you're on the dyno, it's a perfect place to tune because you can just hold it at RPM and you say like, is my pilot good?
00:54:38Is my pilot, how's the transition, slow transition, quick transition for cutaway.
00:54:43How's the accelerator pump.
00:54:45And you can kind of do all that, especially now with the O2, uh, O2 sensors that you can stick inside of there.
00:54:51But I could not get rid of the stumble.
00:54:52It was like 3000 RPM and I'd get a 3000 and it would, and drove me insane.
00:54:59I tried everything with the jetting and I just kept reading and reading and reading because I wanted perfection.
00:55:04And I finally found out that that Lucas ignition was a, or excuse me, the Bosch ignition was a switch.
00:55:10It had 10 degrees at idle.
00:55:12And at 3000, it switched to 35 or whatever the max was.
00:55:1535 degrees before top dead center of ignition advance.
00:55:19And I was on that switching point, which was causing what I thought was a jetting problem, which is a very common.
00:55:24So it was just jumping, jumping back and forth in time.
00:55:28And that's 75 and all the way in 1995 with my Ducati 900 SS Kokusan ignitions, one little box for each cylinder.
00:55:37It's the same.
00:55:39It's basically, it's, it's like nearly vertical line.
00:55:42It does have a, a rise, but it's 10 degrees, whatever the idle is.
00:55:48And then it goes to 36 and that's why, like you set the choke that happens at like 25 or 1800 or something on the Ducati.
00:55:55And so you start the bike cold and you pull the choke and it'll go to say 1500 and everything's good, but it starts to warm up.
00:56:02And so it's freeing up.
00:56:04The mixture is getting better.
00:56:05The, the fuel is atomizing better.
00:56:07And the oil is getting thinner and then it switches ignition timing to 33 or 35 degrees.
00:56:19And then the thing runs away.
00:56:21And instead of sitting dutifully at 1600 RPM, it goes to 3000 and then you pull it back down and then you go below the ignition timing RPM and it drops and it starts to stumble.
00:56:31And that's where you can buy a new ignition.
00:56:33And I got it out of the Czech Republic called a, uh, Ignitech it's map and mappable.
00:56:39If you hook it up to your PC, you have inputs, you can put map sensors, a manifold air pressure.
00:56:45You can, which, you know, a Ducati does not have a manifold air pressure sensor, but it will, because I want to experiment with that because you know, at cruise, anyway, it's programmable.
00:56:55You have a curve.
00:56:56Now it starts and warms up exactly how you'd want to.
00:56:59It's so smooth.
00:57:00It pulls from a thousand RPM lower than it would have.
00:57:02Otherwise it's really nice.
00:57:04And I can put that map sensor on it.
00:57:07And so when you're running down the road, like very common on cars, and I'm sure we're, it's all happening electronically now, but the old vacuum advance distributor was high vacuum, meaning the throttle is closed, which was like Kevin was talking about.
00:57:19You're throttling, you're throttling, you're keeping the engine, you're keeping the engine from inhaling and it wants to inhale so bad and you're holding it there.
00:57:28So you get a high vacuum at cruise, you get a very high vacuum at cruise and you're going along and that vacuum signal would go to the vacuum pod and it would, it would advance the spark at those small throttle.
00:57:39You see, you're getting a relatively weak mixture.
00:57:42Let's say, I mean, essentially you're, you're kind of reducing the displacement.
00:57:47Does that make sense or is that, is that a wrong analogy?
00:57:50You're just not letting very much air fuel into the, into the cylinder.
00:57:54Sure.
00:57:54And so you have to, the volume of mixture is the, is proportional to power.
00:57:59Yeah.
00:58:00And so you have to light the spark.
00:58:02Yeah.
00:58:02You would light the spark sooner.
00:58:04If you're cruising down the highway at 3000 RPM and the butterflies are just cracked, you're going to light it at 40 degrees before top dead center.
00:58:11And you're not going to have detonation and it's going to give you peak pressure at correct timing for maximum efficiency.
00:58:19Just as the piston's about to move.
00:58:21Maximum efficiency.
00:58:23And I want to do that on my Ducati and just see, because the Ducati gets, it's jetted nicely and it gets like 40 miles per gallon if I'm sort of rattling around and having fun.
00:58:32And I was like, well, how good could that be?
00:58:34So I bought a Jeep map sensor.
00:58:35Well, this, this reminds me of, of zero to five volts.
00:58:42One of the things that troubles that Honda had with their NSR 500 two stroke GP bike, they were, they had developed a fuel injection system for it, but it was too responsive.
00:59:00And so they had to write software for it that I'm sure that some joker in that software team called it a carburetor emulator.
00:59:11Because what was happening that the, the response, the throttle response was so sharp that it would break the back tire loose when you're trying to, to ride off a corner.
00:59:26Whereas with the carburetor, the carburetor would be gargling and, um, there would be a, a smooth transition as you rolled into the throttle rather than instantly there's power.
00:59:40So they had to, they had to make the, the more modern system behave like the system it was replacing because that's what the tire needed.
00:59:53So your, your, your description of, of your efforts to make that Laverda run, right.
01:00:03Or your later, your Ducati sounds like trying to make the more modern system emulate the performance of the older system, which had been well worked out over a period of many years.
01:00:17And now we can do whatever we want, which is all we ever wanted, I guess.
01:00:25Yeah.
01:00:25I mean, full, full engine management and all that mapping going on.
01:00:29Um, you can spark it at any old time.
01:00:32I throw a strobe.
01:00:33It was baffling to, uh, it's kind of the Ford that I have is a very weird transitional system from carburation to fuel injection.
01:00:40So the, they use the distributor as the engine position sensor.
01:00:45So that's, it has a distributor and it is distributing the spark from the coil through each one of those posts on the, uh, distributor cap.
01:00:54But inside of the distributor is a hall effect.
01:00:56And then there's this umbrella shaped deal with the, um, the veins that tell it when to spark.
01:01:02And you set the timing on that truck by pulling out this thing called the spark out connector and it disconnects the computer from manipulating the spark.
01:01:12So the ECU and the kick panel and the driver's compartment doesn't get to see the spark anymore.
01:01:18So it just fires at whatever the physical timing of the distributor is.
01:01:23So you actually are setting the timing with a strobe, just like you did in the old days, except that it's an electronic full engine management system.
01:01:30Um, and you set it to 10 degrees, which is spec, but actually we all kick it up because it runs better at 14 because you get better spark timing during the mid range.
01:01:40Um, because you can't, well, you can program it, but anyway, you, you set the timing with the dang strobe and then you plug the ECU back in and I strobed it with the ECU plugged in.
01:01:50And if you're strobing at 14, set it to 14 and it's 14 dead nuts.
01:01:55And then you plug that deal back in and you throw the strobe on it again.
01:01:58Ignition timing and idle is at 40 for some reason.
01:02:02And then you whip it open and the map sensor changes what's going on because it's a speed density.
01:02:07So it's a manifold air pressure sensor.
01:02:09You snap the throttle and that spark comes back to at what would seem like a normal time, but then it's off in space again.
01:02:16It's often, you know, like what, how is this thing idling?
01:02:19And, but it does whatever they do with all, whatever their, their scheme is for that programming to get it through smog,
01:02:25to make it run smooth, to make it start cold. It's all there. And we have, you know, all these bikes back here, even that, even that Harley behind me, you know, electronic fuel engine.
01:02:35It runs perfectly all the time. It just starts. It idles. Tunk, tunk, tunk. Does it potato, potato. And away it goes.
01:02:41There's a Honda back there. It does the same thing. Ice cold. Take off. Pop a wheelie. Will not cough, spit back. Does nothing wrong. It's wonderful.
01:02:53It is wonderful because, um, I spent, um, many confused hours trying to bend choke, pull off pieces for carburetors, automobile carburetors to make the thing cold start.
01:03:10And you've got this little wrinkly sheet, very fine print on it. And now you just put in the key. Oh, it's zero outside. Well, well, you're running whatever it takes to make an idle.
01:03:29It idles. Now the idle is high at first until the engine warms up, but the idle speed comes down because there is a throttle positioner that does that.
01:03:40And I don't miss, uh, chokes and choke pull offs and cams with different contours filed into them by me. I don't want to file any choke cams. I want to go.
01:03:58Well, how, how late, uh, like a TZ seven 50, that was still fixed timing, right? Yep. I mean, how long did we run fixed timing? I guess in, you know, in racing, maybe that makes some kind of sense, but it just seems so archaic.
01:04:15That we were out there racing like aircraft, like vintage. I mean, general aviation is largely vintage aircraft because new ones cost one and a half million dollars for your $1.2 million for your serious SR 22 with, I just moved the lever for throttle.
01:04:33Cause it's all electronically controlled, but it's just 25 degrees. Like you go up to a Piper cub, 25 degrees, both mags, 25 degrees. Some of them, they, they offset it ones.
01:04:44So aircraft have two magnetos, redundant ignition systems, twin plugs. So you love having both, but you might get, you might need to get away with one, which happens.
01:04:55Yeah. And so they will use, there will be planes that say, start on the left mags only. And you time the left mag to 20 and it's a little easier to start the plane.
01:05:05And once it starts, you bring in the right mag, which is timed to 25, which is going to give you optimal timing at cruise, which in a plane, like some of these flat, most of these flat engines, the air cooled, like homings and continentals or whatever, they're all like 2,500 RPM or something.
01:05:21And then you just sort of, it's like a pump motor, you know, you just, once you get into cruise, you're like, ah, 65% power. And you set your RPM at 2,200 and the spark is fine at 25 degrees, but we could do better.
01:05:33And we, that's, we do do better with modern, modern motorcycles.
01:05:37And for the manufacturer, the manufacturer doesn't want to do it because introducing new parts opens a window for new lawsuits of liability.
01:05:47Now that's what, uh, the reason that U.S. Light aircraft are 1930s designs is that those aircraft are old enough that every conceivable attempt to win control of the company by means of a liability suit has been tried.
01:06:07And you go to them and you say, uh, my, my vintage Piper Cub gave me a hangnail. Do I have reason to sue? Get out of my office. Those things are impregnable.
01:06:22Yeah. Yeah. They're certified and you can get field approvals and all that, but yeah, generally speaking, you're, you're dealing with, you know, set, get the mags rebuilt and set them to 25.
01:06:32And if it's got a generator, it needs a generator. You just can't, you can't just throw an alternator on there and go flying.
01:06:39You can, if it's experimental, but if it's a type certified aircraft, forget about it.
01:06:43Yeah. It's got to be, which it gives me great wonder and freedom to be able to take a Norton Commando and put a electronic ignition on it and watch the motorcycle transformed.
01:06:56Oh, sure.
01:06:56Oh my gosh. Between that and those AML, uh, premier carburetors with the better carb bodies and a better idle circuit and electronic ignition that's has an inverted curve at low RPM,
01:07:08which is what I put into my programmable ignitions that I use on the Jags and stuff is you invert the, you invert the curve, uh, down low.
01:07:16So the advances as the RPM drops. So from like five, 800 to 500 RPM, it advances so that if the art, if the RPM goes down, the spark advances and it will push it back up.
01:07:30It'll give it a chance to keep running and that the tri spark just does that.
01:07:34So you put the cookie in where the points went and you put a reluctor, uh, a two pole magnet rotor where the points, uh, advanced used to go.
01:07:43And you stick that thing in there and you throw the points in the trash and you, you time it and you never touch it again.
01:07:49You never touch it. It just does that. And then, I mean, a Norton Commando, that bike, I could go out cold, tickle it, no choke, hit it, starts first kick, go one, one, one, like three revs.
01:08:04Hold it for four seconds, let go of the throttle and it would idle low, but it would continue to idle.
01:08:14And then once it was warm, it was exactly the same. Every time that come pulling up to a light, none of this float because the weights are sticking and so many problems.
01:08:24Yamaha XS 650, there's a, the, the points are on the cam. So the weights, the points are on one end of the cam and the weights, the advanced weights are on the other.
01:08:34And there's a rod that goes through the center of the cam. And when they're not serviced, that oil, that grease that's in there that lubricates, that gets all gummy.
01:08:42And then the springs after 50 years, let me tell you, the springs are not springs anymore. They were hanging on the posts at, at like idle.
01:08:52And so that bike would never idle the same because you'd rev it and the weights would stop somewhere in some advanced form.
01:08:59And so your idle would be 1200 and then it would be 600. And if you tried to set it, you could set the carbs, but like, where was the timing?
01:09:06So finally I'm like, you know what, Hoyer, call a guy, get the, get the advanced springs, got the advanced springs.
01:09:13Very easy to take the shaft out, clean the daylights out of it, lubricate it with a beautiful red lithium grease, grease, put it back together.
01:09:20And it works great. I mean, it works great. Now you can do an electronic ignition on those too, and you never have to mess with it.
01:09:27But I'm still, I still have brushes on the alternator on that bike, like carbon brush brushes, wear points people.
01:09:35A wag at Arlington Motorsports, our little dealership who described, who mimicked the idol of a triumph whose ignition advancer had been neglected.
01:09:47He said, he said, you could start it. And then it would go, tum, tum, tum, tum, tum, tum, and then stop.
01:09:59And nice that there's a procedure by which you can restore normality or even a supernormal state.
01:10:07Yeah, the, um, those, uh, those Lucas weight advancers, like on the Norton commandos, um, even in the best conditions of high maintenance and regular lubrication, they were not lasting that long.
01:10:22And, and, uh, mine were very good. Well, the first time I got that Norton, I want to say I bought it with about 7,000 miles on it in sort of, you know, 20 years ago.
01:10:34And, uh, I, I set it all up. I set it on the points. I strobed it at 28 degrees. Why? Cause it has a great combustion chamber.
01:10:41That's the maximum advance that engine wants is 28 degrees before top dead center, which is good.
01:10:46We don't need to be over advanced. We need just enough advance to get the spark to go off at the right time.
01:10:52We don't just seek like, Oh, we're going to get more power. If we just keep, if we light it sooner, it's just going to make more power.
01:10:57No, it's going to blow up or it's just going to make less power. So don't worry about it. 28 degrees, strobe it, use the points, worked well, sold it to a guy who did not maintain it.
01:11:08And he didn't put a ton of miles on it, but when it came back to me, it was red fretting on those ignition weights and the, they were.
01:11:14And as always, yeah, they were sticky.
01:11:17You saw it many times.
01:11:18Yeah. Sticky and horrible. And you get rid of that stuff and put your electronic on it and you kickstart your Norton cold and it just doesn't misbehave, which I don't know. Maybe that's part of the charm.
01:11:31Bad running.
01:11:32Bad running. Yeah.
01:11:33Yeah.
01:11:33You know, high maintenance. They use that expression for, to describe people, but it originally described machinery, high maintenance.
01:11:43Yep.
01:11:44Well, there's, everybody always says, you know, oh, it needs me. And I'm, I'm getting over that.
01:11:52Yeah.
01:11:54Although it's not true. I spent, um, I spent the last year messing with that Ford.
01:12:00That's my jam. You know, it's like, I like getting things.
01:12:06I like overcoming that, getting something, learning the system, understanding the system the best that I can, and then putting it into a position to where it, it behaves.
01:12:19It's getting to good running. Yeah.
01:12:21I take deep, deep, deep satisfaction. That was 64 Cadillac that I restored years ago, that Laverda.
01:12:26And it was really satisfying to go through the whole tuning process other than picking up 20 horsepower and making the clutch slip.
01:12:33So, uh, unintended consequences. Uh, but I let, um, this guy, Ed Lutz, who was the, kind of the Laverda guru of the time. And he had a spawned and framed Laverda that was beautiful. And he was really into it. I let him ride my Laverda. And he came back and said, I have never ridden a 180 triple this smooth.
01:12:55And I feel good about that because I do get pretty obsessed and I want to, I want it to be as nice as it can be. And I try to, I try to see not just here. I've set it to the book, but experimenting with the variations and with different equipment and trying different wires or what all of that stuff and different caps. And I just, I don't know. It's fun.
01:13:20Um, so I appreciate, I appreciate electronic programmable ignitions, such as what's on my Ducati, hooking up a laptop, seeing the chart and picking, picking numbers to see how it goes and hoping I don't melt the piston or something, but getting the most out of it. It's nice to have a dyno and I'm going to, um, and a knock sensor.
01:13:40Okay. Well, that's knock sensor and, and a O2. So the, the Ducati doesn't have an O2 sensor, um, because it is carbureted. But what I found out is that the fittings on the factory headers are American pipe thread of some kind.
01:13:57Yeah. And they were using an American made emissions machine at the factory to sniff those bikes, to set the carburetors, to make them legal for sale in the United States. Not that they stayed that way, but they certainly, obviously Ducati was doing what they needed to do and they use an American equipment and we got an American pipe thread.
01:14:15So I bought brass fittings to screw into the Ducati exhaust pipes. And we have a two channel, uh, O2 sensor on the, uh, dyno in the shop, the dyno jet 250i. And I can have O2 readings on the screen while I run the bike on the dyno. And so there's a couple of things going on. I can just double check. I know that it runs beautifully at wide open throttle things. Unbelievable. It's so crisp. The needle is like tip top. It's a great needle. It's a very good carburetor kit, but, um,
01:14:45setting the, setting the pilot mixture on the dang thing. Holy mackerel, getting that nice where the pickup is super clean. I'm just not, I'm just, I'm still practicing Kevin. I still am trying to figure it out. Well, we've gone far afield again. We're off in Ducati carburation, but, uh, luckily it's all related. So, so it is. Yes. It's all related. Um, thanks for listening folks.
01:15:15Check us out in the comments. Um, appreciate your support and, uh, and spending your time with us. That was, uh, ignition history and more. And more. And we, uh, we thank you for joining us. We'll catch you next time.
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