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Show DETONATION IS MOTOR PROBLEM 'what Happens When Gas Vapor Fires in Cylinder Baffles Engineers. Just what occurs when gasoline .vapor Is Introduced Into a cylinder 'combustion chamber, compressed und fired Is a problem that has battled automotive au-tomotive engineers. However, they have made progress in Its solution with the resultant Increase In power and smoothness of operallou found in the better cars of today. Study of the problem Is comparable compara-ble to the youthful researcher who, on. July fourth, holds a lighted (ire-cracker (ire-cracker in his Imnd "to see wlial will happen." Both the boy and the automotive auto-motive engineers are dealing with .something that operates practically instantaneously in-stantaneously and with terrific force. Carbon Knock Resulted. The principles of an Internal com-bustion com-bustion engine ure well known. Vapor-'J.ed Vapor-'J.ed gasoline Is mixed Willi air. healed, and then drawn into the cylinder by the downward slroke of the piston. The upward piston slroke compresses the vapor anil an electric spark ex plodes the mixture, the resulting explosion ex-plosion transmitting energy to the engine by means of the power stroke of the piston. Engineers also know that Increasing compression increases power, up to a certain point anil then power Is lost and "detonation" or what 13 commonly known as a carbon knock, results. Also thoy know that different curves in the combustion chamber Inlluence the useful force of the explosion. During the two years that a new car was being designed months of ef-. ef-. fort was expended to obtain best results re-sults In combustion. Engineers worked In co-operation with the engineering I k 1 u IT of a large corporation and the laboratories and equipment of the corporation In solving this problem. Design New Chamber. Tills co-operative effort resulted In n new design of combustion chamber cham-ber which gives high compression performance per-formance without the use of special fuel. The compression ratio is 5 to 1, or approximately 03 pounds. The design further controls the explosion eo that the rise of pressure within the chambers and cylinders Is progressive and the pressure peak is more nearly continuous. This results in additional addition-al useful power per explosion. Two distinctive features bring about this desired result. One is the step-like prollle of the chamber roof above the pistons and the other Is the curves that form the four sides of each chamber. These factors govern gov-ern the rate of expansion of the burning burn-ing gas within the cylinders and bring about the advantages of high compression without "roughness" or detonation. |