Too bad development didn't continue...

It is interesting. I'm pretty sure that thread got me here, as that was my only hobby hangout at that time.
Rusty

Well I see a few problems.... electric pre heat of glow element? I do not see the path for exhaust out of the engine

That's pretty wild the construction is based on todays rotor valve pressure washers , I didn't read it all I will have to check it later my necks killing me this morning getback

Fred, there is some porting at base of the piston slugs' cylinders to act as intakes and exhaust. The big cylinder container all the slugs rotates around to get to the needed ports. The drawing shows a couple of circles that are exhaust ports(?) The side view dimensional drawing shows the other stuff. I still don't quite get the glow plug portion, though.

Hope your neck gets better! I had to really lean forward to look at these drawings for this engine.

fredvon4 wrote:Well I see a few problems.... electric pre heat of glow element?  I do not see the path for exhaust out of the engine

I see what you mean Fred. Wouldn't you think that those two elements would have been included with taking the design that far? Compression-ignition would be interesting.. but still; there's no place for an exhaust port without causing temperature/lubrication problems. It would somehow need to involve the crank.. which is generally well out of the way of combustion heat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UBAukXPD-0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZmd7k33JWE

Looks like these using a cam. Notice the exhaust is in the same position, the rotation opens and closes the ports. The article states it is a 4-stroke engine.

Phil

OK I can see how the side view does not show the exhaust port opening that looks to be in the other view of the rotating rear intake piece

I believe there is also a compression ratio where you don't need to pre heat the glow wire for the catalytic induced combustion but it needs to be a very durable element as changing that part as often as we do a cox glow head would be a pain

It would be cool if one of those very talented engine builders would further develop and test this design...I too have seen other inline piston designs that seem to work

Yeah... the cooling looks a bit feeble. The fins would be better 90 degrees the other way, i.e., oriented along the length of engine.

I did a few "gamers" computer builds back a few years ago, and got real interested in CPU cooling up to and including cryogenics

Part of what I learned had to do with the coefficient of different metals, thermal dissipation, air flow, and a few other things like thermal conductive pastes/glues etc...

Fins are a simple way to increase surface area, and yes airflow over or through them is a consideration; but also machining ease/costs is also...if you look at the screw machine cost schedule, you can see they (as was typical for COX mfg) were trying to bring it in at a very low cost to produce. Radial fins are easy...longitudinal fins would require a lot more effort and not all that much gain in thermal release

I think the engineering is sound the more I look at this and suspect the real reason we did not see this design was timing...Cox was loosing market share about then as was Fox and in the mid 70s we were seeing the EPA and OSHA having a big impact on USA manufacturers (impact to this project...nil... impact to Cox as a whole....huge!)