The new 6 Stroke engine!

I came across this after a fellow engineer mentioned this... I cannot believe in the century of having internal combustion engines that someone has not already done this!!!

Bruce Crower has lived, breathed and built hot engines his whole life. Now he’s working on a cool one—one that harnesses normally-wasted heat energy by creating steam inside the combustion chamber, and using it to boost the engine’s power output and also to control its temperature.

“I’ve been trying to think how to capture radiator losses for over 30 years,” explains the veteran camshaft grinder and race engine builder. “One morning about 18 months ago I woke up, like from a dream, and I knew immediately that I had the answer.”

Hurrying to his comprehensively-equipped home workshop in the rural hills outside San Diego, he began drawing and machining parts, and installing them in a highly modified, single-cylinder industrial powerplant, a 12-hp diesel he converted to use gasoline. He bolted that to a test frame, poured equal amounts of fuel and water into twin tanks, and pulled the starter-rope.

Autoweek link


After researching this some more, I found that the concept could allow an additional 40% more Miles Per Gallon, at the same time as eliminating the need for massive radiator systems, and leaky coolant.

Yes, the problem of your engine overheating, and cracking an egg to get to the next service station may be over, and you can go further on the same tank of gas... by simply pumping water into your engine for one extra stroke, and using the rapidly expanding water to drive the piston, while soaking up the unwanted heat!

It's such a simple and effective idea... how, in the entire century of using gasoline engines, did we NOT think of this already?!

We have gasoline engines, we have already used steam engines, we have been tackling the issue of excessive heat energy all this time, while trying to increase mileage... how did we not add two and two together to get this.

Kudos to Bruce Crower!

Now, consider adding this system to an already hybrid engine, and think of how much fuel you could save!

Like you said, why didn't we think of this sooner?

There must be a good reason why....

Although, on the face of it, it does seem quite ingenious. Then again, I'm no mechanic, so I do not know what the long term affects on your engine would be, or what kind of emissions you'd get out of it...

Well that was refreshing to read, even though I personally do not believe anything will become of it. I have read plenty of in depth articles on alternative IC engine technologies and they all lack one thing - entering the commercial market place. Not one of these ideas which I feel many of them do what they advertise have made it to the consumer.

This idea sounds really good, and combined with some other technologies such as rotary valve timing, the IC engine could eliminate a lot of our fuel needs.

Of course the oil companies would stand to lose a lot, which is probably why Crower's idea is just a pet project that will never benefit anyone. I have experienced the benefits of his camshafts, however, as many of them are designed to produce lots of high RPM power, which as you know burns lots of fuel.......very marketable.

I actually see little reason why this can't make it to market...

The oil companies don't make cars, the auto-mobile manufacturers do.
The only thing the oil company can do when something threatens it is try to tell the people that the alternative fuel is 'unsafe', or 'useless'.
Seeing as this system is still a gasoline system, they'd be hard pressed to squash it with their usual lies.

Now lets turn to the Automobile manufacturers.
Will it sell? Hell yes, it saves fuel.
Is it easy to make? It's only slightly more complex than the currently existing engines.

If I were in charge of an automobile manufacturer, I'd jump on this right away!