This article seems confuse.
Yeah, then what do you say? My knowledge about gasoline engine is not adequaate to rewrite. -- Taku 23:48 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC)
They are articles about four stroke cycle internal combustion engine Reciprocating engine and maybe other related to the same topic. IMHO half of the article is dealing ignition and the other half with caburetor wich is rather obsolete and a substaantial part of the part related to carburetor is related to other combustibles than Gasoline/Petrol. I think only the beginning is relevant. The first part could be a start for an article aabout ignition system and the second for an article about carburetor. User:Ericd
This has a conspiracy theory smell to it and even if it is true it should belong in carburetor.
There are persistent rumours of extremely efficient carburetors. These seem to be true. The basic mechanism is apparently a catalytic carburetor. It would mix fuel fumes with water and air in the presence of heated catalysts such as nickel or platinum. The fuel would break down into methane, alcohols, and other lighter-weight fuels. The lighter-molecular-weight fuels would burn about 1.8 to 3 times as efficiently as vaporized gasoline, with lower emissions and waste. The original catalytic carburetor was introduced to permit farmers to run tractors from kerosene.
The U.S. army used catalytic carburetors in World War II in the North African desert, to achieve substantial logistic surprise against the Germans.
However, it is known that less than two years after commercial introduction of the first catalytic carburetor, in 1932, tetraethyl lead was introduced, to "condition" gasoline's "ethyl content." Also in that time, the price differential between a thermal calorie of gasoline and kerosene was ended. Tetraethyl lead had the effect of poisoning catalytic carburetors. Many modern gasolines appear to have additives for "cleaning" which perform the same effect by producing varnishes or gums in the presence of water, which of course, is not a recommended use.
Gasoline/petrol is an impure mixture of linear heptane and octane and other miscellaneous light alkanes. Commercial gasolines usually contain additives to clean engines, artificially lower evaporation points, and (conjecturally) poison catalytic carburetors (an effect that is certainly real, but might be accidental).
- I don't if this is conspiracy theory a lot of tanks and maybe other military vehicle can use a wide range of fuels (from gazoline to olive oil for instance), but this is out of the subject.
- And "In the North African desert" please let me laught : Patton complained that the US used gazoline in their tank and thus where higly explosive in the desert while the Afrika Korps had Diesel engine causing much less casualities.
- User:Ericd
This story seems related to the famous urban legend about a certain Army Mechanic who took one of those ultra efficient carbururators home and installed it in his own vehicle. Soon, he went around bragging to his neighbors about the great mileage he was getting, and the Army got wind of his little theft and took back the carburator and let the mechanic spend some quality time in the stockade.
Redirect
editThis article needs to redirect to internal combustion engine. While I recognize that diesel and other engines are IC engines that are not also gasoline engines, there's nothing here that is different or valuable. --User:Tysto
- Agreed, I was rather surprised that this was a separate article. I put the {{mergto}} on the article, in case anyone wants to discuss it more first. --Interiot 15:39, 16 October 2005 (UTC)