Electronic valve control

[Scott Knight]

Hey Dave,

> A few years back, I beleivein a Popular mechanics mag, there was a short
> article about a pancake starter/alternator mounted UNDER the flywheel. It
> was strange to the tester cause there was of course, no gear grind from a
> typicaly starter, as the system was inductive.  I donno if anyone ever
> planned on using it in the future but it was a cool conecpt and worked
> well in the article, and some benefits like, no gears/bearings as such to
> wear out, and better alternator efficiency due to the higher angular
> velocity thanks to the large diameter of the flywheel.

When I was doing some work at Ford in 1993, I shared a cube with a guy
that was working on this very thing.  The flywheel held the magnets and
the 'armature' was mounted to the rear of the block.  They were having
all kinds of problems with it, not the least of which was the analysis
guy didn't even understand how an automobile worked (another story in
itself), much less what was going on inside the bellhousing!!! It seemed
exciting and doable to me, but there was no way it was going to get done
in a company like Ford...too bad.  I learned a lot that year...

Later dates.
-- 
Scott Knight  mailto:sknight at mich.com
http://www.mich.com/~sknight IRC: SS396man
'95 Black Impala SS
'95 Black Impala SS-crashed
'96 Black K3500 Ext. Cab Duallie 7.4L Vortec
'94 Ducati 900SS CR