ION Eyes

[garfield at pilgrimhouse.com]

Hey Maties.

I've been following up on the trail of tasty crumbs JoeZ left me with
that one patent reference, and ONLY on the basis of going to the IBM
Patent search page:
	http://www.patents.ibm.com/
and doing a search on "ionization" near "ignition", I see that there's a
TON of stuff that's been disclosed and filed on the subject!! WAY more
proportionately than SAE article submissions! Does that mean the smell
of $$$$, or what? If you have a moment, go see what I mean. It will take
me WEEKS to sift through all the stuff that's there!

Whew, it's like when OBD II got passed, everybody and their brother
suddenly was interested in "ionization detection of misfire". Well,
their groveling, our gain. There doth appear to be also lots of useful
ideas and discussion, just following the patent dependency/citing tree.
And, to anchor our interest in a sound hope of practicality, there are
the SAAB patents, that do indeed disclose to the last detail their
actual, working implementation of the technology.

One of the things I DID notice in my first pass scan of all the
articles, if that there are lots of references to using this in
inductive IGN, instead of capacitive discharge, and one patent in
particular that says in essence, "well, our patent is to claim that the
other patents don't *just* apply to CDI". So every patent after that
dutifully cites this one. Guess that guy REALLY knew how to play the
patent game, eh? Weird.

The other thing I notice is the minute detail in which the circuits for
doing this job are disclosed. I'm not used to this kinda detail from my
ASIC background, of course, and it was a kinda shock to be transported
back to the seemingly "tube circuit" days, when diff. guys argued over
whether one cathode or resistor was better than another. As a result,
instead of the usual vague "goes-into results in goes-outta" that I'm
used to, the patents are an absolute joy to read, and a crystalline
disclosure of circuit-thot.

It seems almost a pity that this tech hasn't appeared yet in other car
mfg's offerings. It doesn't appear that it's a function of exclusive
patents on the part of SAAB, but rather that their guys actually got off
thier patented duffs and actually built something that would work. Makes
me admire them Saab guys all the more.

Guess I'm a cynic, but I can just see it now, the marketing and
engineering depts get together, and here's the drift, "Well, we could
make it so you could detect detonation really reliably". "Yeah, but how
much is that gonna ADD to the cost of the car, and how are we gonna be
able to convince people this is really better". "Yeah, and isn't that
likely to decrease our service department's revenues? Ya know them guys
that buy turbo cars CAN'T expect them to live as long, and if we make
them live longer by better detonation detection, we're only cutting into
our service revenues, since longer life expectancy isn't, well,
expected". And on and on. Makes you wonder how them SAAB guys ever got
their system to see the light of day!! Probably only because there are
still some engineers left in their management chain. Hee.

Oh, one last thing I ALSO noticed in some of the patents, is what looks
to be ion detection being done EVEN in distributor-equipped IGN systems.
I still dunno how this can work, exactly, since I haven't read the
patents, but most likely my assumption that this would work only on
direct ignition is FALSE. Now there's a case of being wrong one could
really enjoy!

As I sift through this treasure-house, I'll letch'all know if I stumble
over any really big gems. ION's lookin lovelier by the day. I can hear
it now, our theme song wafting through the air, "When ION Eyes are
smiling ...". Ooooh, my jokes are getting worse and worse, ain't they?
Hee.

Gar