Espen's Reed Valves

[Gary Derian]

My guess is the reeds restrict flow at  high rpm.  Look at the size of a
reed cage in a 125cc motorcycle engine.  The  whole cage is maybe 2 by 3
inches.

The really early engines used no cam for the intake valves, just a lightly
sprung poppet valve.

Gary Derian <gderian at oh.verio.com>


>
> -> cam to get variable duration and the reed valves would take care of
> -> the blowback problem at the low end......    At least a first thought
>
>  Alfa Romeo built some engines like that 20 years ago.  There were also
> some stationary engines using reed valves at the beginning of the
> century.
>
>  The Alfa setup let them run a long duration cam without confusing the
> carburetor with reversion pulses or contaminating one cylinder's intake
> charge with another's exhaust coming through on overlap.  It looked like
> a fine idea to me, and I have no idea why they dropped it.
>