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It's too bad that Popular Science clipped about a third of that article when looking at it from their website.. If you go through Google Books (they have every page of every issue scanned - very good way to burn hours of time - you can look at that October 2004 issue. Here's a little bit more and what I thought was relevant at the time and still is...(I had to take it in two clippings due to my Snag program not capturing it all on a scroll)

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Note the RPM range where fuel economy increased and lowered temperature showed up also.. This is pretty much the operating range for your Cub, unless you're mowing....Note that I ran my Cushman up to about 4600 RPM and I thought it felt better all through that range..

Well, nuff said on that dead horse, just thought I'd show you guys why I thought it was worth a try..
 
Ok, has anyone ever heard of this being done to a single cylinder Kohler?...especially an older Kohler like we all deal with. I'd be interested in trying it but I don't care to be the first.

Also, where would be the best place for such a groove in a Kohler head?

The curiosity is kinda working on me here. I really like the part about the engine running cooler.
 
Wayne - the "side valve" engines they are talking about are flatheads like the Kohler.. Here are a couple of pics <u>from his website</u> representing flathead heads with grooves leading from the "squish" area over the valves towards the plug. I did three radial grooves like the second picture, all three leading towards the plug. I'll see if I can find the pics I did.. I know that I did not take the grooves all the way to the gasket, they were v shaped and tapered at the ends (shallower cut) like the second picture. I used a 4" right angle grinder with about a 3/16th grinding wheel ( not a cutoff") that was worn to a thin edge to cut the V grooves....
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You guys be careful using grinding wheels on aluminum...that's a good way to get injured by an exploding grinding wheel. I have seen pictures; it doesn't look like fun...
 
WOW... I missed an interesting discussion.... Not sure I want to go to that website GERRY. It sounds like it may contain information that doesn't agree with most engine builder's ideas.

The flat head engine design is NOT a good design for efficiency, that's why none of the current engine building co's use that design anymore. WAY too much surface area compared to displacement. That bleeds off heat to the engine components and surrounding air. It's impossible to create a quench area which is a good place to start the flame front. Where combustion occurs in a fast moving turbulent area little to no carbon will accumulate, but carbon will accumulate where there is stagnate non-moving fuel/air mixture. And how many of us have pulled the head on a Kohler and found LOADS of carbon?

Think about it? The air/fuel mixture has a straight shot thru the carb, then has to turn a 90 degree corner to go up thru the intake valve, then slams against the head, has to turn another 90 deg. corner and go across the head/block surface, then make another 90 deg. turn down into the cylinder. The return trip for the exhaust is just as bad. LOTS of turbulence for sure, but every 90 deg. turn slows the speed of the fuel/air mixture because the mixture slams into another wall, stops, then has to start moving again.

The wedge or Hemi-head design is so much more efficient. lowest surface area per displacement depending on bore & stroke, room for large free-flowing valves, you can park the spark plug right between the valves close to the center of the combustion chamber, with 4-valve heads you can get the plug dead center.

Years ago companies tried to put large lumps of metal on the tops of pistons to increase compression, but those lumps batted at the flames in the chamber, plus made the pistons unbalanced in weight on either side of the wrist pin which tended to try to bend the conn. rod. But increasing compression ratio from 5-6:1 to 7-8:1 really improved performance, as long as you had good gas, high octane to keep hot spots in the chamber from starting a second flame front and detonating the whole combustion chamber. With the compact wedge or hemi head design it was REAL easy to design a piston to have really high compression ratios and open combustion chambers with hardly ANY hot spots.

The whole reason for the "LONG ROD" engine design is the fact the longer rod parks the piston at top dead center for a longer period than a shorter rod does and lets combustion occur while the piston isn't moving, cylinder pressure soars, which is power, it's like a long stroke engine in a smaller package.

The reason why GERRY's modified Cushman engine runs better with the flame grooves is because of better flame travel in the combustion chamber, at 4600 RPM, his engine is firing over 38 times a SECOND, 2300 firings per minute. Anything he does to start the flame burning easier will be rewarded with better running and more performance.

There's a reason why pullers work with the K-series engines installing larger valves, leaning them closer to the cylinder. I'd like to find a K361 engine to play with some day, might be my Alcohol engine, the over-head valves would breathe better and make it easier to build the ncessary compression to use alcohol's higher octane. And with alcohol's cooler burning, and the OHV design's lower surface area inside the combustion chamber, it'd be almost impossible to over-heat, even on 100 degree days at idle.
 
Matt:
Not sure what construction type you are referring to, all the wheels that I've got for my 4 1/2 " grinder are the composition type with a fiberglass matting embedded. I wouldn't use the older type solid wheels that don't have reinforcement - I'm the one that posted pics of my knee (MANY years ago) after I blew up an old solid thin cutoff wheel (no reinforcement) on a die grinder..

Dennis:
One of the details that PopSci mentioned was that it was very possible that the mod worked better on older design side valve (we call 'em flathead) engines...And just to underscore, a Cushman head looks just about like a Kohler..the combustion chamber design is just about the same. Again, I haven't browsed through my pics for almost a year, I'll have to start that 'puter up and see what I can find.
 
GERRY - My knee had a run-in with a 7" x 1/4" grinding disc in my BIG Black & Decker 7"/9" angle grinder, it was spinning down to a stop and I rested it on my knee to turn the piece of steel I was grinding, the grinder shifted and bit a nice chunk of meat out of my left knee about 1/4" wide by an inch or two long.

I think what MATT is warning us about is the fact that aluminum alloys tend to build up on the aluminum oxide grinding wheels and stress them more because they don't "CUT" anymore, they wipe the built-up metal across the piece being ground and build up a L-O-T of heat. I think it's silicon oxide wheels you should use on aluminum. Or a carbide rotary burr.

Yep, once you pop the head off any flat-head engine, they all pretty much look the same, little differences in bore and valve sizes and relationships.

You look at today's engine designs, and they all tend to run individual runners to each cylinder. I always thought it was odd that IH had siamesed intake ports on their 4-cylinder engines, the 1-bbl side-inlet updraft carb with the manifold splitting in two at right angles with a runner going to both inlet ports in the head then those ports splitting in two to go to each cylinder. Small block Chevy heads had an exhaust port, then a pair of intake ports, then a pair of exh. ports, another pair of intakes, then the last exh port, across each head, and they typically made about one HP per cubic inch and one pound/feet of torque per CID on the higher tuned versions, like the 4 bbl and MFI engines. With the siamesed ports and the low RPM that IH's 4-cylinder tractor engines ran, they couldn't make much HP, but they DID make TONS of torque, like 267 #/ft from 164 CID @ 1046 RPM, 1.628#/ft torque per CID, Test # 492, Super H, and 363#/ft from 264 CID @ 991 RPM, test # 475, Super M, Super W-6 did slightly better @ 370#/ft @ 997 RPM, same exact engine, 1.40#/ft torque/CID. Relatively small bore but long stroke, and really really long conn rods. And they did that with about 6:1 compression on gasoline just slightly better than 70 octane and both made close to 12 HP Hours per gallon of gasoline. By comparison, a K241 Kohler, @ 23.85 CID makes .42 HP/CID at over twice the IH's RPM, but only about 1 #/ft of torque per CID, and burns over twice the gas doing it. THAT'S how much better an OHV design engine is compared to the flathead design. The basic IH H/M engine design dates back into the 1920's, the K-series Kohler was around during WW-II, Dad remembers Kohler powered generators when he was in the Army.

For comparison, the non-turbo version of my commuter car's engine makes 168 HP from 153 CID but needs EFI, variable intake cam timing, at least two computers, and 5000 RPM & 91 octane gas to do it, and it makes about 150#/ft of torque at it's peak. Amazing what 60 years of technology can do ain't it?
 
Dennis:
I've had aluminium build up on grinding wheels; I've got a 3/4" x 3/4" x 6" carborundum stick that I use to clean 'em.. IIRC it came from Sears and Sawbuck for cleaning/shaping grinding wheels on bench grinders. Matt is correct, you want to keep track of the wheel and clean it or replace it. I don't think the laminated mesh types will blow up as long as the RPM limit is observed and they aren't cracked from dropping the grinder on the wheel...
 
HA-HA... SOMEDAY I'm going to buy myself a REAL wheel dresser for my grinding wheels in my bench grinders. I have three ginders but only use two. One is actually SON's, an 8" Delta like my new one. My old one is a Harbor Freight cheapy 8".

Dad had a HUGE wooden table that his old bench grinder was mounted on. Legs were 6" x 6" wood, must have been 5-6 feet square, shelf under the top was loaded with a ton of scrap steel left from welding projects. His grinder was belt driven from at least a full 1 HP capacitor start motor, the shaft the stones mounted on was full 1 inch dia. He got used stones from a local welding shop. They were two inches wide and about 8-9 inches in dia, worn down from 12 inches when new. No guard over the stones of course. He replaced a stone one time and reached over around to the back of the motor to turn the grinder on to chamfer or clean something to weld and about the time the grinder got up to speed the wheel broke in half and went flying. It didn't hit him or anyone else in the shop but it scared him! The switch got moved to someplace where he didn't have to reach over the grinder to turn it on/off.

I dress my grinding wheels like Dad did, I hold whatever I grind at the high spot on the wheel until it's about flat again.

We had a "Swing Grinder" at the foundry I worked at, think it was a 5 HP motor driving a 24 inch diameter abrasive wheel 1/4 to 3/8" thick with 3-4 V-belts. It was a factory made piece of equipment about the size and weight of a Cub Cadet!. They used it to cut the runners off some of the smaller castings. One night after a wheel change, they were the fiberglass reinforced wheels like a 4-1/2 in angle grinder would use, only over 5 times larger, one of the wheels BROKE. The imbalance lifted the grinder AND the 200# operator several feet off the ground. The operator was uninjured but shaken up a bit. They stopped using that grinder for cutting runners off castings after that.

Even the little 3/4" & 1" dia cutting wheels I use in my Dremels I hold under my work bench when I first start them with a new wheel.

Yep, SHOP SAFETY is important. Never take ANY motorized tool or ANY tool for that matter, for granted.
 
Since this thread has gone to hell I may as well post a pic of a grinder I built for a buddy of mine.
The stone is worn way down but it's 3" wide, the motor is an antique 3 horse making the stone turn 36rpm via a gearbox in the middle of two belts.

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Got a couple of vids of it running but don't know which hard drive they're on.

Over the years I've had several grinder disk explode on me. I use to buy some cheap 4" ones that cut almost as fast as a torch but I got tired of picking grit and fiberglass out of my fingers and wrist. I told the guy were I was buying them and he stopped carrying them , kind'a miss them they cut so much better than the ones that cost 4 times the price.
 
Ken:
The Eagle has about 500 lbs less weight, better ground clearance, is shorter and not so prone to fall inwards...it could, but can I do that - probably not.
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Ken: How about trying those maneuvers with this ? BTW - this is not thread hijacking...you started it..
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Peaking of 50,000 pounds, he's put on a little weight since then (he's on BBC's Top Gear..)
 
I think 50,00 pounds is the PRICE in the UK. Too rich for me!
 

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