On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 19:14:08 -0500, "Lee Michaels"
wrote:


"KIMOSABE" wrote in message
...
Explanatory videos are about halfway down the page.

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directo...How_it_Wor ks

The piston arrangement is very interesting. I don't quite get how the
1,695 ci figure is arrived at, though. Someone made the comment about
thermodynamics, which I'll bet will be a seriously limiting hurdle to
overcome.

I'm no engineer, nor do I play one on TV, but the first thing that
caught my eye was that extremely complicated gear assembly used to
"modulate" the piston cycle. There has to be a lot of mechanical price
to pay in that thing (and expense, even if there isn't a mechanical
penalty).

Color me extremely skeptical.



--
LRod

Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite

Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999

http://www.woodbutcher.net
http://www.normstools.com

Proud participant of rec.woodworking since February, 1997

email addy de-spam-ified due to 1,000 spams per month.
If you can't figure out how to use it, I probably wouldn't
care to correspond with you anyway.

LRod wrote:
On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 19:14:08 -0500, "Lee Michaels"
wrote:

"KIMOSABE" wrote in message
...
Explanatory videos are about halfway down the page.

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directo...How_it_Wor ks

The piston arrangement is very interesting. I don't quite get how the
1,695 ci figure is arrived at, though. Someone made the comment about
thermodynamics, which I'll bet will be a seriously limiting hurdle to
overcome.

I saw a calculation of approx. 850 ci based on stroke/diameter and the
16 cylinders although I didn't bother to really look at it in enough
detail to decipher whether there was any sleight of hand being pulled or
not.

I'm no engineer, nor do I play one on TV, but the first thing that
caught my eye was that extremely complicated gear assembly used to
"modulate" the piston cycle. There has to be a lot of mechanical price
to pay in that thing (and expense, even if there isn't a mechanical
penalty).

Color me extremely skeptical.

Yeah, the general lack of sophistication in the analyses and data
presented wherein the mechanical efficiency is claimed to be near 100%
because of only a relatively low part count is just simply unsupportable
w/o a detailed analysis or actual measurements. One would not expect
such claims to hold up when tested.

Ditto to the conclusion...

--

dpb wrote:
LRod wrote:
On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 19:14:08 -0500, "Lee Michaels"
wrote:

"KIMOSABE" wrote in message
...

Explanatory videos are about halfway down the page.

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directo...How_it_Wor ks


The piston arrangement is very interesting. I don't quite get how the
1,695 ci figure is arrived at, though. Someone made the comment about
thermodynamics, which I'll bet will be a seriously limiting hurdle to
overcome.

I saw a calculation of approx. 850 ci based on stroke/diameter and the
16 cylinders although I didn't bother to really look at it in enough
detail to decipher whether there was any sleight of hand being pulled or
not.

I'm no engineer, nor do I play one on TV, but the first thing that
caught my eye was that extremely complicated gear assembly used to
"modulate" the piston cycle. There has to be a lot of mechanical price
to pay in that thing (and expense, even if there isn't a mechanical
penalty).
Color me extremely skeptical.

Yeah, the general lack of sophistication in the analyses and data
presented wherein the mechanical efficiency is claimed to be near 100%
because of only a relatively low part count is just simply unsupportable
w/o a detailed analysis or actual measurements. One would not expect
such claims to hold up when tested.

Ditto to the conclusion...

--

Well if I recall correctly, burning fuel produces heat not just energy.
so theoretical efficiency of 100% is hooey.

sandpounder wrote:
....

Well if I recall correctly, burning fuel produces heat not just energy.
so theoretical efficiency of 100% is hooey.

Well, heat _is_ energy, but that's not the point...

While undoubtedly it's inflated, the claim isn't that the overall
process is nearly 100% efficient, only that the mechanical losses are
low so the output is nearly the theoretical limit. As noted, a couple
of times, this is probably also not going to work out to be so, either...

--

dpb wrote:
sandpounder wrote:
...

Well if I recall correctly, burning fuel produces heat not just
energy. so theoretical efficiency of 100% is hooey.

Well, heat _is_ energy, but that's not the point...

While undoubtedly it's inflated, the claim isn't that the overall
process is nearly 100% efficient, only that the mechanical losses
are
low so the output is nearly the theoretical limit. As noted, a
couple
of times, this is probably also not going to work out to be so,
either...

The actual claim I saw was 60 percent. IIRC the best diesels achieve
around 50 percent when running on their design condition. Saw no
claim on his site that he was going to achieve 100 percent. I'd be
very surprised if he hits a real-world 60 with a brand new design.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

J. Clarke wrote:
....

The actual claim I saw was 60 percent. IIRC the best diesels achieve
around 50 percent when running on their design condition. Saw no
claim on his site that he was going to achieve 100 percent. I'd be
very surprised if he hits a real-world 60 with a brand new design.

Here's the quote from the site in the OP's link...

Fuel Economy

In a phone interview on May 1, 2006 and subsequent email, Jin K. Kim,
Ph.D, Managing Member, Angel Labs, LLC said that the design of the
engine is such that there is a "long dwell time at top dead center."
This means that there is a much higher chance that all of the fuel is
ignited, resulting in achieving "very close to 100% theoretical efficiency."
...
"One more factor is much higher mechanical efficiency due to
radically small number of components. (only 20 parts vs. thousands.)"


What else can I say...it's what I said it was--he claims the mechanical
efficiency is going to be very high; I simply said I doubt that and that
the claim based purely on component count is specious.

What else you want?

--

"dpb" wrote in message ...
J. Clarke wrote:
...

The actual claim I saw was 60 percent. IIRC the best diesels achieve
around 50 percent when running on their design condition. Saw no claim
on his site that he was going to achieve 100 percent. I'd be very
surprised if he hits a real-world 60 with a brand new design.

Here's the quote from the site in the OP's link...

Fuel Economy

In a phone interview on May 1, 2006 and subsequent email, Jin K. Kim,
Ph.D, Managing Member, Angel Labs, LLC said that the design of the
engine is such that there is a "long dwell time at top dead center."
This means that there is a much higher chance that all of the fuel is
ignited, resulting in achieving "very close to 100% theoretical
efficiency."
...
"One more factor is much higher mechanical efficiency due to
radically small number of components. (only 20 parts vs. thousands.)"


What else can I say...it's what I said it was--he claims the mechanical
efficiency is going to be very high; I simply said I doubt that and that
the claim based purely on component count is specious.

What else you want?

--


What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?

"LD" wrote in message
...
"dpb" wrote in message ...
J. Clarke wrote:
...

The actual claim I saw was 60 percent. IIRC the best diesels achieve
around 50 percent when running on their design condition. Saw no claim
on his site that he was going to achieve 100 percent. I'd be very
surprised if he hits a real-world 60 with a brand new design.

Here's the quote from the site in the OP's link...

Fuel Economy

In a phone interview on May 1, 2006 and subsequent email, Jin K. Kim,
Ph.D, Managing Member, Angel Labs, LLC said that the design of the
engine is such that there is a "long dwell time at top dead center."
This means that there is a much higher chance that all of the fuel is
ignited, resulting in achieving "very close to 100% theoretical
efficiency."
...
"One more factor is much higher mechanical efficiency due to
radically small number of components. (only 20 parts vs. thousands.)"


What else can I say...it's what I said it was--he claims the mechanical
efficiency is going to be very high; I simply said I doubt that and that
the claim based purely on component count is specious.

What else you want?

--


What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?

Which part would you like to better explain?

dpb wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
...

The actual claim I saw was 60 percent. IIRC the best diesels
achieve
around 50 percent when running on their design condition. Saw no
claim on his site that he was going to achieve 100 percent. I'd be
very surprised if he hits a real-world 60 with a brand new design.

Here's the quote from the site in the OP's link...

Fuel Economy

In a phone interview on May 1, 2006 and subsequent email, Jin K.
Kim,
Ph.D, Managing Member, Angel Labs, LLC said that the design of the
engine is such that there is a "long dwell time at top dead
center."
This means that there is a much higher chance that all of the fuel
is
ignited, resulting in achieving "very close to 100% theoretical
efficiency." ...
"One more factor is much higher mechanical efficiency due to
radically small number of components. (only 20 parts vs.
thousands.)"


What else can I say...it's what I said it was--he claims the
mechanical efficiency is going to be very high; I simply said I
doubt
that and that the claim based purely on component count is specious.

What else you want?

I interpreted that to mean that he thought he was going to come close
to the theoretical ideal efficiency, not that the theoretical
efficiency was going to be 100 percent. Note the the person giving
the interview was identified as "Jin K. Kim" and his title "Managing
member". The guy who designed the thing is named Morgado. "Managing
member" sounds like a bean counter from the venture capitalist, in
which case he is parroting his own misunderstanding of something that
he has been told.

I think you're reading far, far too much into that statement.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

MikeWhy wrote:

What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?

Which part would you like to better explain?

Theoretically if I could power my truck with salt water, the worlds
oceans would be my gas station. Obama Ben Laden and his fellow
socialists would have to tax the **** out of something else to power the
destruction of the free market.

--
Jack
Using FREE News Server: http://Motzarella.org
http://jbstein.com

"Jack Stein" wrote in message
...
MikeWhy wrote:

What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?

Which part would you like to better explain?

Theoretically if I could power my truck with salt water, the worlds oceans
would be my gas station. Obama Ben Laden and his fellow socialists would
have to tax the **** out of something else to power the destruction of the
free market.

That'd be nice. What's the heat content of 1 mol of seawater?

Some nations taxed salt very heavily. You might be surprised who, which, and
how much.

MikeWhy wrote:
"Jack Stein" wrote in message
...
MikeWhy wrote:

What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?

Which part would you like to better explain?

Theoretically if I could power my truck with salt water, the worlds
oceans would be my gas station. Obama Ben Laden and his fellow
socialists would have to tax the **** out of something else to power
the destruction of the free market.

That'd be nice. What's the heat content of 1 mol of seawater?

Damned if I know, but theoretically, if it contained enough heat to
drive me from here to Florida and back, I wouldn't need to worry about
big oil hiring a spook to kill off this internal engine breakthrough.

Some nations taxed salt very heavily. You might be surprised who, which,
and how much.

All I need to know is the big oil tycoons make less on a gallon of gas
they sell than the government does... well, it makes me feel a lot
better also knowing that every damned penny the government gets from Big
Oil comes out of my pockets.

--
Jack
Using FREE News Server: http://Motzarella.org
http://jbstein.com

Jack Stein wrote:

All I need to know is the big oil tycoons make less on a gallon of gas
than the government does... well, it makes me feel a lot
better also knowing that every damned penny the government gets from Big
Oil comes out of my pockets.

Hey, maybe the government is the one hiring the spooks to bury the water
carburator guy and the small engine guy for threatening their money
stealing machine.

Yeah, now were getting somewhere... now that I think about it, they
don't even have to hire any spooks, they already have the CIA.

Oops, sorry Jack, didn't mean to butt into your brilliant conversation...

--
Jack
Using FREE News Server: http://Motzarella.org
http://jbstein.com

Jack Stein wrote:
: MikeWhy wrote:

: What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?
:
: Which part would you like to better explain?

Obama Ben Laden and his fellow
: socialists would have to tax the **** out of something else to power the
: destruction of the free market.

The free market seems to be doing a dandy job of destroying itself
all by its little lonesome.

-- Andy Barss

On Feb 12, 3:32*pm, Andrew Barss wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:
: MikeWhy wrote:

: What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?
:
: Which part would you like to better explain?

Obama Ben Laden and his fellow
: socialists would have to tax the **** out of something else to power the
: destruction of the free market.

The free market seems to be doing a dandy job of destroying itself
all by its little lonesome.

Free market? Where? We all lost that war a looooong time ago.

JP

Andrew Barss wrote:

Jack Stein wrote:
: MikeWhy wrote:

: What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?
:
: Which part would you like to better explain?

Obama Ben Laden and his fellow
: socialists would have to tax the **** out of something else to power the
: destruction of the free market.

The free market seems to be doing a dandy job of destroying itself
all by its little lonesome.

-- Andy Barss

Free market? Yeah, if banks hadn't been forced/incentivized to make home
loans to people who couldn't afford to repay -- that wasn't free market --
that was Barney Frank, Chris Countrywide Dodd, et al who initiated that
debacle.

Free market right now is doing just fine on the oil price front. That
will be fixed pretty quick I'm sure when The One starts meddling with those
carbon credits and other mechanisms to combat an imagined and propagandized
environmental threat.

--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

Andrew Barss wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:
: MikeWhy wrote:

: What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?
:
: Which part would you like to better explain?

Obama Ben Laden and his fellow
: socialists would have to tax the **** out of something else to power the
: destruction of the free market.

The free market seems to be doing a dandy job of destroying itself
all by its little lonesome.

Which free market is that?
--
Jack
Using FREE News Server: http://Motzarella.org
http://jbstein.com

Jay Pique wrote:
On Feb 12, 3:32 pm, Andrew Barss wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:
: MikeWhy wrote:

: What part of "theoretical efficiency" didn't you guys understand?
:
: Which part would you like to better explain?

Obama Ben Laden and his fellow
: socialists would have to tax the **** out of something else to power the
: destruction of the free market.

The free market seems to be doing a dandy job of destroying itself
all by its little lonesome.

Free market? Where? We all lost that war a looooong time ago.

Like broiling a frog... A lot of people didn't seem to notice...


--
Jack
Using FREE News Server: http://Motzarella.org
http://jbstein.com

Mark & Juanita wrote:

Free market? Yeah, if banks hadn't been forced/incentivized to make home
loans to people who couldn't afford to repay -- that wasn't free market --
that was Barney Frank, Chris Countrywide Dodd, et al who initiated that
debacle.

Nobody forced anyone.

A good friend of mine was a pretty big wheel at MLN (Mortgage Lenders
Network), a 2000-2500 employee mortgage company that was one of the
early ones to go bust.

She made a killing for 4-5 years, and it had nothing to do with incentives.

- Drive-by appraisals by captive appraisers
- Interest-only loans with nothing down
- Pick-a-payment, negative am loans

Hey, real estate only goes up, right?

They wrote the loans, split and diluted them into securities, and sold
them. No prodding needed. Did I mention her home is paid for? G

On the other hand, my credit union, who never participated in any of
that, and requires 20% of unborrowed down payment for a mortgage, was
easily able to approve me to buy another toybkspbkspbksp er..
airplane in early January, when there apparently was NO money flowing
anywhere.

I find it hard to believe so many credit unions never got involved in
sub-prime at all, but others were "forced"? Hardly...

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:00:59 -0500, B A R R Y wrote:


Free market? Yeah, if banks hadn't been forced/incentivized to make
home
loans to people who couldn't afford to repay -- that wasn't free market
-- that was Barney Frank, Chris Countrywide Dodd, et al who initiated
that debacle.

Nobody forced anyone.

A good friend of mine was a pretty big wheel at MLN (Mortgage Lenders
Network), a 2000-2500 employee mortgage company that was one of the
early ones to go bust.

She made a killing for 4-5 years, and it had nothing to do with
incentives.

- Drive-by appraisals by captive appraisers - Interest-only loans with
nothing down - Pick-a-payment, negative am loans

I've been reading a book called "Chain of Blame" that explains what
happened pretty well.

It only mentions deregulation in passing, which will upset the liberals.
It doesn't blame it all on Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which will upset
the conservatives. All in all, a pretty balanced analysis.

Talks about all the major players and their part in the meltdown. In
essence, like you said, it was a bunch of mortgage brokers and non-bank
lenders doing things that, if not illegal, were certainly unethical.

"Larry Blanchard" wrote

I've been reading a book called "Chain of Blame" that explains what
happened pretty well.

It only mentions deregulation in passing, which will upset the liberals.
It doesn't blame it all on Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which will upset
the conservatives. All in all, a pretty balanced analysis.

Talks about all the major players and their part in the meltdown. In
essence, like you said, it was a bunch of mortgage brokers and non-bank
lenders doing things that, if not illegal, were certainly unethical.

I was amazed by the stories of the "mortgage sluts".

Apparently, attractive young women were seducing both mortgate clients and
various bamker/security guys to both get the biz and approve of loans that
did not even meet their standards. I suppose it makes sense. But it was
quite brazen.

How come nothing like that ever happened to me? "-(

B A R R Y wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:

Free market? Yeah, if banks hadn't been forced/incentivized to make
home
loans to people who couldn't afford to repay -- that wasn't free market
-- that was Barney Frank, Chris Countrywide Dodd, et al who initiated
that debacle.

Nobody forced anyone.

A good friend of mine was a pretty big wheel at MLN (Mortgage Lenders
Network), a 2000-2500 employee mortgage company that was one of the
early ones to go bust.

She made a killing for 4-5 years, and it had nothing to do with
incentives.

- Drive-by appraisals by captive appraisers
- Interest-only loans with nothing down
- Pick-a-payment, negative am loans

Hey, real estate only goes up, right?

They wrote the loans, split and diluted them into securities, and sold
them. No prodding needed. Did I mention her home is paid for? G

On the other hand, my credit union, who never participated in any of
that, and requires 20% of unborrowed down payment for a mortgage, was
easily able to approve me to buy another toybkspbkspbksp er..
airplane in early January, when there apparently was NO money flowing
anywhere.

I find it hard to believe so many credit unions never got involved in
sub-prime at all, but others were "forced"? Hardly...


From the middle to end of the bubble I would agree with the analysis that
everyone was jumping in on it. The initial impetus for the whole debacle
does rest upon Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the CRA. The notion of the
government guaranteeing loans led to abuse on both government and private
industry sides. The idea of "affordable housing for everyone" with threats
by the justice department (Janet Reno era) to prosecute banks for failing
to loan to these new looser standards led to the creation of the
mortgage-backed securities market (my speculation is that the banks,
recognizing the risk, came up with a means of spreading the risk around).
Given that the government through FMae and FMac had pretty much promised to
back these risky loans, that opened the floodgates for the rest of the
subprime industry that sprang up around this government-guaranteed lending
approach.

That, plus your assessment later that people got carried away with the
notion that prices of real-estate only go up continued to feed the fire. I
was disabused of that notion early in 1987 after we had bought our first
house and the housing market at that time took a serious dive -- actually,
that's not totally true, I knew about business cycles and expected ups and
downs, just not such a big down that soon after buying. Anyone standing
outside the whole frenzy could easily see that this was not going to end
well and that prices were eventually going to crash, just as they always do
at the end of an unsustainable business cycle. People who should have been
able to afford houses were being priced out of the market, people who
should never have been given loans were getting them for outrageously
priced housing -- who would have thought that this was going to crash? [he
asks, sarcastically].

My concern is that the very people who helped stoke this fire are now the
ones in charge of fixing it -- they are blaming and threatening the banks
for implementing the very standards that these congresscritters were
pushing.


--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
m...
The idea of "affordable housing for everyone" with threats
by the justice department (Janet Reno era) to prosecute banks for failing
to loan to these new looser standards led to the creation of the
mortgage-backed securities market (my speculation is that the banks,
recognizing the risk, came up with a means of spreading the risk around).

That's only half right. Mortgage backed securities were not new with the
bubble. Pretty much all loans and credit are sold as bonds or credit
derivatives. The lender, say the bank in this case, doesn't want to or
cannot by law hold the entire risk. Those loans are bundled and sold to
investors. What should really irk you is that the investors are almost all
professionals and institutions, not Joe Blow homeowner throwing darts at his
investment board, and understood the risks of those investments. The normal
presumption, especially in credit markets, is that returns are tied very
closely to risk. Low risk, low yield; higher risk, higher yield. Investors
demand the higher yield, a higher return on investment, for assuming the
risk. Buying out the investors' risk and exposure with the bailout amounted
to rewarding them with the high returns without the risk.

MikeWhy wrote:

"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
m...
The idea of "affordable housing for everyone" with threats
by the justice department (Janet Reno era) to prosecute banks for failing
to loan to these new looser standards led to the creation of the
mortgage-backed securities market (my speculation is that the banks,
recognizing the risk, came up with a means of spreading the risk around).

That's only half right. Mortgage backed securities were not new with the
bubble. Pretty much all loans and credit are sold as bonds or credit
derivatives. The lender, say the bank in this case, doesn't want to or
cannot by law hold the entire risk. Those loans are bundled and sold to
investors. What should really irk you is that the investors are almost all
professionals and institutions, not Joe Blow homeowner throwing darts at
his investment board, and understood the risks of those investments. The
normal presumption, especially in credit markets, is that returns are tied
very closely to risk. Low risk, low yield; higher risk, higher yield.
Investors demand the higher yield, a higher return on investment, for
assuming the risk. Buying out the investors' risk and exposure with the
bailout amounted to rewarding them with the high returns without the risk.


Don't disagree with that at all. Bottom line is that with the bailout,
this just passed donation to DNC patrons (can't come close to really
calling it a stimulus), TARP II, TARP III, TARP reloaded, etc. we are
rewarding failure and penalizing success. This is going to have
consequences and they are not going to be good.


--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough

Mark & Juanita wrote:

Don't disagree with that at all. Bottom line is that with the bailout,
this just passed donation to DNC patrons (can't come close to really
calling it a stimulus), TARP II, TARP III, TARP reloaded, etc. we are
rewarding failure and penalizing success. This is going to have
consequences and they are not going to be good.

Well if you hate America, but would love AmeriKa, then the consequences
will be wonderful.

Amerika seems to have voted for socialism, so socialism it tis. Go Marx,
go Stalin, Go Mao, Go Hitler, Go Obama... If you don't like it, I think
you need to move to another planet... I doubt anyone has the balls to
fight another Hitler...

--
Jack
Using FREE News Server: http://Motzarella.org
http://jbstein.com

On Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:16:52 -0500, Jack Stein
wrote:

Mark & Juanita wrote:

Don't disagree with that at all. Bottom line is that with the bailout,
this just passed donation to DNC patrons (can't come close to really
calling it a stimulus), TARP II, TARP III, TARP reloaded, etc. we are
rewarding failure and penalizing success. This is going to have
consequences and they are not going to be good.

Well if you hate America, but would love AmeriKa, then the consequences
will be wonderful.

Amerika seems to have voted for socialism, so socialism it tis. Go Marx,
go Stalin, Go Mao, Go Hitler, Go Obama... If you don't like it, I think
you need to move to another planet... I doubt anyone has the balls to
fight another Hitler...

Perhaps, but another Hitler we will have.