Here's some food for thought:

I was sittin around the other day, thinking about engines, and how they work, and all that jazz, and was thinking that someone needs to design a cool new engine that was different from all the others. Then I got to thinking about the efficiency of a 4-stroke, etc, etc, etc, and somehow for some reason I got a weird idea for an engine. I thought it would be cool to make an engine with a combustion chamber on BOTH sides of the piston, not just one side. This would potentially allow a 4 cylinder engine to have the power of an 8 cylinder, and I assume it would help with airflow through the engine, because on the power stroke of one side of the piston you could be on the exhaust stroke on the other side, and it would push the gasses out quicker. I'm not exactly sure how you would hook it up to the crankshaft, and I'm sure there'd be a lot of other problems I've overlooked, but I just thought it'd be cool if someone invented that.

Ramble on.

 

two combustion chambers per cylinder? so you would basically have an 8 cylinder with extremly small displacement. because what would you need another combustion chamber for if you didnt have another piston?

 

Yeah, sorry I worded that kinda weird. Like you said, it would be one long combustion chamber but combustion would actually occur on both sides of the piston.

 

oic what you mean now i was thinking side by side, thinking about it in my head it seems possible but i dont know how. timing would be crazy to figure out with nowhere to have a crank shaft. you would also need valves on the bottom end of the piston so you would have a camshaft on the underside of the piston as well(domestic set up minus push rods) and lubrication would be another large problem. but with todays technology anything is possible.

 

Any one here got the guts to come up with some sort of picture/drawing for this 4cyl w/ 8cyl power? I think i get what you guys are talking about, but i'm having some trouble visualizing the internals. Just a basic block w/ heads and pistons would work. For those of us also having a problem foreseeing this "engine".....

 

Well see, I can't really draw it because I have no idea how it would work, or how it would be designed, but the basic concept is instead of having combustion occur on one side of the piston, have it occur on both sides.

 

How would you put a connecting rod to a crankshaft?

 

Beats me. I'm sure someone could figure out a way.

 

Where's the oil in this equation?

 

I don't really know how it would work as in how it would all be put together.