This gets to be an amazing arguement to say the least, something like standing in a crowded room of 100 people
all discussing differing subjects, like politics, religion, and gay rights!
it gets hard to follow, and very easy to get lost, in the hooopla.
i would agree that it is going to be very near impossible to improve the basic lister design for most of us
mere mortals. we are stuck with what we got, and modifying in part of it is difficult if not impossible.
And to what end, if you can't accurately measure the before product, how you going to tell if you have a
meaningful improvement?
i think lister got it pretty damn right to begin with, and failing having alot of time, specialized machine work, specialized test
equipment and a butt load of money, one is likely not to improve on the original design in any significant way at least in thermal efficiency, fuel consumption, or emmissions.
But here again, i said i "think", and that is all most of you have going for you so far. that is "i think" or "i feel" or " i believe"
basically all being either "theory" " hypothesis" or "conjecture"
i am all ears to the first guy that comes up not only with his theory/hypothesis/conjecture, but a test stand using instrumentation and scientific procedure and analysis to publish actual supporting evidence.
even in the world of scientific investigation the reports are followed by conclusions that are carefully worded such as:
1 according to our findings..... it would appear.....
2. our testing has shown.....
3. more work has to be done.......
4. possibly the results we came up with were caused by something other than what we saw.....
and all sorts of other statements, indicating that perhaps their findings while showing promise may or may not be what
they have found.
only after others have documented similar results independantly does the scientific community accept something as "maybe" being fact.
up till now in this discussion all i see is a bunch of fairly intelligent folks kicking sand in each others face.
Guy: i like your anvil analogy, hard to improve on time proven technology to say the least as it applies to anvils, harder still to find suitable material to build one.
many old engines, such as Bugatti's et al. having roller or ball brg mains and rods, and a plethora of other inovative engineering feets are still hard to improve on today. the biggest improvements came with improved metallurgy, not design.
makes you wonder what guys like them could have done with todays technology.
anyone got the time, space and inclination to set up a proper test bed to test an original and make mod's to retest and get
some useful feedback as to what actually works?
bob g