Somender Grooves Revisited

[theastronaut]

So you're only getting 30 mpg mixed city/highway?

My old worn out 1600 with bolt ons (36 DRLA's, modified stock muffler, 12# flywheel, and 1.25 rockers) would never get worse than 28 city mpg driving it HARD, and normally got 32ish around town if I somewhat behaved while driving it. It got 36.25 mph highway with a german 009- no SVDA to help the mileage out. It could have gotten 40 with more tuning and a SVDA, with low stock compression and no special "high tech" combustion chamber mods. It never pinged, drivebility was amazing, and was pretty quick for a 1600.

I don't really see what you've accomplished?
_________________
Strive for perfection in everything. Take the best that exist and make it better. If it doesn't exist, create it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough."
-Sir Henry Royce, co-founder of Rolls-Royce

'64 Sunroof OG Bahama Blue
'66 Bug
Pro-Touring '66 Chevy C10 Short Fleet Big Window Build

[mark tucker]

what a astronut. open your eyes!!! 7 pages accomplished, not quite a fivelugshortaxle saga but somethen to be proud of.Might be able to get 8 if we all try hard.but he did document his findings and let us know the outcome,so that counts for somethen.And he has been working on his stuff trying to better it,and him self.witch is better than just taking it to somebody then bitching about what they think is wrong with the guys work that they dont have a clue how to do, but sure can piss&moan it was done rong.but how do they know???
Your turn.

[MinamiKotaro]

[Eric Hodges]

Paleese! It's not just a 1600, it's a 1776 with a W100 cam and a zoom tube on a stock exhaust with home ported stock heads.

Every 'normal' add-on would be worth real mpg, but I didn't want to put out the $$$ for the parts.

Fill in the list of parts I didn't use if you like:

Duals____
Header___
Muffler____
Pro heads___

It could be $3000-$4000 for 40hp more than I've got in mine and maybe 5mpg. There are 'real' engine builders here that make and sell 200hp turnkey motors, but that is not attractive to me to put $10k worth of sombody else's expertise under my decklid. I'm not a checkbook kind of hot-rodder.

Back in the old days, this could not have been done because of the prevailing common wisdom: big compression, big cam, big ports, big power and 2000rpm idle. I know that same wisdom exists today on these pages but the technology moves on and so must we. It is the way of the world.

I was there in the old days and drove/owned them. Some had nice power in the right range but ran like crap someplace else. Not fun to live with.

Regards
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'74 Super, worn, becoming DD

[Bruce]

[Altema]

[Eric Hodges]

Hummm, still chuckling..

No proof indeed. I'm running 10.1:1 SCR, 9:1 DCR. I have sped up the burn to only need 20deg initial + mechanical advance and still get 30mpg with a W100 cam and a progressive!

Without serious consideration, I'd say a 'normal' combo would run like crap with 20 degrees advance, barely get 20mpg and overheat to boot.

I'll post the photos of my 4th gear wheelie on the fwy at 55mph.

A trip to the track would be a laugh riot. Fatso Superbeetle with skinny tires, questionable motor mounts and dead shocks. A thrill ride for sure!

Regards.
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'74 Super, worn, becoming DD

[theastronaut]

[mightymouse]

Uhm.... i just read this entire thread every post. And this needs to be used as proof for why NOBODY should EVER run a piece of shit progressive on a VW engine... EVER

My 2nd thought is.... if i built the exact same engine WITHOUT the grooves. It would also need 20 degrees timing to keep from pinging.
Too much compression and not enough cam is gonna make heat which will cause you to need less timing to combat multiple flame fronts. You cant even get enough octane at the pump to support a 9 to 1 dynamic CR engine.
It may be working good though as it may have made the burn more efficient But its gonna cause you all kinds of tune heartaches (sound familiar) and inaudible detonation is a VERY high probability and should show up in your rod bearings in the long run.

Im very open minded and this whole deal sounds pretty cool so i will be reading more on it.
But ive been deep in engine tech, research, design and builds since about 1990 and ive built all kinds of oddball stuff. Never seen anything like these little grooves.
So im thinking that if they were really the magic touch, id have run acrossed them at some point. Not to sound close minded because my experience is one little guy in a big ass world, but i do read and look at TONS of shit. Surprised i havent run into this.

Id love to see you take off your heads and slap on some identical ones WITHOUT the grooves. See what your outcome is.

THAT would solidify all this.
_________________
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson


Note to EVERYONE.
Know your ZDDP levels or you WILL lose a cam and lifters.

[Altema]

[Altema]

[Bruce]

Eric, take it to your local track and make a bunch of passes. Ignore the ET, since you say you have crappy trans mounts and skinny tires, inconsistent ETs will be due to those, and driver inexperience.
It's the MPH that is meaningful. It doesn't matter how badly you get off the line, your MPH at the end won't change much.
Then, make sure you put the car on the scale at the track to find the weight as run, with your butt in the car.
With those two pieces of info, your hp can be calculated.

Then take your heads off and fill the grooves with JB-Weld and put them back on with NO other changes. Make all your observations all over again.

If you don't do any comparisons, you are just blowing wild guesses.
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[Eric Hodges]

It will have to be guesses then. The point of the grooves is to even out the low speed behavior, not make big horsepower. There is no way I know of to get more power that does not involve more flow throught the heads, a bigger bang (compression) and higher rpm. There is no free lunch.

Read over the laborious posts and you should see my quest has been for good behavior, good power and good mileage using mostly stock parts. There are no pricey items anywhere and I would be surprised and pleased if the power was even close to the 'normal' high performance build of anyone else's 1776.

My memory of VW's drops off when the 1600 was new and it had a soggy bottom end compared with a 40hp engine with one of these new fangled big bore kits. Now that was a grin off the line. I actually met a guy that claimed to have made the first kits out of billet cast iron!! Racing? Too much $$.

I set out to build a strong runner and I did it. The only point was to amuse me. Times? Race? Compete? Not interested. Fast = $$, how much do you want to spend? Somebody will always have a faster combo.

I could have built/bought MUCH more power but I was/am after doing it all myself, getting the most out of an underdog and maybe tweak the status quo just a bit. I guess it was a success.

For more info, search Somender Singh, the man behind the grooves, and a blogger called automotivebreath from 2002-2006. This automotivebreath has parameters that should satisfy and very little in the way of A-B comparisons. He got hounded off the internet.

Regards
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'74 Super, worn, becoming DD

[mark tucker]

Im just wondering what low speed behavor is? but it dosent matter.and spending a lot of$$$ has little to do with mpg.and as far as the 20 degree of timing, well that to me shows somebody might need to have somebody check out & tune the motor.but with that said I have never ran a vw of my own that was less than 1874 cc&10.5 cr that got 28-30 mpg. made with a new crank ,heads,fk8 cam,total seal rings& wore out justabout everything else.if your hapy with what you have done great.but without controled scintiffic protocall your gonna catch all kinds of crap.witch is ok also.but you did a fine job of documenting it.a much better job that my spelling witch pissess off more than you did, so who wins??your almost up to 9 pages now,stick a chrome dipstick in for an extra .23 mpg then you might just get to tem pages.thats a 10, pages) good luck and have fun.

[Altema]

[Tom Simon]

Someone tested those Somender Singh grooves on what looked to me to be a pretty decent test bed, using a Geo Metro 3cylinder. They posted a report and pictures of the test, http://www.herningg.com/singh/Engine%20Running%20Tests%20Analysis.pdf I was interested at the time since I have a Geo, and commute 140miles/day.

About the time I was reading on singh grooves, cars that run on CNG, hybrids, GEET, the hydrogen gas generators and such, I sat in on an internal combustion group's quarterly project update. Far from a bunch of back yard hacks, at the time, this group had a funded project with about 7 scientists and engineers on it, sponsored by the US Department of Energy, to work on improving MPG and emissions of current internal combustion engines in automobiles. I admit to not up to speed on all the jargon or much of the physics, but the focus of overcoming the hurdles that limit maintaining a homogenous charge (well mixed) was the theme of most of the research. Apparently this is known to be key, to extracting the most work, while spitting out fewest emissions, from gasoline. OEM's have been raising stock compression ratios higher and higher each year, through better control of the charge, complete burn without overheating and producing Nox gasses, through sensors and better computer controls, and combustion chamber design. These guys are trying to unlock the key to maximun efficiency at all operating rpms and load conditions, not easy.

From the reading I've done on the subject, the premise is those grooves promote better in-chamber mixing (at TDC) for a more homogenous, non-stratified charge, resulting in a faster, more complete burn. Sort of an enabling technology, like John's super squishy pistons, where both allow the builder to raise the static compression ratio for a more efficient running engine, without the detonation normally associated with that. Ever notice that the OEM's with 4 valves/cylinder have been able to raise compression ratios and MPG's each year, yet still run those engines on regular gas and today burn cleaner than ever before? Ever read about 'golf ball like dimples' on carefully selected small areas of pistons and inside of combustion chambers, to stimulate 'dead air zones' and promote mixing? Better the mixing, the faster the burn and less timing you need, potentially more power to the ground and less fuel needed to maintain speed.

From some of the other engines tested and results reported, it seems that the older the chamber design, the more difference the tester sees.

There is plenty of good reading on the topic, the VW engine seems like a natural mule to test the groove idea with, a little machine work, a used set of heads, some patience... but writing about it won't prove or disprove anything.

One side note about the arguments I read here; Guys will spend 45 minutes writing a diatribe explaining, then continue the following days again and again why someone's 'out of the box' idea is complete BS. Yet that same guy won't spend 15 minutes trying to understand why something might work, or not. Puzzling human nature I guess.

[modok]

[GusC2it]

ON My latest Tp4 2L. bus engine, I reduced the deck aquish to .028, way less the the recomended mimiun of .040, and added 4 groves. I posit that the tighter the squish area the greater the benifit of the groves. Anyway, the engine runs super sweet and its all a labor of love. The groves produce a high velosity jets aimed at the spark plugand that mixes the mixture for a more complete burn.
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[mark tucker]

do that with out the groves now and see the diferance.what is pushing the air through the grooves at the sparking bolt??are the grooves recevers for ribs on the pistons? just making the squish where you have it will make the turbulance&squish/squirt you want, I doubt the groves did squat.yes a disel has a trough/grove what ever but these arnt diesels.and thats not what it's there for in a diesel.

[theastronaut]

I'm with Mark on this one, what is making this jet of air/gas mix come out of the groove? There has to be less squish where the groove is, since the deck height in the groove itself is considerably larger in the groove itself, so the open groove would have to serve as a low pressure area for the tighter decked areas surrounding the groove.

I posted this earlier, and still think it's true-

"Grooves can't add any quench/squish, they just add "holes" in the turbulence coming from the quench pad area."
_________________
Strive for perfection in everything. Take the best that exist and make it better. If it doesn't exist, create it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough."
-Sir Henry Royce, co-founder of Rolls-Royce

'64 Sunroof OG Bahama Blue
'66 Bug
Pro-Touring '66 Chevy C10 Short Fleet Big Window Build