Ion Sense

[JohnP]

Please note, my intent is to provide knock control, and the detection of misfire and pre-ignition, for engines that are too noisy to use acoustic knock sensors.

Primarily, I think these would be racing engines with high clearance forged pistons. Drag racing, probably, as they don't want the engine to come to full operating temperature, where the pistons expand to stock like clearances.

I think another application could be offshore power boats, where they are under sustained load for long periods, where pre-ignition could melt them down in a few seconds. At present, there are no pre-ignition detection systems available, outside of automotive labs.

[JohnP]

I have been reading and gathering patents on ion systems since 2000, when Garfield Willis was active on the old DIY Fuel Injection forum, which later became mega squirt.

Willis was a retired engineer who read and could understand patents by Bosch on wide band O2 sensors, and the Mecel ion patents. He stirred up a lot of interest on the forum in his projects, which he called "EGOR" for the wide band O2, and "Ion Eyes" for the ion sensor.

The forum was supposed to be open source, but he went private with his findings and started marketing the first wide band O2 meter. Then he died.

I understand your longing for PPP control where everything is nirvana, and it's free because it's on the internet, just SOMEone, ANYone, program the damn thing. Here are the waveforms, just DO IT.

But real life gets in the way. I should have been farther along by now, but I had to stop work on it for three years as my wife Shirley lost her battle with cancer, then I lost another year when I was hit by a car while walking and was out of commission for a year.

But as you see, I'm back at it. I'm 78, may not reach my goal, but for now it keeps me out of the pool rooms. Oh, I still go.

[JohnP]

I think this is the original run where I was recording the waveforms on my SONY DAT machine, seen in an earlier post.

I was recording my scope with my phone. It's a lovely little scope, a Leader LBO-315, I paid almost $2k in 1989. A few days after this, I decided to spring for a bigger, brighter scope.

[JohnP]

Mike, forgive me for going off, I didn't mean you in particular. I was on a riff and just went for it.

But you see the difference between a crude system and the lab. There is no way I could develop a control signal from "the second peak" or the "third peak". I don't see them. The signals are not stable enough. I'd say it's doing good just to detect knock.

[JohnP]

This was my first prototype ion processor box, in 2018. Shirley and I actually ran it on a car in 2016. It "had issues". Proto #2 was the one on the 1990 Suburban, generating the waveforms shown earlier, in 2022.

[JohnP]

This was my bench before I designed the ignition tester board. I just kept adding proto boards until it was filled. I finally took a couple months off to design the all in one board.

So, when is PPP coming? I don't know but it was a lot of work just to get to this point. So I kind of roll my eyes when I see that question on ion threads.

Plex, DIY Autotune, or another worm crawling around in the woodwork, like me?

[JohnP]

Ed Van Dyne developed the Smartfire CD ignition with ion sensing in the early 2000's, and eventually sold it to Woodward controls. I don't know if it's still in their catalog.

The first time I saw it, asking price was $22k and that didn't include the knock sensing software. I spoke to someone who had tested it on the dyno and his comment was it didn't work that well. So whatever I come up with has to work better than that.

I'm not a user software guy, so it won't have all the data analysis stuff. But it should, I admit that. My goal is "a simple box" that shows misfire and pre-igntion, and controls knock.

[mpgmike]

Nothing like this is showing up on their site, even using their search feature and "SmartFire". I guess they gave up. The above document is dated 2005.

[JohnP]

In 1996, I developed a display with eight bargraphs, to show the amount of knock retard in each cylinder. It connected to the SafeGuard and was synchronized to the engine with a timing light pickup on #1 spark plug wire.

I was getting ready to start showing it around when I got a call from a guy that said he builds engines for NASCAR. He asked about the SafeGuard and I told him about the new display. He said could you build me one with eight knobs, so I can manually retard each cylinder on the dyno.

I remember I was on the couch having a bite to eat. Swear to GOD, I started sketching the block diagram on my paper towel. I said, yeah, I can do that. He said he needed it before Daytona. It was sometime before Thanksgiving, and I think Daytona is in Feb?

I told him I would try, then got to work. I was a couple months late, so he was no longer interested. I did, however, sell one to a guy that worked with Bill Elliot.

The system was later displayed at the 2000 SuperFlow engine conference, where someone from Richard Childress racing called and asked to borrow it for a week. I was hoping that SuperFlow would test it, but that never happened. Childress racing tested the manual control feature, saying with restrictor plate motors they don't get knock.

At the time, they had ten dynos running, so I was picturing each race team ordering one unit per dyno. I called to talk to them after they returned it, they said it did everything they wanted but they were going to use something from MSD. Or Geico, I forget. I should have charged them a rental fee, but I wasn't business savy.

We showed it to Kenny Duttweiler, who used it to tune a turbo engine for Hot Rod magazine for their "Power Tour" series. So were were in two issues of HotRod that summer. In return, we offered him the unit with the eight manual retard controls, he said no I want the little one, and he named it Son of Knock Finder. He got the only one I built.

I sold a grand total of six of the larger units, world wide. I was only asking $2500. My last sale was in 2001.

[JohnP]

World Headquarters is a spare bedroom in an 1100 sq. ft. condo in Garden Grove, CA.

[JohnP]

I found links to SmartFire, a few years ago, on archive.org:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040525182024/http://adrenalineresearch.com/racecar.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20040114023033/http://www.adrenalineresearch.com/price.htm

[JohnP]

MIke, I re-read the price sheet and just noticed they offered software for PPP:

"Ignition Timing Optimization Software, Includes Knock and Peak Pressure Control", very cool, but no prices are given for the various software packages.

So at one time, PPP was available. I have trouble selling my stuff, they had trouble selling their stuff. Marketing is the key.

Ed Van Dyne, while at Adrenaline Research, was trying to market it to Formula 1, NASCAR, OEM car companies, etc. He eventually found a buyer, in Woodward, but they couldn't do anything with it. Unless they have incorporated something similar into a later product line.

[JohnP]

Ah, finally, I have the noise blank pulse working. I'll make another video tonight to verify we have a clean knock signal.

Last week I thought I had pre-ignition, but it turned out to be ignition noise getting into the knock signal.