[qr20de]

Originally Posted by SS-Traveller

More electronics. More control modules. More patented technologies. More complications. More things to go wrong.

All for the sake of reducing emissions from the internal combustion engine.

No major advantage for the driving enthusiast. But this is technology that will become common soon, whether we like it or not. Like fuel injection, EGR, DPF and a multitude of other techs that are purely focussed on emission control.

Hell Yeah! Couldn't agree with you more. As a self certified grease monkey, electronics are helpful and beneficial, till a point. Good old mechanicals will never let you down!

[ringoism]

Originally Posted by qr20de

Hell Yeah! Couldn't agree with you more. As a self certified grease monkey, electronics are helpful and beneficial, till a point. Good old mechanicals will never let you down!

More correctly, Good old mechanicals will sometimes let you down - but at least (if you're a grease monkey) you can usually fix them yourself, and it won't cost you a small fortune to do so.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Its been available for a long time, not for car engines, but it has been applied in Marine Diesels. E.g. MAN has had a camless engine on the market for many years. Others too.

Indeed been around awhile. I think there was an issue of Popular Mechanics magazine back in the 1980's/early 90's that had a feature on a company who had developed such a system for automotive applications. Seems we've been on the verge of things like mass-market direct-injection 2-strokes, self-navigating/driverless cars, and stuff like these camless engines - for many decades. Some will finally come to fruition, others will be forgotten as they are leap-frogged by solutions on completely different lines.

-Eric

[ringoism]

Originally Posted by qr20de

Hell Yeah! Couldn't agree with you more. As a self certified grease monkey, electronics are helpful and beneficial, till a point. Good old mechanicals will never let you down!

More correctly, Good old mechanicals will sometimes let you down - but at least (if you're a grease monkey) you can usually fix them yourself, and it won't cost you a small fortune to do so.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Its been available for a long time, not for car engines, but it has been applied in Marine Diesels. E.g. MAN has had a camless engine on the market for many years. Others too.

Indeed been around awhile. I think there was an issue of Popular Mechanics magazine back in the 1980's/early 90's that had a feature on a company who had developed such a system for automotive applications. Seems we've been on the verge of things like mass-market direct-injection 2-strokes (recent Jawa thread), self-navigating/driverless cars, and stuff like these camless engines - for many decades. Some will finally come to fruition in some form, others will be forgotten as they are deemed obsolete by changes in the scenery, and/or leap-frogged by better solutions on completely different lines.

-Eric

[ringoism]

Mods: my apologies re: the double/uncombined posts here... please rectify.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

These days turbo lag is a thing more or less of the past for most car engines at least. On plenty of cars you would simply not notice, or even care, whether you have or not have a turbo. As an example, bit extreme; I had the pleasure of test driving the new Porsche Panamera recently. Not sure what you are comparing to? Turbo engines have been available for cars for more than two decades at least...

Also, I can’t speak for India, but in Europe fuel injection was introduced as the big sexy power boost.

Turbo lag is alive and well, if not in the Panamera, then in most of the modern Indian-market cars I've driven (test-drive an mHawk if you don't believe this - just horrible). Felt it a bit in the Gurkha I drove last week, the Safaris / Turbo Victa's were famously bad this way, and even the CRDe's in the Thar have issues with it. There'd be a thread or two out there on this.

To add some North-American data: AFAIK first marketed turbo cars: 1962 Olds F-85 and 1962-1/2 Corvair Spyder. Then after a long hiatus, the 1981 Pontiac TransAm: A 4.9L turbo V8 to replace the earlier 6.6L normally-aspirated. And the same year the 1981 Datsun 280ZX Turbo - a wonderful car - I had a modified '83 2+2 (that had more lag as the mods progressed, but more peak power, too). So it's been many, many decades now!

First FI (mechanical unit) in the U.S. market was the 1957 Corvette - Definitely powerful for the engine size by standards of that day - highest output per engine displacement available. Pontiac offered it a year or so after maybe, on a very limited basis.

All this about turbos/FI could be tangential but to say that sometimes, despite ongoing improvements / refinements, the basic limitations of a technology will end up being around for a long, long time. As others have noted above, camless engines never really came into the foray till now because it was possible to develop cammed engines that met requirements quite economically / simply. In an age of unexpectedly still plentiful / cheap oil reserves, economic realities have also been holding back development of electric / fuel-cell powered cars. The Tesla is a wonderful product, but I wonder if it will ultimately survive this latest glut in the world oil market (and/or the policies of the new U.S. Administration). Will camshafts be replaced on a large scale before the IC engine itself becomes obsolete? It depends on a lot of things - some of them unpredictable - besides the technical / manufacturing ability.

-Eric

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by Sankar

Throttle body: Throttle body controls intake of air. With camless engines intake of air into the cylinder can be controlled by the valves themselves. Valves need not close and open with engine revolutions. Its independent. With the finer control of individual valves made possible by these electro-hydraulic and electro-pneumatic systems the TB will become redundant.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

It will be a long time before they can do away with the throttle body.
Jeroen

Camless engines are still not a production reality, but two manufacturers have come out with production engines with cams that doesnt need a throttle body to control air past a particular pedal input. One is Nissan and the other is Fiat. These engines still have a throttle body but only as a backup and operates at certain conditions.

When these cam operated engines can make a throttle body almost redundant, it will be history with the camless engines. If the valves themselves can control the air intake into the cylinders the engine doesnt need a throttle body who's sole function is as an air control device.

More details below. Jason as usual does a very good job of explaining things.

https://youtu.be/v3QxsJRNigs

[Sankar]

Another video on the same topic. Mute it and watch.

https://youtu.be/6i1rBkP8dYs

Variable Valve Magic!

[Sutripta]

BMW Valvetronic?

Regards
Sutripta

[Sankar]

That too and Fiat Multiair. These three only as of now i think?