wrote:
On Wed, 1 May 2019 19:24:04 -0700 (PDT), Its Me
wrote:

You actually don't need much of that. I had a friend growing up that
had a neighbor with a "collection" of those old single cylinder engines
that fired once every 4-6 revolutions. They have almost no compression,
and run just fine, sort-of. Similar to this:

http://prestonservices.co.uk/item/horizontal-single-cylinder-workshop-engine/

It was pretty cool to go over on a weekend and see him fire one up.

===

I think those were engines with "spark interrupter" governors. They
had big fly wheels with a lot of momentum. In order to maintain a
constant speed and prevent over revving, the governor would actually
disable the ignition until the speed came back down. I once saw a big
collection at a county fair in upstate NY, and they were a lot of fun
to watch. Running under load they'd generally fire on every
compression stroke.



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They were make-break ignition engines. And I think the intake valve was
kept open to prevent overspeed. They also disconnected the battery, so no
spark at same time. Was to save battery juice. The battery disconnect was
not on all engines. Make break had the points inside the combustion
chamber and no condenser to suppress the spark.