Some Effects of Fuel Structure, Tetraethyl Lead, and Engine Deposits On Precombustion Reactions in a Firing Engine

THIS paper presents the latest findings in a 30-year study by GMC Research Laboratories, seeking the cause and prevention of knock in automotive and aircraft engines. The authors made a series of single-cylinder engine studies in which engine firing conditions were directly observed and recorded on supersensitive instruments through a transparent quartz window in the engine cylinder head. This enabled them to duplicate in the laboratory certain conditions in highway driving.

They also secured visible confirmation of how various fuels and fuel blends behave in the critical precombustion process, during the phase when the fuel’s antiknock quality is put to test.