Bourke Engine (click for animation)

In a comment to my post last month about Professor Gary Waissi’s new piston engine that has no connecting rods between the pistons and the crankshaft, one of our readers asked about similarities to the Bourke Engine, invented by Russell Bourke. Based on the diagrams of the Bourke motor, that seemed like a good question, so I asked Prof. Waissi about it. I received his reply today. Waissi said that while there were similarities between his engine and Bourke’s, there were also substantial differences, resulting in the Bourke engine having more operating friction. Dr. Waissi also said that he hoped to have a two-cylinder prototype of his own design assembled and running by the end of this year. Waissi’s response after the jump.

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Though much of the attention paid to new automotive drivetrains recently has focused on hybrids and battery electric vehicles, the simple fact is that internal combustion engines are going to be around for a while. They’re still teaching the old dog a few tricks and even coming up with a new breed or two as can be seen every year at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress, in Detroit’s Cobo Hall. There is always at least a handful of inventors and promoters at the SAE confab showing off their new engine designs. Maybe it’s the romantic idea of a lone inventor trying to prove his concept in the face of a skeptical world, but after looking over the convention program, the booth that I most wanted to visit was that for the Waissi Engine, the invention of Gary Waissi, an engineering professor at Arizona State University. (Read More…)