i.e. let’s say you have a land-speed record car with two engines. You want to avoid and problems with different rpm. Could you fabricate a twin-distributor drive like on a Top Fuel car and run plug wires to both engines?
Both throttles would still need to be in synch, but would this ignition system make them run smoother? Is it even a problem??
I was hoping this was about model rockets, I’ve got this idea for a multi-engine rocket that would be so cool.
Wouldn’t some sort of electronic ignition system be much easier, just create a 16 plug electronic ignition that is not for 16 cylinders but for 8x2?
You could use one engine to produce the spark for two, but there is a real problem with this approach.
if the engines get even a couple of RPM out of sync the timming on the slave engine will go all to hell. At high RPM, high load even a few degrees off and you would lunch the motor.
I don’t think that a common distributor would be enough to synchronize two engines. I think they would have to be running in synchronization or mechanically coupled before this would work.
The distributor has to be driven by one of the two engines. It’s going to make sparks based on the mechanical timing of that engine. Those sparks won’t occur at the right time to run a second engine unless the relationship of the piston positions in the two engines remains exactly identical.
If that relationship drifts a bit, the sparks won’t reach the pistons in the second engine at the right time. If spark timing is wrong, the engine will slow down. Making spark timing worse. Slowing the engine further. The engine will backfire as the spark timing goes way out of spec (firing on the wrong cylinder), and it will eventually stop.
You might be able to tie two ignition computers together and synchronize the engine speed that way. This still means two distributors.
Not so much an answer to your question as an example, if you want to see a twin-engine car in action (in a Hyundai, no less), one competed in Sport Compact Car’s Ultimate Street Car Challenge last year:
http://www.sportcompactcarweb.com/features/0203scc_uscc13/
oops. I meant to add that
the engines would be end-to-end with their cranks joined.
If they share a crank and an ignition system them they would actually be a single engine slightly spread out.