Anybody ever heard of a chap called Keith Hall?

[Simon]

Aparrently he used to work on the GT40 engines at Fords in the sixties.
I'm only asking because I saw him last night presenting a new engine design to a group of Venture capitalists in London. He says that his (petrol driven) engine produces more power, is cleaner and much smoother than a standard ic engine. he also says it's much more economical. He says an engine to power a Fiesta sized car will give the same performance but should easily give 100 mpg!
Seems a bit like alchemy to me, I'm sure there have been lots of claims like this over the years, but I just wondered what his credentials were?
Simon

[ChrisL]

Advanced appologies for sidetracking a little. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

An Australian invertor by the name of Ralph Sarich developed an extremely echonomical orbital engine in the early 70s that was hailed as the next big thing in petrol powered engines. It never made it to market and rumours flowed from "it just didn't run" to "the oil companies have payed him not to build it". The company is still around today making all sorts of inovations in the automotive industry, and even have (had?) Ford in their customer books.

Orbital Engine Corporation

[norman falkiner]

Ralph Sarich's original orbital engine if I recall never worked but in trying to make it work they developed fuel injection systems for two strokes. Some of which are used today by large manufacturers of outboards,and motor bikes. I have driven a couple of cars with the two stroke motor(in line not orbital) and they were fantastic. One was a six cylinder in a 3 series BMW and you could take it down to 800 revs in third gear and it would pull away very strongly, and being two stroke and firing each stroke it was like a tiny twelve cylinder. The emissions were ahead of the toughest world standards, and as it consumed oil, the oil was only topped up and never changed. The reason Ford walked away at the 11th hour was never disclosed but rumours included the worry that they may produce another Edsal or a Wankel like problem, tooling up for a two stroke car engine was expensive and Joe public would take some convincing to change. A real pity it did not make it big time. I might add Sarich cashed out of the company close to the top and is now one of Australia's richest from property investment. Regards