goodvibes

the 'stoichometric' ratio used to be 15 to 1 by weight, so sounds about right to me, ithink it means ratio reqd for complete combustion,but dont quote me on that, its a ,long time since i read
anything about petrol engines. their trying to make them run on as lean a mixture as possible ,partly for economy and maybe for emission control.
if you take that to the extreme,lean mixture that is, you would end up with,guess what? a petrol engine that didn't have a throttle, the power would be varied by just changing the amount of fuel injected, no throttle means operating at max compression all the time, very efficient. id buy one tomorrow just one snag, isnt there always? with all the brains on the planet
no one seems able to make massive air to petrol ratios ignite with a spark , have a think about it, if you can crack that one, you could write your own cheque!.
as to fuel air ratios on a diesel, i dont think there is one, my guess is because of the very high compression , constant, because theres no throttling of the air, you simply inject as much or as little as you want , up tothe point where the smoke becomes unacceptable, diesels would be much more powerfull if you were allowed to inject as much fuel as you wanted, but the smoke produced would prohibit it.'
this is all from what i remember from many years ago when i used to bury my head in all sorts of technical books, im a' walking question mark' basicly, how about some clever engine designer out there stepping in and clearing up any mistakes or doubts, dont be shy, some of us want to know, dont keep it to yourself.
vain? give me a minute to stop laughing on that one, trust me , if you could see me, that is the last thing you'd say.
mike.[humble].