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00:00I'm super excited today. I've got Chris from Speed of Air Pistons. We're going to talk about
00:09his piston technology and we're going to try to find out if there's a kink in the armor,
00:14but I got a feeling we're going to find no kinks. You were a Top Gun trainer?
00:20So I flew in the Marines, flew as fighter pilot in the United States Marine Corps for 24 years.
00:24Wow.
00:24And I was a Harrier pilot, the jump jets, right? Yeah. And flew with the British Royal Navy for three years.
00:32I did a tour up at Fallon. We're the home of Top Gun schools, instructor up there. Flew F-16s, F-18s up there.
00:38So yeah, it's good times.
00:40I'm taking the boys. We're going to Miami Formula One. We leave Thursday to Friday. So we're big speed freaks.
00:47Come on, an F-16, is there anything more like just like make you feel alive than to hit that thing?
00:54No, it's amazing. Yeah, it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on, I guess.
01:00So tell us, Chris, how did you come to own this business, you know, be the CEO of it and the journey? Tell me a little about it.
01:10Yeah, great. For me, I retired from the Marine Corps after 24 years. Wasn't sure what I was going to do.
01:15I knew I didn't want to go fly commercial. I wanted to go from a Formula One driver to a school bus driver.
01:20So I didn't want to go commercial aviation. I didn't want to do anything with the government.
01:24I just wanted to get out and do something sort of entrepreneurial. And Caterpillar came to college.
01:28So I went and worked for Caterpillar for a few years. And I rebuilt a facility in Reno, Nevada, a remanufacturing facility.
01:35So rebuilt engines and torque converters and transmissions and final drive assemblies and the rest of it.
01:40So I rebuilt that. I did like a $30 million renovation and expansion of that business.
01:45And during that time, I was introduced to Speed of Air. It was a small R&D company based in Reno.
01:50They just had a research lab. That's all they were doing.
01:53And one of my clients, Newmont Gold, which is one of the largest gold mining companies in the world,
01:58are having issues with the 35-16 Caterpillar engines. They were carbon packing.
02:03So you had carbon that was packing up in the ring lands, upper ring lands. They were breaking rings.
02:07So best case you had, you're placing a cylinder pack on a 35-16, 69-liter mine-haul truck engine.
02:14Worst case is you've ventilated the motor through, you know, contingent damage.
02:17And they came to me and said, hey, this company's got this engine technology.
02:21We think it might help. Would you build an engine? I said, sure.
02:24So we built two engines. We built an A engine and a B engine.
02:27Same arrangement number, same ECM flash, identical.
02:32And one had Speed of Air pistons in it, the Dimple pistons.
02:34The other one was just Caterpillar OE pistons.
02:37And we ran it for 27 months, 18,000 hours, and it was stunning.
02:42It was absolutely stunning.
02:43So we reduced the Sydney oil by 55% on the engine.
02:46That was not with a gapless second ring, right?
02:49That was just the Dimple pistons.
02:51So same ring pack, just different pistons.
02:54Okay, cool.
02:55And actually, it was an OE piston.
02:57We just applied the Dimple pattern to the OE piston, and we put a coating on, a thermal barrier coating on the crown of it.
03:04So other than that, there were no other modifications to the pistons.
03:06But we reduced Sydney oil by 55%.
03:09So the effect in it was, in those engines, they change the oil by condition monitoring, right?
03:15They do oil sampling.
03:16So the average oil change in that fleet of trucks at that mine site, this is the Phoenix mine site in Carlin, Nevada, was about 250 hours between oil changes.
03:24Now, this is a truck that's being utilized at about 20 hours a day on average.
03:29So 250 hours comes up pretty quickly.
03:31Yeah.
03:31And there's 89 gallons of DEO and 4 gallons of filters that have to be changed every 250 hours.
03:38The speed of air truck went to 500 hours between oil changes.
03:42They doubled it.
03:43Wow.
03:44And the only reason it got doubled is because Caterpillar says you change the oil based on the condition of the oil, but under no circumstances do you exceed 500 hours.
03:52That was an artificial limit applied by Caterpillar.
03:54Otherwise, it would have gone even more.
03:56We don't know.
03:57Yeah.
03:57We don't know.
03:58At the end of life, after 27 months, the maintenance superintendent came and told me, he goes, when we did the tear down the engine, he goes,
04:04man, you saved me $180,000 in oil changes over the life of this engine.
04:09Wow.
04:09One engine.
04:10Whoa.
04:11One engine.
04:12One engine.
04:13Crazy.
04:13So if you think about 89 gallons of fluid, the man hours, what, four or five man hours up in the shop, the downtime.
04:20And you've got a truck that's producing maybe $25,000 an hour in production.
04:24So when it's not in the dirt working, it's not making the money.
04:27And every time somebody touches, this is another thing a lot of people never consider.
04:30Every time you put hands on something and open something up, you could be introducing an error.
04:37You know, a guy could, like, not get, you know, cross-thread something, not get the filter on right.
04:41You know, any time you've got a guy touching a vehicle, there is a possibility that you've added a problem to it.
04:47You know, even something as simple as changing out the oil.
04:50Yeah.
04:51So, you know, when you don't have to have a vehicle in the shop for maintenance, that's not a bad thing.
04:56Yeah.
04:57So how long ago was that?
04:58When was that test done?
05:002017.
05:01Wow.
05:01And that was when I got, that's when I sort of got introduced to the company.
05:05So you asked me how I got involved with it.
05:07And that was my introduction.
05:07I had nothing to do with speed of air at the time.
05:09And again, they were doing research and development.
05:11And they were messing around with turbos and heads and intake runners and everything else.
05:16It just so happened that they did the piston.
05:18And so if you look at the patents and look at, and again, all this technology is now patented.
05:22We own three U.S. patents and an international patent and have a couple more pending.
05:25But the pistons seem to be, you know, 80% of the technology or 80% of the benefit of the technology, if you applied everything you could to the ICE, sort of resolved around the piston.
05:37And of course, that's convenient for us because a piston is a consumable item at Rebuild.
05:41It's not something we reuse, like, say, a head.
05:44Right.
05:44And so just to fast forward, I got involved and I was fascinated with the company, the technology.
05:51I understood kind of the physics and what was going on in there.
05:54And, you know, my background is doing operational test pilot stuff and taking things and applying it to the real world kind of resonated with me.
06:03And they really didn't have a commercialization plan.
06:05Like, how are we going to take this to the market?
06:06And you get a new technology, you're breaking into a highly regulated industry.
06:11Right, emissions standard.
06:12Oh, yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff.
06:13We started this process and we started very grassroots.
06:17You know, we don't have a marketing firm or sales force or anything else.
06:21It's been everything we've sold at this point so far has been word of mouth.
06:24And just one happy customer saying, hey, this worked.
06:26This is what I got.
06:27And so we went back and did a lot of significant amount of testing and verification and understanding the physics and what's going on to get people all to, oh, I'll just drop some ball bearings in there and it'll work.
06:38Well, maybe not.
06:39That might not work out somewhere.
06:42Yeah, it might not work out somewhere for you.
06:42That's not how you want to dimple your pistons, man.
06:45So, you know, today we have the nuclear physicist from Sandia National Laboratory, Dr. Sal Rodriguez on the team.
06:52We call him Dr. Dimple.
06:53He's dimpling hypersonic rockets.
06:55He's doing nuclear plenums for the government.
06:57And he has figured out how to optimize the dimpling patterns and predict where they need to go and where they're placed.
07:06And he's literally written the book on computational fluid dynamics.
07:10So other PhDs that want to learn how to do computational fluid dynamics, they read Dr. Sal's book on how to do it.
07:16So now we can simulate, we can take the combustion chamber and we can simulate the effects in combustion.
07:21And you can say, hey, I want a 6-7 Cummins, apply a patter to it.
07:25And we can do that predictably.
07:27Up until this point, our founder and the co-inventor of the technology, Joe Mouth, and he's still with us as a technical director.
07:34And you've got to talk to Joe sometime.
07:35He's forgotten more about engines than I'll ever know in my entire life.
07:40He's an absolutely amazing mechanic.
07:42He was a global training guy for Porsche.
07:45Just phenomenal.
07:46But he did a lot of flow bench testing back in the day and doing the design work.
07:50But it takes a tremendous amount of time to come up with a dimple pattern design that works and is optimized.
07:56And now with the computing power we have today, we can come up and figure this out in real short order.
08:01We're talking mostly diesel motors up to this point.
08:04Direct injection, gas, port injected.
08:07You're seeing some of the benefits that you're having here too?
08:11So actually this started in gasoline engines.
08:14One of the co-inventors, he said Joey Moutham, and he was doing V-Twin motorcycles, Indian motorcycles.
08:18There's probably a thousand Indian motorcycles around the world with dimple pistons in them.
08:22Yeah, that's where it started.
08:23Give me the decade.
08:24So this is probably 20 years ago when they started kinkering with this stuff.
08:27Now I heard something, World War II or something like that.
08:30Yeah, yeah.
08:30So actually there's a guy, there's an old, a docent at the Air Museum in Duxford, England.
08:36And a docent is a plane?
08:38No, docent, the guy that gives the tours around the museums.
08:41Oh, okay.
08:41Museum docent, yes.
08:43Or new word.
08:44New word.
08:44Word of the name, docent.
08:45He wasn't paying attention.
08:46I dropped out of college.
08:49So anyhow, this guy's like, oh yeah, yeah, we're messing around these in like, I think
08:54the Spitfires or something like that.
08:56I don't know what application.
08:57But you know, people come up from time to time and say, yeah, I remember NASCAR was messing
09:00around with this back in the 70s or the 80s or something like that.
09:04So it's not new.
09:05I mean, people have been playing with internal parts and dimples and other things like that
09:11with various successes, right?
09:13Some people said, oh yeah, we did that and it worked.
09:14And somebody else said, yeah, I've tried that and it didn't work.
09:17Well, the issue is, think about a dimple on a piston, right?
09:20You've got a bunch of dimples.
09:22How many variations are there?
09:23It's infinite.
09:24Infinite.
09:25It's literally infinite because the variables are what?
09:28The number of dimples.
09:29Size, depth.
09:30The depth, the diameter, placement, right?
09:33So if you take all those variables, you have an infinite number of applications or patterns
09:37that you can come up there, right?
09:38And so some will work a little bit, some will work a lot.
09:41And it's figuring out how, so when somebody says, I just randomly put some dimples on
09:46there and it didn't work, I'm like, well, okay.
09:48And then you think about a piston, the structure of a piston, right?
09:50You look on the other, we have oil galleys and things like that.
09:53So putting a dimple randomly on the crown of a piston may cause some structural issues.
09:59Yeah.
09:59So there's a lot of design work that goes into it and a lot of engineering goes into
10:02where we put them and how they go there.
10:05What about different motor application, like bigger industrial power plants and things like
10:10that?
10:10I mean, do you offer pistons ready to go in that or where is your major market share?
10:15When we started the commercialization process, we started with the mid-duty diesel.
10:20So your Duramax, Power Stroke.
10:22We kind of went back to basics.
10:23And we focused on diesel, not because diesel works.
10:26In fact, some of our most successful applications have been gas.
10:29We've done methanol, methane, landfill gas, just full of, I mean, nasty, siloxane.
10:36We've done obviously diesel compressed natural gas and petrol.
10:39And it works in all gasolines.
10:41But if you think about, again, a business, industry runs on diesel.
10:45And the bigger applications we get into, the better the benefit.
10:48Let me back up a little bit.
10:49When I started the company, I told our folks, I said, we're not going to be a solution in
10:53search of a problem.
10:54We're here just like you are.
10:56When a customer comes in, a customer has a problem.
10:58And you're here to solve that problem.
10:59And usually it resolves in fixing an automobile.
11:03So our customers come to us with all kinds of problems.
11:06We have these in dragsters, ProCom dragsters.
11:09His problem is I need to get down the track a little bit faster.
11:11So we put him in a dragster.
11:13He picked up 1,700s in three miles an hour on an eighth mile track.
11:17Significant.
11:17It's a big time.
11:18With just a piston change.
11:20Right.
11:20With just a piston change.
11:21Wow.
11:21Yeah.
11:22So his problem is I need to go faster.
11:24I need to win another race.
11:25If you're an over-the-road trucker, your problem is it fuels the largest overhead of your business.
11:30Fuel mileage and maintenance.
11:31So if I can give him another mile to gallon, that's solving his problem.
11:36Caterpillar or the Newmont Goldmine, when they came to us, it was carbon packing up in
11:40ring lines.
11:41Soot.
11:41Right?
11:42And we can talk about that a little bit, about what that is and how we resolve that.
11:46But that was their issue.
11:47You know, they're making money hand over fist, but they can't make money if they're breaking
11:52piston rings with carbon packing.
11:54And so when we started the business, we said, look, every industry has their own set of problems.
11:59If you're in an EPA non-attainment area in the Permian Basin of West Texas doing natural
12:04gas compression stations, and you're getting fined because you can't meet emission standards,
12:10that's your problem.
12:11So going and talking about more horsepower is it going to resonate with them.
12:14So this quarter, here in this month, actually, we're releasing our V-twin motorcycles for
12:19Harleys and Indians.
12:20We're just about finished up with our Euro testing.
12:23So the 2.0 TDIs and 1.9 Volkswagens, the Audis, the M57s, M47s, BMWs, OM606s, Mercedes, all
12:32those applications are coming out.
12:34The question that's coming up in my head, and a lot of people are, EGR, exhaust gas, you
12:37know, the soot that we're recirculating.
12:39You know, you just stick a hose from your butt to your mouth and, you know, suck that all
12:43day long.
12:44Basically, what we're asking these medium-duty diesels to do all the time, nobody's doing
12:49oil sampling or anything like that, you know.
12:52So I guess my question is, is there an avenue, is this an avenue, and you have got access to
12:58SEMA benches, you know, where we can get EPA approval and stuff.
13:02Is this an access to reduce those particulates and maybe reduce these EGR coolers, you know,
13:09how much we're doing?
13:10Because, man, I think as engine builders, doing as many diesels as we do, that's the
13:15killer.
13:16That's what's killing these motors.
13:17You know, you don't see that on motors that ain't got EGR, you know, exhaust gas recirculators
13:21on them.
13:22What's your thinking of that?
13:23So that's a great question, and actually, that's what Speed of Air was founded on.
13:28It was all about emissions to begin with.
13:30The happy discovery was that by cleaning up emissions, you get more power and torque, and
13:35you get better fuel consumption.
13:36Ever since the Clean Air Act in the 1970s, the automotive industry's answer to cleaning
13:41up exhaust emissions has been after gas.
13:44After gas.
13:44Right?
13:45Yeah.
13:45Put a catalytic converter.
13:46Your 1978 duster had a catalytic converter on the back of it.
13:51Well, the whole world runs on that.
13:52We call it after gas.
13:53You know, the medical community does it.
13:55We're all overweight, diabetic.
13:57You know, we fix the problem after we have the accident.
14:01We're not putting all the money and the effort into prevention, and that's what I'm asking.
14:07This is kind of that preventive model, right?
14:09Yeah.
14:09And so that's really what it started off.
14:11And so you look at, and I call it the three-letter alphabet soup of after gas, especially on a
14:17diesel engine.
14:18About 2005, it was the first sort of emissions control that showed up.
14:21You just said it.
14:22Yeah.
14:22EGR.
14:23EGR.
14:23Right?
14:24So exhaust gas recirculation, and that was developed to reduce NOx.
14:28So NOx is created by heat, right?
14:31We get very hot temperatures.
14:32We produce NOx.
14:33And most of your NOx happens in the ring land, the top ring land at the edge of the piston.
14:37Right.
14:38Yeah.
14:39Right.
14:39And so what happens is, so they, let's say, let's cool the exhaust stream, and we reduce
14:44NOx.
14:44But what's that produce?
14:45Soot.
14:46Soot.
14:46100%.
14:47Darbage.
14:47So now we have particulate matter, PM2.5, which is a carcinogen, which is harmful to humans,
14:54and that's the black smoke that you see coming out of the tailpipe.
14:57So then what do we do?
14:58We put a DPF on there, and now we need urea, and we need SCR.
15:02That's right.
15:03So it's like a game of whack-a-mole.
15:05We chase one constituent, and another one pops up.
15:08This is our health care.
15:09Right.
15:10100%.
15:11It's the exact same thing in our health care.
15:13100%.
15:13100%.
15:14So this is your solution to get it at the start instead of...
15:18Yeah.
15:19So Speedabare went back and said, you know, there's got to be a better way.
15:23Let's go back and look inside the combustion chamber.
15:25And if you look at the internal combustion engine, the combustion chamber hasn't really
15:29changed in 100 years.
15:30We've changed valve geometry, injectors, how we introduce fuel and ignition.
15:35Right.
15:35But the actual...
15:36You've got a slug and you've got a cylinder, and it goes up and down and makes compression.
15:40Right.
15:41That geometry hasn't changed very much.
15:43And so we really started looking at that.
15:45And when you start getting it, and this is where you get into the mad science, right?
15:48Into the boundary layer physics of what's going on inside a combustion chamber.
15:53We understand squish and swirl and tumble.
15:56And those are gross movements inside combustion chambers.
15:59So we understand that we need to mix.
16:01But what does an engine need to make power?
16:03We need a fuel source.
16:05We need oxygen.
16:06We need air.
16:06We need an ignition source.
16:08And to convert that chemical energy into mechanical energy, we need compression.
16:11Lake Speed Jr. has got a great...
16:13He did a great lecture on, you know, fuels the enemy of your engine.
16:16Yeah.
16:16Right?
16:17And people think, oh, fuel, you light it up and it burns.
16:20Well, it doesn't burn.
16:21No.
16:21It doesn't burn.
16:22Yeah.
16:22I remember when I was a kid hanging around a race car shop.
16:25I was about 15 years old.
16:26The mechanic would take a cigarette and he'd chuck it in a can of gas.
16:29And everybody would run.
16:30Everybody would run.
16:31Nothing happened.
16:31Nothing's going to happen.
16:33It's like, no, it doesn't necessarily burn.
16:35All that black carbon that's on that piston right there.
16:38What is that?
16:39Unburnt fuel.
16:39It's unburnt fuel.
16:40Yeah.
16:41It's carbonized fuel.
16:43And when you say unburnt fuel, let's say it this way.
16:45It's no gain.
16:46No gain.
16:47Right.
16:47Lost opportunity.
16:48So when you see the guy rolling coal down the highway, that is unburnt hydrocarbons rolling out the smoke sand.
16:55Gail Banks talks about that, about, you know, that's garbage.
16:59It's doing you no good.
17:00That's a lot of lost power.
17:02Yeah, 100%.
17:02Yeah.
17:03100%.
17:03So the idea was, how do we burn it inside the combustion chamber?
17:08And we can tell, and so just like your medical analogy, you go to the doctor and he wants to know, you pee in a cup, you take this blood sample, 99% of what's going on in your body, he can figure out without ever seeing you just by analyzing what's coming out of your body.
17:23And so we can examine the exhaust of an internal combustion engine and we can examine the oil of an internal combustion engine and we can tell you pretty much everything that's going on.
17:33And we can see it, we can smell it, we can hear it, we can feel it.
17:37So when that Duramax came in there, you felt, you heard it was quiet.
17:41Stuck his face in the exhaust.
17:42Yeah.
17:43You can smell it.
17:44Smell different.
17:45Yeah.
17:46Didn't smell it all.
17:46You know, people say, well, how's it smoother and quieter?
17:49How does that, how does that work?
17:50Well, think about a 1970, I don't know, pick an inch, diesel engine.
17:54The old Volkswagen Rabbit, a little four-cylinder 1.8 diesel, man, mechanical injected, noisy.
18:00What did that sound like?
18:01Clackity, clackity, clackity.
18:02Yeah, now you get a L5P or something, you know, modern diesel engine with piezoelectric injectors.
18:08Yeah.
18:09And it's quiet.
18:09Why?
18:10It's a more efficient combustion process.
18:12How are we, you know, in those old mechanical injectors, we're just chucking.
18:15Jumping fuel.
18:16Jumping fuel in there is like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
18:18One stroke, man.
18:19One shot of fuel.
18:20And now we're able to atomize it very, very carefully, right?
18:24Under 30,000 PSI instead of 2,500.
18:28It's smoother.
18:28Yeah.
18:29Right.
18:29So that's because the combustion event that's happening is smoother.
18:34And we can look at the oil, we can measure the exhaust, and we can tell what's going on with the engine.
18:39So when we have inefficient combustion, this is what we get.
18:43We get black carbon packed up on the piston crowns.
18:47We can see black smoke coming out of there, and we can see soot in the oil as it passes and rains.
18:52But it's also an abrasive, and it wears out the engine.
18:55Right.
18:55So it affects longevity of your engine life as well.
18:59So, again, going back to your question about the pistons and what speed of air did.
19:04So how do we get into dimples?
19:05That's probably a really good question.
19:06So think about air as a fluid, okay?
19:09It's like water.
19:10Subsonically, until we hit supersonic speeds, it's a non-compressible fluid, and that's how we treat it.
19:15Anytime a fluid, like air, hits a boundary, whether it's a wing of an aircraft, a golf ball, or the crown of a piston, it creates a boundary layer.
19:24And that boundary layer is sort of immovable air.
19:28There's nothing happening in there.
19:30It's static.
19:31And so think in terms of the combustion event, if we have this layer of static air over the top of the crown of a piston, and we have a fuel-air mixture, we have a flame front that's advancing through that fuel-air mixture.
19:46At some point, it hits that boundary layer.
19:47That becomes unburnt, and that fuel is able to fall out of suspension and coat the top of the piston.
19:53That's exactly how that's happening.
19:55And what the dimples do is—
19:55There's no turbulence here.
19:57There's no turbulence on the surface.
19:58Gotcha.
19:59So, again, when we talk about swirl and tumble, those are big movements, but that's not happening on the boundary.
20:05What the dimples do, just like a golf ball, if you go out and hit a golf ball, you go take a ping-pong ball and hit that with your golf club, it'll look like a wounded duck.
20:13It's not going anywhere.
20:14It's just going to corkscrew all over the place.
20:17My golf ball's still there.
20:18It's because it's not breaking up that—it's not twirling in that air.
20:22Right.
20:22So, what happens is those dimples on a golf ball, what happens is that boundary layer, just like a wing of an aircraft, as it forms around that golf ball, around that sphere, inside those dimples creates a very turbulent—
20:36And that allows that boundary layer to become very thin and tightly bound to the sphere as it flies.
20:42So, in the case of a dimple on a piston, instead of this thick laminar boundary layer, it now becomes very, very thin and very, very turbulent.
20:52So, you can think of that boundary layer as unburnt space, unburnt volume, inside the combustion chamber, and all we've done is taken that and made that very tightly bound, very turbulent boundary layer.
21:03The flame front is able to advance all the way down to the piston crown and burn it all.
21:06That's it.
21:07So, you take these two motors, like the one you were talking about at the mining, is their carbon buildup is quite substantially less on the top of your piston?
21:15They sprayed it down with some brake clean, wiped it down with a rag.
21:17It looked like a shiny nickel at 10,000 hours.
21:20Wow.
21:21So, the other question is what the pistons look like after that.
21:23Yeah.
21:24In fact, if you go on our website, you can go on our website and go to our results page.
21:27We have the Newmont report.
21:29You can actually see the valves, the pistons, the rings.
21:32We'll put a link up on that.
21:33Yeah.
21:33On the website.
21:34At teardown.
21:36Yeah.
21:36At 18,000 hours.
21:37Wow.
21:38Yeah.
21:39That's awesome.
21:39I mean, we wash these pistons, and it still leaves residue.
21:43Oh, yeah.
21:43And carbon does not come on easily.
21:45Yeah.
21:45Yeah.
21:45Yeah.
21:46On to the piston.
21:46Right.
21:47One of the questions that a lot of our followers have,
21:49they're skeptics about the ceramic or thermal barrier.
21:53It's going to flake off.
21:54It's going to then be ingested through the engine, and it's going to ruin it.
21:58Would you mind explaining?
21:59So, first off, Cerakote, they make our thermal barrier coating for us.
22:03And we've worked hand-in-hand with them, so it's proprietary.
22:06It is the best thermal coating on the planet.
22:09And I'll tell you, we've tested.
22:11This is NASA-level stuff that we're using.
22:13And Cerakote has been an absolutely fantastic partner, technology partner for us in making this.
22:18So, there's a couple of things that the thermal coating does.
22:21One, it prevents thermal soaking of the piston.
22:24Aluminum has a very high heat transfer rate.
22:26So, if you put a heat source on the crown of the piston and measure the temperature at the bottom of the piston,
22:30it's going to be about the same, right?
22:32Yeah.
22:32And so, all that heat in the combustion chamber soaks through an aluminum piston.
22:35It gets down in the oil.
22:36It gets in the bearings.
22:37It causes other problems.
22:38The first reason we use it as a thermal barrier, so we prevent that heat.
22:41We have taken our coating and done destructive testing.
22:46We're about to put a video out, and we're getting 1,000 degrees of temperature delta.
22:50We're going to put an IR parameter on the top of it, measure temperature, and put one right at the bottom.
22:541,000 degrees of temperature delta.
22:56Whoa.
22:57So, aluminum is going to melt at around 800 degrees-ish.
23:04It starts bubbling.
23:05It gets weird.
23:06Yeah.
23:06So, we'll get about 1,800 degrees on the crown of the piston.
23:10Wow.
23:11The surface temperature here before the substrate just melts underneath the coating.
23:17Holy.
23:18So, it is super, super durable.
23:20But the other thing we're doing is heat is work, right?
23:24Heat is energy.
23:25People get, there's a lot of, well, you're lowering EGTs, and how are you creating power?
23:29I don't understand that part.
23:30We're actually reflecting heat back into the turbo.
23:33One is preventing the heat to soak through into the oil.
23:35The other one is also reflecting energy back into the turbo where it can produce mechanical work.
23:40Okay.
23:41So, let's talk about that.
23:42One of the things, the claim is that it reduces EGTs a couple hundred degrees.
23:47Now, if you're pushing that heat for work back into the exhaust stream, how are we getting lower?
23:52Great question.
23:53This is probably the best question you could ask.
23:55We're seeing EGTs reduce about 200 degrees.
23:58That's just, that boggles the mind.
23:59Now, is that, is that across the board of, is that the applications like Duramax, Powerstroke?
24:06Yep.
24:06So, 100%.
24:07Roughly.
24:07Isaac Fisher, Fisher Motor Works is doing, he's got two M57 BMWs right now, seeing the same
24:12thing, 200 degree EGT drops.
24:14Wow.
24:14So, the first thing, the first thing about EGTs is, everybody in the automotive industry
24:18understands EGTs because that's what we have.
24:20In the air, in the aircraft world, I fly, I got an airplane.
24:22We've got these pistons in an airplane, and I fly it.
24:25I put my kids in that airplane.
24:26We look at EGTs, but we mostly look at CHTs, cylinder head temperatures.
24:31Yeah.
24:31Cylinder head temperature is telling you a lot more about what's going on in the combustion
24:34chamber, the EGT.
24:35Remember, EGT is just one in four, right?
24:38Right.
24:38You only get 25% of the information.
24:40So, it's on that exhaust stroke is when you're getting that pulse and measuring that temperature.
24:45CHT is constant.
24:46Secondly is, how are we reducing temperatures at the exhaust?
24:50Well, what is causing super high EGTs?
24:53Unburned fuel, right?
24:54It's just going out.
24:55Right.
24:55So, when we see that.
24:56So, if that's not happening, if you're burning it in the combustion chamber, then that's going
25:01to reduce it.
25:02But here's what's really cool.
25:03The dimples are what's causing the biggest reduction in EGTs.
25:07So, if we have a dimple, right, and we have airflow over this dimple, there's a downwash
25:13flow that goes in, and there's an impingement flow that comes in here as this air recirculates
25:20through there.
25:20So, think about a wing.
25:22Wing looks kind of like that, sort of flat in the bottom.
25:24We have air molecules that go over the wing, and the ones that go over the top of the
25:31wing have to go faster than the ones at the bottom of the wing, right?
25:34Because they've got further distance to go.
25:35And so, that velocity increase creates a low pressure, which creates lift.
25:41Lift, yeah.
25:42Right?
25:42On any concavity, we would have the same effect.
25:45So, this air molecule that's got to go zipping down through here has to go a lot faster than
25:50this guy up the top.
25:52Well, the math is, and if you ask Dr. Sal, he'd tell you it's 2.7 times more air going
25:58across the bottom of that dimple.
25:59So, this region right here becomes a very high heat transfer region, and it's just sucking
26:04heat.
26:05Sucking.
26:05It's a vacuum, basically.
26:06It's just sucking heat out of there.
26:08So, it's actually, you've got 2.7 times more air moving through those dimples.
26:14The other thing is, is we've actually increased the surface area of the piston.
26:18On this piston right here, it's somewhere around 15 or 20% increase in surface area.
26:23On some designs, it's up as high as 40%.
26:25So, there's a lot going on physics-wise, thermodynamically.
26:29Yeah.
26:29That's actually more interesting than the fluid dynamics or the airflow going inside the engine
26:33with the dimples.
26:34So, each of those dimples has a very high heat transfer region in there.
26:39There's a lot more air that's falling over them, and that's how we're getting those EGTs down.
26:43Okay, I've got even a better question, but everybody wants to know this.
26:47Is there a possibility the federal government comes out with a regulation?
26:51By this year, we want you to hit this mark.
26:54So, then the engineers at GM or Cummins or whatever say, well, this is how we're going
26:59to have to do it.
27:00We're just going to have to put restrictive crap on all this stuff.
27:04You have access to EPA benches where you can test this stuff, and if you meet a certain
27:09standard, can we just get rid of that stuff?
27:12Yes, possibly.
27:13Because that would be like the holy grail of diesel.
27:18These pistons right here, our Duramax pistons, are the first piston in the world to be EPA
27:22certified.
27:23We've just gone through about six months at the SEMA garage doing EPA certification of
27:29the pistons.
27:30Results have been just absolutely tremendous.
27:32The follow-up to that will be to get a CARB executive order number, and then we'll expand
27:36into our Cummins.
27:37Basically, we hope by the end of the year, we'll have EPA clearance for every four-stroke
27:42diesel on the road.
27:43But then, can we then take that and then say, now let's rent it without the EGR?
27:48Right.
27:49So, we are taking an LLY Duramax.
27:52We're putting a speed of air engine in it.
27:54It has EGR on it, but it doesn't have any aftergas on it.
27:56Right.
27:57Our goal is to make that 2015 CARB compliant.
28:01Without the aftergas.
28:01Tier 4 compliant without any aftergas.
28:03That's the goal.
28:04We don't know that we'll get there with just the pistons.
28:07We also speed our own patents for some turbo technology.
28:10We may end up changing the turbo.
28:11We're probably going to reflash the ECM.
28:14We may need some light substrate on the back end to get it into that compliance.
28:18But if we can do it without EGR and DPF and SCR.
28:22That's like hunting with a rifle, man.
28:24You don't want to hunt with a shotgun.
28:25You want to hunt with a rifle.
28:27Some of the best engines there.
28:28I mean, the Caterpillar C15, the 3406E, the 60 Series Detroits.
28:33Phenomenal engines.
28:33And if you talk to these truck drivers, they'd kill to keep those engines.
28:36You can't drive them in California.
28:37They're illegal.
28:38And our goal would be to take, say, a CAT C15.
28:41The Caterpillar got out of the truck engine business because they couldn't make them emissions
28:44compliant.
28:44Yeah.
28:45We think we can get there.
28:46So, that's what we're actually working on now is to come up and get a CARB executive order
28:50number for a Tier 4 upgrade kit.
28:52So, you just buy an upgrade kit.
28:54You get pistons, you get an in-frame rebuild kit, you get a turbo, you get a new ECM, whatever
28:59we need on the back end to clean it up.
29:02Put it on your truck and you're good to go.
29:04And legally, California.
29:06How the politics work out and all that, we'll see.
29:08Yeah.
29:08They're going to want about 2,000, 2,500 hours of actual lab dyno testing.
29:13So, that's a big build.
29:16So, we're doing the LOIs to prove the concept just to prove that we can actually take a pre-emissions
29:20diesel engine and make it 2024 compliant.
29:23Wow.
29:24That'd be awesome.
29:25Some people just want that benefit with the gas prices and everything going on.
29:28Yeah.
29:29I mean, what's the typical average increase in fuel economy?
29:33It's laying out at 20%.
29:34That's like, that boggles the mind, especially for over the road.
29:39I mean, that's their biggest expense, fuel costs.
29:42So, we got our over the road applications.
29:44We got guys running against C-15s, 60 series Detroits.
29:47They're picking up a mile to the gallon.
29:49Basically, it pays for itself for the upgrade.
29:52I mean, you can do the math here real quick, but the difference between our monster engine
29:56and then a monster with the speed of air piston, you're like three or four tanks.
30:02You bought your pistons.
30:03You bought the difference in pistons and that alone.
30:06Yeah.
30:06And that alone.
30:07And then, you know, on top of that, how about, you know, that dang DPF?
30:11You're probably reducing the amount of times that it regens.
30:14That's not what I'm talking about.
30:15The first thing they noticed, actually, on the modern trucks, including that SEMA truck,
30:19the LML, was they quit putting death fluid in it.
30:22Not completely, but it was just like, it just drastically decreased.
30:25It's like, oh my gosh, you just quit burning death.
30:27And the active regen activity went down considerably.
30:31Again, if you're not dumping soot into the DPF.
30:33It's not, it doesn't need to do its job.
30:36We did a little video down at SEMA.
30:37So, we built a bypass right off the turbo downpipe.
30:41So, we were able to test at the tailpipe, but we also wanted to test straight out of
30:45the engine.
30:45And so, SEMA did all their testing at the tailpipe, and then we repeated it all again.
30:49We did it with the stock engine, and we did it with the speed of air engine.
30:52The average opacity was 26%.
30:54So, the California limit is 20%.
30:57So, just to give you an idea, it was at 26%.
31:0026% is black.
31:03Yeah, okay.
31:03Okay.
31:03So, we're talking about opacity.
31:05That's a percentage of black smoke that's coming out of there.
31:08So, on the stock engine, it was 26%.
31:09We did it with the speed of air engine.
31:11It looked like a Prius.
31:13It was 2% opacity.
31:15Straight off the turbo.
31:17No after gas whatsoever.
31:19So, a stock engine, 26%, the speed of air engine, and the only change was the pistons.
31:25The only change.
31:26I mean, the air filter, no tuning.
31:28Nothing.
31:28No nothing.
31:29All you people, there's hope out there.
31:31There's hope that we can get away from this.
31:34I've been in this industry so long to see what they've gone to.
31:37I know when we went through the 1980s, it was, and if you didn't work on cars in the 1980s,
31:43you have no idea what I'm talking about, but there was a million vacuum hoses with dashpots
31:49to run everything and everything to try to get emissions down.
31:53And, I mean, you pop a hood on a Honda Accord in the mid-1980s, because, I mean, I'm not kidding you,
31:58there'd be a hundred different vacuum lines coming off there, and that was between carburetion
32:03and then electronic carburetors to fuel injection.
32:06It was for the emissions.
32:07And I think we're going through the same thing now.
32:09We got all this crap bolted to motors, but we need to go back and look at, you know,
32:15how we're actually burning that fuel.
32:17This addresses it at the source, the combustion process.
32:21Another question.
32:21So, the torque increase as well.
32:24So, you decrease emissions by a drastic amount.
32:29You increase fuel economy by 20%.
32:31So, decrease emissions, increase fuel economy, but then you pick up tower, immense amount of torque.
32:38That's right.
32:38Right. So, think about the combustion event itself, right?
32:41There's three sort of direct variables from a combustion event.
32:46One is going to be fuel consumption.
32:48One is going to be what goes out the exhaust stack.
32:50And one is going to be what chemical energy has been converted to mechanical energy.
32:55So, horsepower torque.
32:56If we fundamentally change the combustion event, then those three variables are going to change as well.
33:01Right.
33:02Equally.
33:03If we see a reduction in fuel economy, we're going to see an increase in power for the same given amount of fuel.
33:08And we're going to see reduction in emissions because we're converting more chemical energy into mechanical energy inside the combustion chamber.
33:15So, yeah.
33:16Where we see it, though, is not so much on the top end.
33:19So, for example, the 100% wide open throttle torque sweep, it picked up maybe 30, 35 foot-pounds of torque and about the same number of horsepower.
33:27But that's not where you drive your vehicle.
33:29No, no.
33:29When you loaded it in fourth gear, so you had basically a one-to-one ratio and ran it, we picked up 200-something, 220, 220 or something like that.
33:39I think it went like 250.
33:40You thought it was a typo.
33:42Right.
33:42I thought this can't, like, their graphs are off.
33:45I think it went from like 250 to 500.
33:48Yeah.
33:49So, we picked up like over 200 foot-pounds of torque at around 60 miles per hour, which is where you drive the truck.
33:55And that goes back to fuel economy, too.
33:57So, torque is, you know, people talk about horsepower and diesels when we talk about torque.
34:00Torque is what gets you down the road, right?
34:02So, to get the amount of torque that you need to produce 65 miles an hour down the highway requires a specific throttle position, right?
34:10Right.
34:11If I'm making torque, if I move that torque torque to the left, that throttle position now changes to get that same amount of torque.
34:16Right.
34:17Right?
34:17Right.
34:18Back to the fuel economy.
34:20And so, we're seeing it at the lower end, and that's been really, really consistent.
34:24Now, that was an exceptional, I mean, 250-ish foot-pounds of torque increase at the low end is extraordinary.
34:31I mean, we were blown away when we saw it.
34:33Yeah.
34:33But, I mean, the lowest we've seen is probably around 100, 100 foot-pounds of torque.
34:38Okay.
34:38Last question.
34:40Not a bad thing we found yet.
34:42Not one kink in the armor of this.
34:46What is the kink in the armor?
34:48That's a tough question.
34:49So, admittedly, the pistons are cheap.
34:52I don't, I wouldn't call that a kink.
34:55Yeah, but we should pay for it.
34:56Well, it pays for itself.
34:59It gives you money back.
35:00So, that's kind of the, some of the corporate motto.
35:03It's the only piston in the world that pays you back, right?
35:05It pays for itself.
35:06Yeah.
35:07We go, we do a lot of work.
35:09There's a lot of work that goes into these pistons.
35:11The computational fluid dynamics to do the designs is extraordinarily expensive.
35:15So, it's not as simple as just put it on a CNC machine and our lathe and, you know, make some dimples.
35:22The inspection process, every one of these pistons, every piston that comes in a black box, not one in 10, one in 100, every single one sits in a temperature control room at exactly 70 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours.
35:37Every piston is measured and blueprinted.
35:41So, you're truly getting a custom set of pistons.
35:43Look at this.
35:43These are all handwritten by a text.
35:45Yeah.
35:45Right.
35:46Wow.
35:46That's very impressive.
35:47I've never gotten one of these with another set of pistons.
35:49Well, he's answering my question.
35:50So, we do that and then even the packaging, you know?
35:53Yeah.
35:53I mean, we, we, we, I have a hard time throwing these boxes away when I'm done this.
35:57I know.
35:58So, it's like a jewelry box.
35:59You know, these pistons are protected.
36:01Yeah.
36:01You know, they're not rattling around in a cardboard box.
36:04So, we really go overboard with trying to put out the best quality product that the industry can provide.
36:10So, you know, you're truly getting a custom set of pistons.
36:13But, at the end of the day, they pay for themselves.
36:16Yeah.
36:16And if there's, and the pricing strategy for us has always been on a return on investment.
36:21If you're not getting your money back.
36:23Look, if a high school kid with this 1995 5.912 valve came in and said, I want to spend my life savings on a set of pistons.
36:30And he drives 5,000 miles a year.
36:33He's not, he's not the customer, right?
36:35But if you're a service truck, if you're a tow truck, if you're a hot shot driver, if you're putting 50,000 miles a year in your truck and you're getting 20% fuel gains, the economics, yeah, it makes sense quick.
36:47Yeah.
36:48Chris, it's a beautiful product.
36:49I appreciate you taking the time to stop in and visit with us today.
36:53And educate us on it.
36:54Yeah.
36:55You've got some great questions.
36:55This is awesome.
36:56Thank you very, very much.
36:57Yeah.
36:58Thanks, Dave.
36:59Pleasure, pleasure being here.
37:00Thanks.
37:00All right.
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