Desmodromic Valves

[CincinnatiFiero]

I know this post is about 60 years too late, but I had never heard about it until a couple days ago and have been reading about it. Mercedes used it in the 50s in F1 cars, and Ducatti still uses it. Pretty neat, its like progressively harder valve springs, and makes float impossible. For the valve to open it has to be slammed shut first. Yes it full of faults and impractical, just an interesting thing to learn about for those who don't know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmodromic_valve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LgHFJbtw78
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4QrYK0g ... re=related

[The Dark Side of Will]

But it helps you avoid this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_REQ1PUM0rY

With modern spring steel, however, you just don't need it. Ducati did it because at the time, in Italy, they just couldn't get good enough spring steel to use conventional valvesprings. They have a good marketing department and turn that stopgap into a selling point...

[CincinnatiFiero]

Yeah, titanium valve springs, double and triple would springs, etc. all make Desmodromic setups not useful and in F1 they now use gas filled bags instead of springs, which is another interesting thing to read about, I'll post that in here next.