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THE REVOLUTIONARY FIRESTORM SPARK PLUG------------------------------------------------------------------------ Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 12, Number 2 (February -
March 2005) by Robert Stanley © October 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ During the past nine years while I was working as a market researcher for a major Japanese auto company, I learned that the price of oil worldwide would continue to climb higher due to a steadily growing demand for a limited supply. It was clear from the reports I read that this presented a very real problem to the auto companies of the world. There was a general agreement in the auto industry that the answers to the problem would come in the future via new technologies. For years now, I have wondered where and when the next Edison with a bright idea will appear and invent a "lean, green, driving machine". I have finally found such a man. He lives in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and his name is Robert Krupa. We have all heard the saying, "If something sounds too good
to be true, it usually is". The amazing new spark plug designed
by Mr Krupa, which he named "FireStorm", is the exception
to this rule. FireStorm's Capabilities
Second, let's see what FireStorm plugs eliminate:
How, you may ask, is all this achieved? In a word, plasma. The revolutionary design of FireStorm spark plugs creates an electric plasma that fills the entire combustion chamber like a firestorm. It allows you to take an internal combustion engine from the standard 14.7:1 air-to-fuel ratio to an incredibly lean 24:1. At this ratio, all the air/fuel mixture is burned much more efficiently without increasing heat, thus giving an engine more power and fuel economy while creating much less pollution. That's the good news . The bad news is that you can't buy a set of FireStorm spark plugs anywhere right now. No spark plug company wants to make them. Robert Krupa is no stranger to the way the automotive industry and spark plug industry operate. He has worked as a technician, then as an engineer for GM and Ford. Krupa explained: "Before I entered college and earned a BS [Bachelor of Science] in engineering, I was taking electrolytic capacitors and mounting them to the plus side of a distributor, which would smooth out the electrical pulses going to the distributor and the spark plugs. With that little improvement, I was able to make cars run smoother. So, that was the start of this engineering journey I am now on. "I have an electrical background that's very heavily into automotive applications. I have an extreme sensitivity to mechanical noise. I can listen to an engine running and tell exactly what's wrong with it. My hearing is so keen that when I worked at General Motors they sent me to Mexico and to Germany and New York to fix engine assembly plants. When I went to New York, they were having problems with engines going in the repair loop. So I looked at what they were doing, thought a while, then made changes to 22 machines and got the engine plant running faster than design intent. The plant manager offered me a job right on the spot." Krupa knows spark plugs and has worked very hard to bring improved designs to the automotive market. Although it was not his design, he is solely responsible for bringing the "SplitFire" spark plug to the market over a decade ago. It was a simple variation on standard plugs which featured a split electrode, designed like a snake's tongue, that increased the sparking area of the plug somewhat. It cost more than an average spark plug and generated annual sales of US$60 million in 1993. As fate would have it, Robert Krupa became friends with the legendary Henry "Smokey" Yunick, of Daytona Beach, Florida. Smokey was a Hall of Fame NASCAR stock car and IndyCar builder, entrepreneur and inventor extraordinaire. They met while working on a project for GM. At that time, Smokey was having a little bit of trouble hearing. So Krupa set up a knock module and sensor and hooked it up to an oscilloscope for Smokey to use. The next morning, Smokey asked Krupa to come and work for him. Krupa politely turned Smokey down, but the end result was they became good friends. Because of this, Krupa decided to take his first prototype of the
FireStorm to Smokey. While witnessing the new spark plug firing
on a portable test stand, Smokey declared: "After 30 years
consulting for Champion, I have never seen a spark plug fire like
yours. You are going to turn the automotive industry on its ear!"
Genesis of the FireStorm
This all seemed too good to be true, but there was more good news. According to Krupa: "I know it sounds like smoke and mirrors. But this has all been documented. When I was doing some of the early testing on this, I hooked up an emissions analyser to the car and I had equipment in the car while changing air/fuel ratios and idle speeds. I was doing this at an automotive aftermarket speed shop. The guys were coming over to see what I was doing. I had the test vehicle running at 250 rpm! Engines do not like to idle at 250 rpm. You can't do that with a regular spark plug. But you can do it with the FireStorm plug." I had never heard of anyone doing this before, and wondered what the engine would run like at that ultra-low idle—another major fuel-saving measure. Krupa told me: "It just loped along really smooth, but it
was constant. No hesitation; no misfires. And when I did that test
on a T-bird and got a 44% increase in fuel economy, I was using
the air conditioner at the time! And nobody uses the air conditioner
when they test for fuel mileage. But, I was doing real-world testing.
In fact, the EPA is thinking about revising their air/fuel testing
so that it reflects real-world driving conditions. And even with
the increased fuel mileage, I got 33 more horsepower out of a big-block
Chevy just by adding FireStorm spark plugs and adjusting the tuning
of the engine. "The other amazing thing I discovered while
testing the FireStorm plug was that an engine can run further out
in the rpm range. In other words, when they reach extremely high
speeds the power curve starts falling off. Just by using FireStorm
plugs, I can operate from 600 to 800 rpm faster past red-line with
the power curve still heading up rather than down. Krupa showed me an amazing video of the FireStorm spark plugs running
in real time on a test rig. I noticed that the powerful plasma field
coming from his spark plug filled the combustion chamber, but there
was something else. It appeared that the plasma was swirling around
like a small whirling tornado. Acclaim and Potential That might be one reason spark plug companies are not interested
in manufacturing the FireStorm. Another big reason is that the currently
used standard design of spark plugs would rapidly become obsolete.
However, the main reason no spark plug manufacturer is willing to
make the FireStorm is that there is no way anyone can create a knock-off
that gets around Krupa's worldwide patents on his designs. A final important factor to consider is financial. Most spark plug manufacturing plants are over 100 years old. They would need to invest vast amounts of money to retool before producing the FireStorm design because standard centre electrodes in generic plugs are manufactured in three parts. The FireStorm spark plug's centre electrode is only made of one part. Because of this, Krupa's company, CDI Limited, has decided it will have to manufacture the FireStorm plugs on its own. This is a massive undertaking that Krupa and his team did not initially plan for, but it has created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for venture capitalists and investors to get on board early. Consider this: annually, there are over six billion spark plugs made and sold worldwide. Krupa's team at CDI Limited estimates that the FireStorm spark plug will cost US$1.50 per unit initially to manufacture. The team also estimates that once FireStorm spark plugs become available, they will quickly capture 80% of the market share—even if they cost $10.00 or more per plug. That equals a lot of money. Moreover, an enormous amount of money will be saved by consumers when they fill up their gas tanks—even as fuel prices continue to rise. This will have a positive impact on the world's economy. And it couldn't come at a better time. In a recent report, Bill Powers, the editor of an investment newsletter called Canadian Energy Viewpoint, predicts that the price of crude oil will reach US$80 per barrel in the next 24 months! (See web page http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/ powers/2004/1104.html.) When asked if there were any conditions he required of future business partners, Krupa stated: "Well, we would have to sit down and talk about the details and see what they want and work out a deal that everyone agrees on. And no matter who's going to be involved, I would like to be in charge of the quality control end of the manufacturing. Because if you don't make it right, then it's like shooting yourself in the foot before a race." Much like Edison, who refused to rest until he'd invented a better light bulb, Robert Krupa was inspired and determined to invent a better spark plug. In so doing, he has given the internal combustion engine and our environment a brighter future. When asked about the legacy of his life's work, he proudly said: "I tell people I took the lowly spark plug from the Stone Age to the Space Age." ƒ
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