Guys.....In the early days of Snowmobile Racing, everyone ran "fuel" (methanol and nitro) 1960's into mid 1970's, when it was eventually banned, and everyone switched to gasoline. All of the engines we saw at that time were "behind the flywheel" magnetos, No battery involved. The engines ranged from single cylinder around 295 cc all the way up to a triple cylinder, which I believe was 800 cc. It took some work, but they ran very well, AND at that time they were all air-cooled. I, myself ran stock and fuel outboard hydroplanes in APBA, and since there were no electronic ignitions at the time, we ran ford 427 racing points and condenser operated by a cam on the top of the crankshaft. Very crude by today's standards, but it worked. Now, here's the icing on the cake......A/C spark plug used to sponsor us, and they made several spark plugs specifically for outboard racing engines. They are known as (R-Gap) or retracted gap plugs. If you held up one of them so that you're looking straight at the center electrode/
threaded end, you could see an electrode that came out sideways down"inside" the plug, and they were made FOR fuel and ignitiom systems that barely put out 15,000-18,000 volts. That being said, Electronic Ignition Systems are easily in the 30,000- 45,000 volt range, and will work on ringed engines very nicely. I forgot to mention, most of us ran "fixed" or locked ignition at the time and also rope started the engines. We used an aluminum "rope-pulley" flywheel, and only took about 3/4 of a turn of rope on the flywheel.......Safety issue! With fixed ignition that is fairly well advanced, the engines would sometimes kick back, and could easily break your arm OR dis-locate your shoulder. Somebody has spooked you guys about the safety of doing what this discussion is based on. Gasoline under any condition is way more dangerous than nitro-methanol fuels, first of all the flash point on gasoline scares me. Pour some gas on the ground, and throw a lit match on it, then do the same thing with the same amount of say 50% model boat fuel, and you be the judge! I used to store a 55 gallon drum of methanol in my basement, and never worried about it at all NEVER would I do that with gas! Here's something else i almost forgot about: On cold o damp/rainy days, we had trouble getting the methanol to ignite, so we used to prime the engines with a shot of gasoline directly in the intake.....actually another proof of the volatility of gasoline versus methanol...I surely hope that you will pursue this, because Hobby king is showing gas model aircraft engines all the way down to .50 size with electronic ign. systems (hall effect) sensors, etc. I hope I have contributed something to this discussion...
