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Thread: Sleeve valves

  1. #1
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    Sleeve valves

    Went to 'the last of the chrome bumpers' car show today in cora lynn. Got talking to this guy with a 1912 daimler. Was a large heavy vehicle. It had a 3L straight 4 with sleve valves. I have always thought the idea of sleve valves was far superior to traditional ones as found in nearly all engines. Anyway he started the engine for me and I was gobsmacked that it ran in open air (no insulation) nearly silent. Sounded like a.... well a normal engine with the volume turned down. I could not believe what I was -not- hearing. It also gets 20mpg with is not to bad for 100 year old tech. Respect!

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    Sleeve valves were widely used from the very early days of motoring until about WW2, and the main reason for their use was silence. (Although note that Rolls Royce, the most outstandingly silent early car, never used sleeve valves!) Developments in making poppet valves quiet saw them disappear. They were used extensively in aeroplane engines from the 1930s to the end of large piston engines, primarily by Bristol and Napier, not for silence, but because these engines have very large cylinders, and sleeve valves solve the problem of keeping the exhaust valves cool.

    The main drawbacks of sleeve valves are manufacturing costs and oil consumption - as well as the piston/cylinder seal you have to seal sleeve/head and sleeve/intake port while keeping everything oily - usually these engines use a lot of oil. But so did early engines of all kinds and most aero engines, even modern ones.

    John
    John

    JDNSW
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    Like John said, these sleeve valve ( AKA Cuff valve?) engines needed lots of sacrificial oil as there is a big surface rubbing area.

    In simple terms think ..one cylinder liner twisting inside/around another...allowing slotted intake /exhaust ports to align. The sleeves were usually operated by a set of cam-driven levers in the crankcase near the bottom of the bore.

    Compare that.... to the now conventional (poppet) OHV valve system with the miniscule rubbing area of a valve guide and an efficient valve stem seal.

    Yes the system was not uncommon in the 20's/30's. Peugeot also had a
    (4 litre? ) engine with sleeve valves. I remember trying to wrangle one off a farmer in the 70's when I was restoring Vintage cars.

    Cheers
    Bob

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    I remember reading somewhere about early aero engines running castor oil and the pilots used to have the runs from swallowing large amounts of it as it flowed back from the engine. Pat

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    I saw a Napier Sabre engine in the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, UK once. H-24 layout, 2,400 HP from 37L capacity, which was used in the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest fighters. This had sleeve valves.

    It was a very impressive design, but was hideously difficult to make, particularly in large quantities. They certainly used a lot of oil, and quite a bit of it ended up on the windscreen of the plane!

    The mechanics hated them in cold weather, and they had to be kept warm overnight otherwise the oil became too viscous to get them started easily. Having to change 48 spark plugs very frequently was another tedious problem.

    It was later found that a Tempest fighter was much better with a 2 row radial, the Bristol Centaurus, and this was a much simpler design.

    Cheers,

    Lionel

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    The Tempest was one of those designs thats been overshadowed by another(Spitfire) but with the Centaurus fitted it was the perfect pursuit fighter,they were one of the very few piston engine fighters that could run down the V1.The Typhoon was the bain of the Germans in France but the Sabre used revs instead of capacity to produce torque and needed allot of work but I used to know a Typhoon pilot who always said they were the smoothest engine he ever flew.There is quite a few good books on aero piston engines and they are worth the read. Pat

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    Thanks fella's, I had to do a little reading after your posts.
    This from Wikipedia

    Production


    The Hawker Typhoon was the first operational Sabre powered aircraft, entering service with the RAF in mid-1941. Problems with both the Sabre engine and the airframe nearly led to the Typhoon's premature withdrawal from service.


    Problems started to arise as soon as production started in volume. Up to then the prototype engines had been hand-assembled by Napier craftsmen and it proved to be difficult to adapt it to assembly line production techniques. In particular, the sleeves often failed, leading to seized cylinders.[2] After testing some 18 different materials and manufacturing techniques a process of nitriding and lapping the sleeves helped resolve the problem.[2]
    Quality control also proved to be a serious problem. Engines were often delivered with improperly cleaned castings, broken piston rings, and machine cuttings left inside the engine.[3] Mechanics were constantly overworked trying to keep Sabres running, and during cold weather they had to run them every two hours during the night so that the engine oil would not congeal and prevent the engine starting the next day.[nb 2] These problems took too long to straighten out, and for many the engine started to attain a bad reputation. To make matters worse, mechanics and pilots unfamiliar with the very different nature of this engine tended to blame the Sabre for problems which were caused by incorrect handling. This was all exacerbated by the representatives of the competing Rolls-Royce company, who had their own agenda. Rolls-Royce eventually built their own interpretation called the Eagle.
    Napier did not seem to be particularly interested in solving these sorts of problems, however, and instead continued to tinker with the design for better performance. In 1942 they started a series of projects to improve altitude performance with the addition of a three-speed, two-stage supercharger, but at this point the basic engine was still not running reliably. In December 1942 the company was purchased by English Electric, who immediately ended the supercharger project and focused the entire company on the production problems. The situation quickly improved.
    By 1944, the Sabre V was delivering 2,400 hp (1,800 kW) consistently, and the reputation of the engine started to improve. This was the last version to see service, however, seeing service on the Hawker Typhoon and its derivative, the Tempest. Without the advanced supercharger, the engine's performance over 20,000 ft (6,100 m) fell off rapidly, and pilots flying Sabre-powered aircraft were generally instructed to enter fights only below this altitude. At low altitude, both planes were formidable, the Typhoon easily outpacing its German counterpart, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. With the destruction of the Luftwaffe during early 1944, Typhoons were increasingly used as fighter-bombers, notably by the RAF's Second TAF.
    Development continued, and the later Sabre VII delivered 3,500 hp (2,600 kW) with a new supercharger; the final test examples delivered 5,500 hp (4.100 kW) at 45 lb/sq in boost. By the end of the war there were several engines of the same power class; the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major was producing about 3,055 hp (2,280 kW), but required almost twice the displacement to do so, 4,360 in³ (71 L)
    [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Typhoon"]Hawker Typhoon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Typhoon_rearming.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Typhoon_rearming.jpg/300px-Typhoon_rearming.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/0/0c/Typhoon_rearming.jpg/300px-Typhoon_rearming.jpg[/ame]
    [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Sabre"]Napier Sabre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Napier_Sabre01.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Napier_Sabre01.jpg/300px-Napier_Sabre01.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/6/69/Napier_Sabre01.jpg/300px-Napier_Sabre01.jpg[/ame]

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    Quote Originally Posted by rick130 View Post
    Thanks fella's, I had to do a little reading after your posts.
    "The Big Show", a book by Pierre Clostermann, who was a Free French fighter pilot is very interesting. He started on Spitfires, and then graduated to Typhoons and then Tempests.

    There is plenty of comment re the Sabre engine and its characteristics. His account of his first flight with this engine is very entertaining!

    Cheers,

    Lionel

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    The Pratt & Whitney "Corncob" R4360 did not go into service until after WW2. Almost 19,000 were built, some by Ford Motor Co. Engine Division. Many types of aircraft used it including the B36 and B50. The final version, the R4360-51VDT was rated at 4300 horsepower. There is a piece on the internet about the initial development of the 4360 series which is a very interesting read and most informative as to how the many problems encountered in building and developing such a big and complex engine were overcome. The development team had one running at full military emergency power for 22 hours over a three day trial, 4500 horsepower (an early version, not the 51DVT). It was in USAF service into the early 1970's in aerial tankers. The jet engine killed off these monster piston engines.

    The Napier Sabre was a fearsomely complicated machine prone to all sorts of problems and rapid wear. At one time early in its service career the RAF set a period between overhauls of 70 hours only.

    There were still a few sleeve valve cars on the road when I was a boy and teenager, Willys-Knight, Falcon-Knight, Stearns-Knight and Minerva. Mostly they were followed down the road by a cloud of oil smoke. They had many wearing points and used to wear badly between the sleeves in the case of a double sleeve valve engine, or between the sleeve and outer bore in the case of a single sleeve valve, and pump oil into the cylinders. By this time of their lives, the cars were worthless so no-one would rebuild an engine which was a very expensive process. I know of a virtually complete Falcon-Knight tourer sitting in a farm shed on the Darling Downs, not for sale.
    URSUSMAJOR

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    Probably the most commercially successful sleeve valve engine of all time was the Bristol Centaurus (and smaller Hercules). Introduced late in WW2 with a 400hr overhaul period, this had extended to almost 3,000hrs by the late sixties, just about the highest of any piston engine. Possibly its last major application was the Bristol Freighter. As with all big piston engines, turbines spelled the end for it, rather than any shortcomings.

    John
    John

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