Thread: engines of yesteryear

Be nice for a sunday drive, but not when its raining....

Those old motors are fantastic, it is fascinating to look at them in museums and even better when they are running...

Originally Posted by Wraithe

Be nice for a sunday drive, but not when its raining....

Those old motors are fantastic, it is fascinating to look at them in museums and even better when they are running...

Isn't it amazing to see how people approached what, in our day, is a simple problem, and see how they approached it? Also, there is the beauty of the way they built. As a child and teenager I spent a lot of time around 'Veteran' cars, and I cannot think of any thing more beautiful and anachronistic outside of an art gallery. They were works of genius AND art. My favourite is the 1906 Silver Ghost, simply because nothing else came close to it's beauty and unparalleled sophistication and build quality. It didn't do anything extraordinary, though, if absolute quality and almost perfection aren't extraordinary,

In times to come the Bugatti Royale and the Hispano Suiza, any of them, would challenge the RR, but nothing else came even close to the impact on the world, until Citroen debuted the incredible DS19. I truly doubt that the DS19 will ever be beaten for sheer impact. I know this thread is really about engines, but I reckon the RR and the Citroen are worth a mention nevertheless. Sorry if you don't agree.

Oh well, at least I got to see a D5 this weekend.

Originally Posted by Wraithe

Be nice for a sunday drive, but not when its raining....

Those old motors are fantastic, it is fascinating to look at them in museums and even better when they are running...

Thats one of the good things about going to old car shows etc. We have over here in Melb, the Steam Museum in Scoresby. Watching those old motors is hypnotising.
On show days they have a few old petrol and diesel motors running as well.

I agree with you about those to cars, but this thread is not about cars, but about engines, and neither of these had engines that were in any way unusual by contemporary standards.

The RR 40/50 (commonly called "Silver Ghost", although this was only the name of a specific vehicle) had no real innovations in the engine, which was typical for the time, with side valves, non-detachable heads in blocks cast in threes. It did have dual ignition, which was unusual, although not unheard of.

The DS19 had an engine design that was twenty years old, modified to feature a crossflow head, not exactly a new idea at the time, having been first used fifty years earlier. It had wet sleeves, also a very old idea. OK, the ignition was unusual for 1955, with a separate coil for each pair of cylinders, but this was common in the late 19th century, and has become common again today!

As for significant engines, two come to mind. Firstly, in 1908, Ford produced the first mass produced car engine with a monoblock cylinder block and crankcase and single piece detachable head. In 1912, Morris produced the first car with an engine with all parts fully interchangeable (made for them by White and Poppe). From an engine aspect, this made these cars more significant than the ones you suggest. Even overall, I suggest that Ford's product was at least as significant as Royce's one, given that it was the car that almost by itself "put the world on wheels" as the first producer to seriously address this aim, leading to other manufacturers to follow suite.

JDNSW, most of the engines had origins from the steam engines of the day...

If you look into the designs of steam and compare them with internal combustion, there are design similarities among them...
The thinking behind the changes is amazing tho, and the adaptation to different uses of these engines is fascinating...

Just about all of our technology is adaptions from the old days, we dont think outside of the box very often...

Johntins, I grew up with a family that loved the Horse and Cart, stilll...

Mostly early motor vehicles where carts of some sort and an engine adapted, Carts had style to be different, just like cars did...

Phaeton was a luxury four wheel vehicle pulled by 2 or more horses... Another that looked better to me, was french origin(I think), but god knows how to spell it, (Laborcherie... Maybe)...

Imagine an engine on a Cobb & Co coach, hurtling down the road at 80 kmh...

As JDNSW, pointed out, fascinating engines of the day, all the tries at motorizing a cart, where fascinating and different...

I dont know where to find a photo of the engine I seen on an old Norwegian boat, but it was amazing...

This thing was probably 80 years old, over head cam, driven by chain, a very basic injector pump, intake valves where poppetts...

All the engine was external oiled, there where oiler caps on the cam, the chain drive bearings, the crank bearings and the rods even had feeders from external caps... Yet it was a diesel and very reliable too...

The injector pump was hand oiled and you could adjust anything on that engine while it was running...

Air start system, using one of the cylinders to start...

Only thing was, the boat it was in was about fall apart, too much rot in the keel boards and ribs where not much better down low...

My friend was considering buying it until he checked the hull out, but I would have loved to own that old diesel, cant remember the date stamps, but it maid my old friend feel young and he was in his 70's then(about 1978)...

Certainly there was a similarity between steam engines and the first petrol and diesel engines, not least because they were usually made by the same people, or at least the men who made them trained in a steam workshop. This was more apparent in stationary engines though than in car engines. One that comes to mind was an oil engine I saw in about 1960. This engine was used for irrigation pumping on the Murray near Swan Hill. It had been run for about six months of the year, 24/7 for about forty years at that time, with no major repairs in that time, despite having burnt down the shed it was in twice. Producing 80hp from a single horizontal cylinder, it turned at a fixed 120rpm, with a stroke of about three feet and a bore of about six inches. It used hot bulb ignition, and air start. The flywheel was about ten feet in diameter. All the moving parts were open to the air, and lubricated by oil cups, which needed to be replenished regularly, or manually with an oil can.

Another that comes to mind was the engine in one of the vehicles my father had when I was young. A Reo from the early 1920s, it had IOE valve gear, completely exposed, with oil cups on the rockers. With non-detachable heads and the cylinders cast in pairs, it also had a non-removable sump - access to the big ends and centre crankshaft main was via panels in the side of the crankcase.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I agree with you about those to cars, but this thread is not about cars, but about engines,

A point I clearly acknowledged, John.