Thread: Trivia and other useless but interesting items

I think you missed out Tilling-Stevens of TS3 fame.

Originally Posted by Fifth Columnist

I think you missed out Tilling-Stevens of TS3 fame.

Post war wasn't it? Inspired by Sulzer.

Originally Posted by Fifth Columnist

I think you missed out Tilling-Stevens of TS3 fame.

https://roadtransporthall.com/yesterdays-workhorses/commer

The legendary Commer is one of the unsung heroes of the Australian road transport industry. It was such a common sight on Australian roads it was hardly given a thought, that is, if it were not for the famous knocking sound that made it stand out from the rest. The distinct knocking sound that could be heard for miles giving the truck its famous ‘Knocker’ nickname. The first Commer in Australia were not very successful and even the refined version released in 1953 caused problems for operators. The highways at the time were little more than narrow winding bush tracks and the Commer was renowned for its habit of de-coking, or melting its pistons as it struggled to complete the task at hand.

I decoked one of these in another life. Brilliant design!

Originally Posted by V8Ian

Post war wasn't it? Inspired by Sulzer.

Yes, and I am not sure that 'inspired' is quite the right word - "helped by the UK invalidating German patents" might be more accurate.

Worth noting that several of the truck diesels described in my book from the 1930s were opposed piston two stroke diesels reminiscent of the TS3, but all were vertical rather than horizontal, and none either used the TS3 rockers and pushrods onto a common crankshaft or the blower for scavenging. They either had two crankshafts connected by gear trains or had a pair of connecting rods from one piston outside the cylinders to the crankshft at the other end of the cylinders. Most had a piston scavenging pump linked to one of the pistons for each cylinder.

So the opposed piston concept was not new, just the TS3 was one of the very few that could be regarded as successful in the road vehicle world. As I commented above, the Junkers was the most successful aero diesel, but the layout has been used very widely in marine and stationary engine situations over the last century.

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

Nev Morris has e-mailed me that his Guiberson had a clutch and cooling fan when he acquired it. So it came from a tank not an aircraft.

Aircraft have "Cooling Fans "

TS3 stood for Two Stroke 3 cylinders not Tilling Stevens. A good little engine and there is the rub. In typical English engine design manner it was too bloody small. It was also oversold in this country at least. A Commer knocker was a good eight tonner body truck but got sold as a prime mover as well and it was not powerful enough to comfortably pull semi trailers. Eight much bigger cylinders would have made something of it.

The problem, Brian, is that you are looking at the world of the 1950s through eyes that have experienced another sixty years since then. Hindsight is wonderful!

A few points about that world that existed then, for those that weren't there.

1. Australia sourced almost all trucks (and nearly everything else imported) from the UK. There are two basic reasons for this - firstly, Empire Preference tariffs, and secondly, dollars. In the 1950s the developed world was divided into two currency blocks - sterling and dollar, with countries having their currency tied to one or the other. There was no free interchange between these areas. For someone in Australia to buy something from the dollar area meant you had to effectively buy dollars from the federal government, because nobody else could exchange Australian pounds to US dollars. And the government had very limited supplies, as Australia sold very little to the USA. What dollars were available went to buy things such as aircraft (DC-6, Constellation, Electra, but military aircraft were British (Vampire, Lincoln, Canberra) or built here (Sabre), and also Viscounts were used domestically more than Electras) and essentials obtainable only from the dollar area.

2. British truck designs were constrained by two factors. Britain has short distances and narrow roads - not much demand for big trucks, so they were few and far between. And Britain had, until the early fifties, a speed limit for commercial vehicles of 30mph (50kph), so there was little demand for large engines. This was reflected in their designs, even those intended for export.

3. In Australia, diesel engines in trucks were quite rare except in the very largest trucks - and even most of these were petrol. What Commer brought to the field was the first affordable diesel truck. So they were overloaded. But so were the ones they replaced, typically a petrol engined WW2 ex-army Ford or Chevrolet. With even less power, and a bigger appetite for fuel.

Originally Posted by pop058

Aircraft have "Cooling Fans "

...lots of aeroplanes have them too.