Engines
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 02 September 2008 |
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Engines
The descriptions of the models included in this book provide irrefutable evidence of the outstanding imagination of the designers prevailing during the period of their inventiveness often proved an insurmountable obstacle to the actual ralisation of their technical solutions which recently put forward again have enjoyed more success and have been improperly, represented as new.
The most popular engines at the beginning of the century were single-cylinder ones. These were quickly supplanted by twin-cylinder engines, either in line or V, water or air cooled, and mounted in a large number of different positions (on the front axle, in the middle of the vehicle, beneath the floor, on the rear axle) both longitudinally and transversely. The twin-cylinder which has never totally disappeared (eg, the Fiat 500 and later the 126) gave way to the4- , the 6- and later the 8-cylinder engine, especially in American products.
The valveless or sleeve-valve engine enjoyed considerable success. Its main feature was that it was free from valve floating at high engine speeds, noise, the breakage of springs and the burning of the valve seats. The best known sleeve-valve engine was the one designed by Charles Y. Knight. In this the combustion chamber was alternately open to the inlet and to the exhaust ducts. The gas flowed during those periods of the reciprocation and rotary oscillation of the sleeve when the ports cut in it aligned with the combustion chamber ports. It seemed that 8 cylinders marked the upper limit to the number of cylinders but in the 1930s more than one manufacturer adopted 12-cylinder (Auburn, Franklin, Lincoln, Packard, Lagonda, Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza, Napier, and Lancia, the latter two only using it on airplane engines) and 16-cylinder engines. These were the upper limits of the number of cylinders other than in aircraft engines where 24-cylinder examples existed.
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