Weird engines

[quicksilver]

The Rover gas turbine cars and the Leyland truck that was the ultimate development of the idea must be worth a mention here.

I was lucky enough to see and hear this one running. Leyland wanted to put it into full production in 1970 so can you imagine an alternative future with fleets of these howling and whistling up and down the motorways instead of diesel trucks?

[scdan4]

1 hour ago, big_al_granvia said:

is posting that on here wise sir

Very much so.

This is the quality content I stay subscribed for.

[Christine]

Wooler . Flat four.  I knew his son in law, one bike he owns,   the other survivor is  in the Science museum...

 

  

 

[castros_bro]

Not a theme but aeronautical.

 

 

[Missy Charm]

4 hours ago, castros_bro said:

Not a theme but aeronautical.

 

 

The only question, in relation to that thing, is 'why?'.  Petrol-engined planes were commonplace a long time before the Besler took to the air.  Was the aim purely to prove wrong those who claimed that a steam plane was impossible?  

The Besler can't have been practical, on the basis that it could only have carried water sufficient to provide for a flight of a few minutes.  

[Zelandeth]

5 hours ago, castros_bro said:

Not a theme but aeronautical.

 

 

I did not know that was a thing.  It did NOT surprise me though reading it that Doble were involved (Besler bought out the company when they went under apparently), as they really were at the forefront of lightweight high efficiency steam tech.  If you've not heard of them, go do some reading.  Their cars were mighty impressive.  Just...horrifically complicated and expensive!  

[Tommyboy12]

Honda's tiny 25cc 4-stroke overhead cam strimmer engine is quite weird/interesting to me. 4 stroke at this size is unusual but to make it OHC instead of OHV seems like complete over engineering.

The cambelt is miniscule

[Missy Charm]

39 minutes ago, Tommyboy12 said:

Honda's tiny 25cc 4-stroke overhead cam strimmer engine is quite weird/interesting to me. 4 stroke at this size is unusual but to make it OHC instead of OHV seems like complete over engineering.

The cambelt is miniscule

'Well, I looked at that sad hunk of OHV, pushrod, Yankee pig iron over the fence and I thought to myself, "no chance, sucka!  This bad boy's JDM.  There's three generations of race-breeding in my engine and  yours is just some good-old-boy, trailer-trash junk spewing black smoke and making that down-home 'grumble grumble' noise".  I braced myself and gunned the Honda and then somehow missed the next shift.  The VTEC kicked in too early and I somehow lost the front end and found it chewing up my prized, climbing hydrangea.  Mr Simpkins, mowing his lawn next door with his old Briggs and Stratton-powered Hayter, stopped its engine and asked if I'd ever used a petrol strimmer before.  I shook my head, dazed.  Mr Simpkins brought me a glass of cool lemonade and recommended that I sit in the shade for a while.  He then puffed on his pipe, said "Nothing kicks like American muscle", and re-started the Hayter.  It roared, lit up the wheels when the self-drive was engaged and pulled a wheelie all the way from Simpkins's patio to the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden...' 

 

[Richard_FM]

9 hours ago, quicksilver said:

The Rover gas turbine cars and the Leyland truck that was the ultimate development of the idea must be worth a mention here.

I was lucky enough to see and hear this one running. Leyland wanted to put it into full production in 1970 so can you imagine an alternative future with fleets of these howling and whistling up and down the motorways instead of diesel trucks?

From what I've read gas turbines seem to work best when running at a steady speed & lose efficiency in stop start conditions, it's possibly that hybrid technology would help things.   

[Imhotep]

On 16/06/2025 at 23:42, DodgeRover said:

How about the Detroit diesels big 2 stroke with a blower? 

Nothing else sounds like one of those, even the little ones that we sometimes got in plant over here sound good.

Best noise an engine can make, a 2 stroke Detroit diesel 

[Snipes]

9 hours ago, Richard_FM said:

From what I've read gas turbines seem to work best when running at a steady speed & lose efficiency in stop start conditions, it's possibly that hybrid technology would help things.   

They've been trying to make turbines work in cars since the late 1980s, if not earlier. Features on prototypes were surprisingly common when I use to buy period car magazines. 

Toyota and Mercedes spent a lot of money and effort but it all looks to have been a developmental dead end. 

[Dyslexic Viking]

2 hours ago, Imhotep said:

Best noise an engine can make, a 2 stroke Detroit diesel 

Yes, Canadian farmer below with straight piped exhaust on his Detroit powered grain truck.

 

[Zelandeth]

20 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

Yes, Canadian farmer below with straight piped exhaust on his Detroit powered grain truck.

 

 

It makes me very sad that Detroits never really caught on over here.  They might not win any efficiency awards, but they don't half sound good.

[andy18s]

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1GLLWmmXJw/

All wheel drive train!

[flat4alfa]

Years old these two clips and glad they are still online.  Truck was seen for sale two years ago at $8k

 

 

[flat4alfa]

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

It makes me very sad that Detroits never really caught on over here

We had Commer Knockers to ruin our hearing instead!

Granted this particular one is out in a colony, but still

Quote

The problem with the TS3 was running backwards if you were not careful letting the clutch out at traffic lights etc. It was easy to stop it, just stall it in top gear. When the M6 opened at Preston they would de-coke themselves with a shower of red hot sparks from the exhaust. [quote: an internet person]

 

[108]

Bombardier produced quite a few buses with Detroit diesel engines. These were omnipresent for around 15 years until 2000ish. 
 

Wikipedia

[High Jetter]

I thought Bombardier was a beer 🤷‍♂️

[Dyslexic Viking]

6 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

I thought Bombardier was a beer 🤷‍♂️

And I thought Bombardier was just a tracked vehicle.

[Snipes]

5 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

And I thought Bombardier was just a tracked vehicle.

And I thought Bombardier was just an aircraft 

[Dyslexic Viking]

So you could take a Bombardier bus to the airport then a Bombardier plane then a tracked Bombardier to a cabin in the woods where you could get drunk on Bombardier beer.

[Surface Rust]

3 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

So you could take a Bombardier bus to the airport then a Bombardier plane then a tracked Bombardier to a cabin in the woods where you could get drunk on Bombardier beer.

Then a ride through the snow on your Ski-doo. (I think Bombardier were the inventor)

[D.E]

11 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

It makes me very sad that Detroits never really caught on over here.  They might not win any efficiency awards, but they don't half sound good.

FTFs such as this one have British bodywork (Motor Panels) and a Detroit two stroke. They do indeed sound great.

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

And I thought Bombardier was just a tracked vehicle.

[Richard_FM]

14 hours ago, Snipes said:

They've been trying to make turbines work in cars since the late 1980s, if not earlier. Features on prototypes were surprisingly common when I use to buy period car magazines. 

Toyota and Mercedes spent a lot of money and effort but it all looks to have been a developmental dead end. 

Rover did a lot of research into gas turbines in the 1950s & 60s, but decided against using them in a production car, partially due to the cost of accurately machining the turbine blades.

In the late 1960s there were a few Indy Cars with gas turbines, as they were well suited to oval racing.  Both the STP turbo car & Lotus 56 almost won the Indianapolis 500 but had mechanical trouble late in the race.

[RayMK]

1 hour ago, Richard_FM said:

Rover did a lot of research into gas turbines in the 1950s & 60s, but decided against using them in a production car, partially due to the cost of accurately machining the turbine blades.

In the late 1960s there were a few Indy Cars with gas turbines, as they were well suited to oval racing.  Both the STP turbo car & Lotus 56 almost won the Indianapolis 500 but had mechanical trouble late in the race.

The reason for the Rover 2000 P6's unorthodox front suspension was to give the engine bay sufficient width for a possible gas turbine engine in the future.

Photo of the T4, By Matthias v.d. Elbe - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42353399

[Leyland Worldmaster]

23 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

We had Commer Knockers to ruin our hearing instead!

Granted this particular one is out in a colony, but still

 

Sometimes three cylinders are not enough, innit:

 

[Leyland Worldmaster]

19 minutes ago, Leyland Worldmaster said:

Sometimes three cylinders are not enough, innit:

 

 

[quicksilver]

17 hours ago, D.E said:

FTFs such as this one have British bodywork (Motor Panels) and a Detroit two stroke. They do indeed sound great.

Funnily enough there was one of those at Gaydon on Sunday as well as the Commer TS3. I didn't get to hear it running though

[Inspector Morose]

All worthy engines, the above. But are any of them truly weird?  Sit down while I tell you a tale of an almost bus engine whose designer went on to help the war.

It was the early 1930s, and Bristol Commercial Vehicles were on the lookout for an engine that could be mounted under the floor of a bus so that more passenger seats could be fitted within the permitted dimensions of the time (also one of the reasons why underfloor-engined buses gained so much popularity in the 5-s and 60s) AEC had toyed with putting the engine on the side of the bus, under a sideways facing seat (the AEC Q) but Bristol wanted to banish the engine from the passenger compartment altogether.

Enter one Charles Benjamin Redrup. At the 1929 Olympia air show, he exhibited a novel engine design of his own creation. Ot consisted of a number of cylinders arranged like the barrel of a gun whose pistons were connected, via ball and socket type joints, to a disc mounted at an angle to an output shaft. As the pistons drove down, the force was 'steered' by the slanted disc arrangement to turn the output shaft. Christened the 'wobble plate' engine, it showed promise as a compact and powerful engine that could be used where space and weight were at a premium. Bristol engaged Redrup and tasked him to design a larger version for use in a bus chassis so that the body could be placed over it, freeing up vital fare paying passenger space.

His design was of a nine cylinder engine with rotary disc valves and could produce 145 bhp from its seven litre capacity, an unheard of output at the time for a bus engine. Due to the lack of unbalanced forces withing the engine, it was also quite free revving and the power output was achieved at an astronomical 2900rpm. 

The engine was fitted to a single deck chassis that had been shown at a recent commercial motor show. Known as 'the black chassis', it was used in experiments involving this engine and was never bodied in this form, apart from a shed like structure to protect riding engineers. The engine was mounted at the front in this instance, the idea being that once proven, a new chassis would be designed to take full advantage of the compactness of the engine. Ala,s this chassis was never designed as the engine, although showing great power and performance when running but getting it running was another matter. The main problem was the rotary valving bot being able to reliably seal the combustion area, making starting the engine very difficult indeed.  On one test, the chassis was towed over five miles before the engine roared into life. On good days, the engine would consume a couple of sets of fully charged batteries. oil consumption, again due to the rotary valve, was said to be 'rather high'.

The engine went through numerous redesigns, with little success, before a change in management at BCV cancelled the project and let Redrup go. He went on to refine the wobble plate engine, this time using conventional poppet valves, and had some success selling it to the military as a propulsion unit for torpedos. One other small job for the military was that he designed the hydraulic drive mechanism for Wallis' bouncing bomb. After the way he spent the rest of his life designing axial engines for aircraft, and constructed a 250cc radial three-cylinder engined motorbike using a Royal Enfield frame. This bike still exists in the Sammy Miller Museum in New Milton, Hampshire.