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McEvoy
United Kingdom
252 Posts |
 Posted - 17/11/2010 : 12:58:49
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When I advertised a cylinder head on the Forum a month or so back I mentioned in jest a V8 engine which Cymber rightly pointed out did exist in the Harker Special and requested a picture. All I had was a picture of the complete car but for those ionterested there is now a picture of the engine on web page www.reesbros.co.uk
Bob Milton |
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David Allison
United Kingdom
665 Posts |
Posted - 17/11/2010 : 13:54:04
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The Harker Special was indeed a very special Hybrid of the 1930's.
Built around an Austin 7 originally - the Harker was stretched open to 1100 cc using two special cylinder blocks on a special crankcase - the two Austin cranks geared together.
A pair of MG cylinder heads were then chain driven off the nose of the crank.
A Zoller supercharger mounted off a special front housing made for a lively performance.
The car was pretty reliable although it doesnt rev very hard (from memory I think it tops out at about 6000 rpm) and Harker used to drive the car on the road to and from meetings.
A chap called Leeson used to run the car at VSCC Prescott but I dont know if he still has the car.
It is a truly "interesting" piece of motorsport history with a small MG connection (well a pair of cylinder heads and a blower anyway).
Regards David |
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David Allison
United Kingdom
665 Posts |
Posted - 17/11/2010 : 13:55:23
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Sorry I forgot to add that the engine is not strictly speaking a V 8.
There are 2 cranks so really it is a twin engine.
Sorry to be picky.
Regards David |
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Gordon
United Kingdom
693 Posts |
Posted - 17/11/2010 : 21:19:44
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David,
Looking at the rear of the cylinder heads there appear to be 2 ports. I assume the lower and larger ones are the oil drain ports. Is the other one a water entry port? And did they dry deck the heads?
Gordon |
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sam christie
United Kingdom
3121 Posts |
Posted - 17/11/2010 : 22:14:04
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Is it actually the case that 4 cylinder Triple-M engines are developed from a V8 aircraft engine? As fitted to the SE5a?
Wolseley Viper
Sam |
Edited by - sam christie on 18/11/2010 22:25:04 |
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Cymber
United Kingdom
966 Posts |
Posted - 17/11/2010 : 22:23:38
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Thanks Bob, very interesting. It was quite a project for a special builder but he had the advantage of access to very good free facillities.
Maurice. |
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bahnisch
Australia
674 Posts |
Posted - 18/11/2010 : 09:37:13
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| Sam, I understand that Wolseleys built Hispano-Suiza (probably the foremost engine designers at the time) aero engines during the first world war and then designed a range of engines for their cars using similar principles. Wolsleys went broke in the 1920's and were bought out by Morris, who then went on to adopt the Wolseley/Hispano layout for some of his range. The Morris Minor was probably the best-selling product to use the Wolseley design, and thus the M-type followed. By the early 1930's Morris went back to side valves but Abingdon continued to develop the OHC design with outstanding results, eventually producing the highest output per litre (with the R-type) in the world to that time (and until the early 1950's in fact). |
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Colin Butchers
United Kingdom
1487 Posts |
Posted - 18/11/2010 : 10:34:47
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I think that I can claim one (possibly two) more V8 engined MMM cars. Len Goff's K2 K2015 at one stage ws fitted with a Ford V8 engine by a Mr D A Stump who ran it as The DAS Special. Len decribed the car in detail in his Article in the 2004 Yearbook.
Also at the Tewin Water Sprint held on the 18th June 1950 a Mr H Cocker entered an M.G. (possibly the same car) fitted with a 3622cc engine. On his first run he was timed at 20.8 secs, on his second run at 18.8 secs and on his final run he got down to 18.4 secs, which was almost as fast as the blown 750cc cars !
Not many people know that.
Colin B. |
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Bob Stringfield
United Kingdom
854 Posts |
Posted - 18/11/2010 : 11:14:06
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The last new ohc Wolseley was the 6/80, 1949-55, as seen in many police movies.
The subsequent 6/90 had an Austin pushrod six as well as a very imprecise right-hand gear-change lever, in reality the previous car's steering-column 'change mechanism routed under the floor. |
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JMH
United Kingdom
919 Posts |
Posted - 18/11/2010 : 12:40:28
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Colin,
Was it K2015 that was onced owned by a certain David Vizzard (emgine ghuru to my generation)? The biography in one of one of his books has a picture of the installation in it.
JH |
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MaGic_GV
United Kingdom
868 Posts |
Posted - 18/11/2010 : 12:50:49
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quote:
Looking at the rear of the cylinder heads there appear to be 2 ports. I assume the lower and larger ones are the oil drain ports. Is the other one a water entry port? And did they dry deck the heads?
Gordon
I think the upper holes are oil drains, the lower holes being water entry - these holes are where the core plug usually is, I had a head set up this way at one time.
I don't know about dry decking I'm afraid...
Cheers,
Graham |
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Onno
Netherlands
1067 Posts |
Posted - 18/11/2010 : 19:50:30
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JH
I presume you mean Vizard.
The A-series engine guru.
Did he have a V8 engined K? |
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Colin Butchers
United Kingdom
1487 Posts |
Posted - 19/11/2010 : 10:33:05
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Hello Jeremy, Yes K2015 was owned by David Vizard in the mid sixties I think and during his ownership, the 3622cc Ford V8 engine enabled the car to cover a standing quarter mile in 15.2 seconds. In an effort to find more speed David fitted the car with a 5.4 litre V8 and three Strombergs which eventually produced 225 bhp and resulted in the destruction of the car's gearbox ! By 1980 the car was owned by Peter Warne who returned it to something much closer to original condition. It's all in the 2004 Yearbook article.
Best wishes,
Colin B. |
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David Allison
United Kingdom
665 Posts |
Posted - 19/11/2010 : 10:33:42
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Gents:
The cylinder heads on the Harker are indeed dry decked - mainly because the water passages between the MG heads and the Austin (the engine did originally have Austin heads I think) based cylinder blocks were too difficult to engineer for a DIY engine tuner in 1933. Not sure if Harker realised that dry decking would give an improvement - MG certainly had found this by 1931 so probably he copied convention which was well documented.
Len Goff's K2 was I think owned by Dave Vizzard and did have a flat iron V8 (pilot) engine fitted for a time - the original engine had been frost damaged and the V8 was fitted for expediency (and cost) because it was to hand.
I am pretty sure that Vizzard's involvement was short and involved little in the way of engine tuning that he became so renowned for later.
Dave Vizzard and Clive Tricky both wrote books on engine tuning of BMC and Ford OHV engines - using recieved knowlege of their own allied to extensive work by Weslake on behalf of both manufacturers.
My own cylinder head tuning work was heavliy influenced by Les Rider (ex Weslake - Coventry Climax) a cylinder head tuning guru who also influenced both Vizzard and Tricky.
Dry Decking - is a system of cutting off the water flowing between head and block through the head gasket - instead feeding the water between the exhaust valves.
The MG work was done on EX120 when the blower was fitted because they experienced head gasket and then valve failures as the combustion temperatures increased.
This lead in turn to the development of the AB (cross flow) head on the C type and J2, with the racing heads again dry decked to improve engine performance.
Dry Decking is still very much an accepted way of improving cylinder head sealing and reducing valve seat temperatures.
Interesting to note that the Wolseley Moth engine is designed with the cylinder head and water jackets cast in one piece - the cylinder block being a separate assembly.
"Monobloc" construction being a modern invention of the late 1960's and 70's? - the Moth engine dating to a 1912 Hispano forebear - nothing new in engineering is there?
The OHC Morris and Wolseley engines were indeed developments of knowledge gained through the tie up between Wolseley and Hispano - although it would be stretching things to say that the MMM engine is a direct relation of the Hispano V8, it is certainly a 1st cousin (sic).
Engineering has always been a small world - the odd thing is that development within that world always seems to come full circle and engineers of each generation all seem to delight in re-inventing the wheel.
However often you re-invent the wheel it ends up round!
As an aside NA037 owned and run by Derek Davies also ran at Tewin in 1950 and gained a time of 16.6 seconds and fastest time of the day.
NA037 entered Tewin 3 times and won the FTD award twice - each time beating more modern cars with larger engines and less weight.
For 1950 Davies had fitted the lightweight body (known as the Blue Whale) an intensely ugly creation which was nonetheless successfull in improving the cars performance - in 1949 the car gained a time of 18 odd seconds and the new body got the time down by almost 2 further seconds.
Competition that day was a Cooper MG and probably Tony Crooks' Frazer Nash - both of these cars influenced the lightweight body on 037 and maintained its competitiveness for another few years.
Dad took the car along to the retrospective run of the event and the old girl was dissapointed to see that the circuit had been reduced to a through the cones test which Dad struggled with bearing in mind the heavy steering etc..
Regards David |
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Peter Green
United Kingdom
1682 Posts |
Posted - 19/11/2010 : 19:05:16
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David,
I presume you are talking about NA0307 (JB 3852) now owned by your sister. I have mentioned this so people are not confused.
Peter. |
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bahnisch
Australia
674 Posts |
Posted - 19/11/2010 : 22:18:33
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| On the question of V8's I was told many years ago that the factory considered making a V8 engine using, in effect, two 750cc fours on a common crankcase with suitable crankshaft, etc. Sounds feasible, given the ohc heads etc. The 1500 class was popular in the 1930's and eventually led to its adoption in Formula one. Has anyone else heard of this scheme? |
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