Ok.. I talked over with a buddy of mine today.. He told me. Why don't you just mount the engine in front and bolt on a different gearbox. Buy a rearend and flip it.. I think it's genius!
Depending on which way it turns, you wouldn't need to flip the rear. If someone put a flathead in one (as mentioned earlier in the thread) then they probably rotate the same way.
Hey Scooter - just read an article about Tatra in a recent classic type mag - I'll try and bring it LimeWorks tomorrow - you coming to the open house this year? CraigR
CRAIG! Hey man! Can't make it to the open house this year. I'm lame. Have to work. Missing LARS also. Work is work though... Come to breakfast sometime! I'll buy ya' a cup of joe...
They definitely sound cool <object height="385" width="480"> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iIop1cIi9r0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></object>
if i'm not mistaken, cheesler owns the very NAME "HEMI" and NOTHING but cheesler can legally be called a hemi, regardless of the design.... lawyers. dozens of "hemispherical" 4's, 6's, and 8's out there. VW lost a lawsuit to Tatra over plagiarism if the design in the late fifties, which forced the growing firm to stay with their aging design into the seventies.... and didn't save Tatra cars in the long run. as an aside, one is used in the movie "a series of unfortunate events" but the director misled the audience, showing luggage being loaded into the REAR of the car....
The Minneapolis Institute of Art has a Tatra T87 in their collection, for anyone who's in the area: http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?v=12&id=98653
Can't verify this. When I was a kid I heard that the Tatra plant was one of the last things we bombed in WWII. GM didn't want the competition. Strange things happened in that war, Ford of Germany sent reports to Ford in Detroit, right through the war.
Speaking of the War ,,and Aircraft ,,did any of those engines get put into an aircraft ??? be a heck of a good engine for an ultralite or a small experimental airplane,,,or two in a little bigger one ,,,sure sounds GREAT !! thanks you guys for the videos ,,
So where do I find that one for 175 Euro? I'm in the Netherlands right now (Hoek van Holland) and like weird engines ;-)
That one's a Tatraplan, a four cylinder model that preceded the 603. I have a book on the model that I bought when I lived in the Czech Republic 5-6 years ago. As it's in Czech, it's a rather slow read for me. Interesting and innovative car in its day.
Heck of a good engine in a plane?? First thing in a plane i think is that the engine is reliable. They are not! My father put one with a propeller on a sledge and it was nothing but problem. He swaped it for a VW engine cause he got tired of pushing the sledge home through the snow.Atleast he was on the ground but with a plane...... I gues pushing it home is not the biggest problem We later burried the tatra engines he had R.I.P.missed by no one
That's true - but the Ford company are still very sensitive about Henry's "enthusiasm" for the new politics in 1930's Germany.
Sorry Rob, it's already sold and goes into a beach buggy. Found it in Drenthe a couple of years ago. Wouldn't be to hard to find an in Holland or Belgium i think If your in Hoek van Holland you can visit me, i live near Hellevoetsluis so less than an hour from Hoek van Holland Good luck Hennie
Yep, it´a Tatraplan with a 4 cylinder aircooled 2 liter boxer engine, a pre 1951 I think. I´m slowly kustomising my 52. Here´s the current state and a photoshopped vision how it´s going to be (someday). -Heebah-
Here's more info & pics of the above Tatra, over at Bring a Trailer dot com: http://bringatrailer.com/2010/06/16/bat-success-story-human-cannonball-tatra-t600/ .
Geez Louise....I got a lead on an old car in a shed tonight so I went and checked it out. Be damned if it wasn't a Tatra!!! Left my name and number to see what they want for it but another guy says a car hauler was picking it up. There was a real nice old 50 Merc in the driveway waiting for the same hauler. No pic of the Tatra but did get one of the Merc that I might post later...
Automobile Quarterly had a pretty complete article about them about 30 years ago. They covered the Hans Ledwinka era and the Porsche thing, but I remember a couple of other things. The Germans tried to use them in various war vehicles with little success. The skinny was that they were, in a word, delicate. Kind of understandable, since they were originally designed for an air-cooled rear engine configuration.
The Jalopy Journal
