1936 Buick straight eight engine is modified from stock with special carburetor and manifold setup and machined engine covers. 1914 Peugeot
Obviously there are a lot of engine aficionados watching and contributing to this thread. I would like to take a stab in the dark and ask if anyone has knowledge as to who designed the Ranger SOHC, air cooled 6 cylinder in-line inverted aircraft engine for Fairchild starting in the late 1920's? Did it evolve from a foreign engine or was it original design? Post WWII used in many race cars. The internet is no help nor an enquiry to the Fairchild Club.
Studebakerjoe...note my avatar that's a fuel injected 169 Champion in line 6 That's an easy assumption to make but I haven't been able to substantiate that. Sherman Fairchild hired CAMINEZ in 1925 to develop and build his 4 cylinder cam type radial engine for use in Fairchild airplanes. It was certified and produced but did not prove to be very satisfactory. Later 20's Fairchild, was building an unspecified foreign engine under patent license and assuming they would have used it in their own airplanes suggests it might have been the German Siemens-Halsked which was a rotary radial engine or the English Armstrong Siddeley Genet, a conventional radial engine. The Ranger 6 cylinder SOHC, in-line development apparently started around 1929 and a V-12 version followed. The only American non radial aircraft engines that might have had some features incorporated in the design that I can identify might be the water cooled Liberty V-12 with it's overhead cam and hemi heads and to a much lesser degree the Menasco's, while air cooled, were (only ? )pushrod operated valves and did run some inverted engines. My only further definitive mention of CAMINEZ credits him with being Chief Engineer at Allison about 1931 and responsible for developing the Allison V1710 which while water cooled did have some similarities to the Ranger. So...who designed the Ranger? Someone out there must have a magazine article or a Engineering published paper, or book with the absolute answer.
Ranger L-440 is a six-cylinder, inline, inverted air-cooled aircraft engine produced by the Ranger Aircraft Engine Division of the Fairchild Engine and Airplane corporation of Farmingdale, New York. The engine was mainly produced for Fairchild’s family of training aircraft in the mid-1930’s. See:- www.wikiwand.com/en/Ranger_L-440; www.wikiwand.com/en/Ranger_Engines (Reference to Fairchild-Caminez Model 447); www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_aircraft_engines; www.si.edu/object/nasm_A19731576000; www.enginehistory.org/Piston/Fairchild/Fairchild.shtml; and Bridgman, Leonard (1988). Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II. New York: Crescent Books. ISBN 0-517-67964-7. The company was founded by Sherman Fairchild in 1924 as Fairchild Aviation Corporation, based in Farmingdale, and East Farmingdale, New York. It was established as the parent company for Fairchild's many aviation interests. The company produced the first US aircraft to include a fully enclosed cockpit and hydraulic landing gear, the Fairchild FC-1. At some point, it was also known as the Fairchild Aircraft Manufacturing Company. The Fairchild Aircraft Ltd. of Longueuil, Quebec, Canada was an aircraft manufacturer during the period of 1920 to 1950, which served as a subsidiary of the Fairchild company of the United States. The Fairchild Engine Company was formed with the purchase of the Caminez Engine Company in 1925.[1] In 1929, Sherman Fairchild purchased a majority stock interest in Kreider-Reisner Aircraft Company of Hagerstown, Maryland. The company moved to Hagerstown in 1931.[2] AllisonV1710 No mention of actually who designed the engine however the Fairchild Engine Company was formed in 1925 with the purchase of the Caminez Engine Company by Fairchild.
426 Hemi DOHC While Ford was trying to get their 427 SOHC engine approved for NASCAR, Chrysler who did not want to lose their lead showed their next step in Hemi evolution A925 426 DOHC HEMI. Chrysler built this one and only for development.
1918 Curtis v12 aero engine in Miss Detroit racing boat. The Curtis Museum used to have a number of rum runner boats from the Prohibition era in their collection. I understand that there might be several in the Detroit river between Windsor, Ont and Port Huron http://www.trianomarine.com/styled-2/styled-5/styled-8/index.html
Miller one piece aluminum crankcase and block that also incorporated the water jackets. The cylinders in this engine were wet-liners of cast vanadium iron inserted into the block with packings.
With all of the unusual engines in this thread the Miller SOHC four (post 950) is certainly an engine to be heralded. The Miller OHC engines (and later the Offy which was a continuation of the Miller racing engines) dominated Indy like no other engine and I doubt any engine manufacturer will surpass the record of 12 wins with the Miller and 27 wins with the Offy in the Indy 500. This engine was designed in 1916 with Harry Miller and Fred Offenhauser working side by side (and in a few years to be joined by Leo Goosen). During the teens some great racing designs were made, the least of which are Peugeot, Delage and Mercedes from overseas (all three Indy winners in the teens). It was an era of looking over the shoulder in a sense of other designers/inventors and artisans for your “new” design whatever side of the Atlantic you resided and American engineers developed some fine examples as well, such as, Frontenac, Duesenberg, Wisconsin, Mercer, Packard, Premier among a few others of course. Although most historians have given credit to Peugeot and Delage for the overhead cam design of Harry Miller, I believe the real credit lies with a great designer in his own right Gratien Michaux. Michaux designed some of the early Lions Peugeot Voiturette racecar engines in Europe some four or five years prior to the L76 Peugeot of 1912 (which many consider the genesis of the modern day OHC engines). Long story but Lions Peugeot and Peugeot were separate companies at the time so not as much crossover with ideas at the time in question. LB points out the valve gear of the Miller 289 four which I believe was patented in France by Michaux. He built several engines very similar to the 289 four of Miller and ran them in the French Grand Prix at Lyon on the eve of WWI, without spectacular result. Nevertheless Gratien Michaux should be awarded his due credit for a design that was chosen by arguably one of the greatest “designer/builders” of all time, Harry Miller. Here is a picture of an identical engine in a recreation of the Miller Golden Sub which was driven by Barney Oldfield in 1917 and 1918. Here is a copy of an article from 1914 which I would guess Harry Miller studied with interest when building his first Miller OHC engine. The 289 four above though was not his first engine he designed and built as the very first was an iron version and ran in 1916 at Sheepshead Bay New York boardtrack. You can see the exhaust of the first laps ever made by a Miller in the 33 car.
LB, same car. This is a fabulous recreation of the original Golden Sub done by the late Buck Boudeman. Here is a picture that I happen to like of the original in 1917 . I imagine if there was a HAMB in 1917 these guys would have probably been contributors. Here is a picture of the iron engine I referenced which is actually the first Miller engine (as opposed to a modified existent engine). It ran in 1916 as evidenced by the photo above. The aluminum engines did not compete until 1917.
LB just so everyone knows, the Monroe was actually a Frontenac engine but Monroe put up the money so some of the cars at Indy got the Monroe nameplate and the others (identical except for color on the bodywork) got the Frontenac label. Cool thing about this engine (the Monroe/Frontenac four twin cam) was the first actual American racing engine to win at Indy (as opposed to the earlier modified stock engines). Also cool part is that the winning engine in 1921 was a Frontenac eight OHC so Louis Chevrolet was the first back to back winner at the brickyard.
Love this thread ! The quality of the castings, machine work and design amazes me, every idea, concept goes back to teens, 20's, 30's, 40's, paper. pencil, Mill, Lathe, Drill Press, No Cad design, No Cam machining, (we evolved in 80's ) Tool & Die Maker/Pattern Maker all my life and the quality/history humbles me to this day.
Most if not all “ ideas” on how to improve the efficiency of the internal combustion engine were thought of and tried on farm tractors before the time of the automobile. I’ve posted this before, but back a spell I went to the dispersal of the largest tractor collection in the world in Montana. I saw a machine that had Hemi heads, four valves per cylinder, overhead cam, roller rockers, posi-tract, rack and pinion steering.....it was a 1904 Farm tractor. Bones
Those exhaust port headers are an absolute work of art, as are the cam towers, side covers, etc. In my opinion late model "engine covers" miss the point entirely. If an engine can't be made to look beautiful in-and-of-itself then the hood needs to be welded shut. Modern designers are missing the point.
The Jalopy Journal
