Let's Talk Cyclecars

The pumps on the island look like they are two-sided Bennetts circa 1930-33. That implies US/Canada, since I don't think Bennett exported them. (The pumps on the wall look older and may actually be oil dispensers.) The architecture looks North-East/New England to me. The three-wheeler looks rather like a late 20s Sandford, but I doubt too many of those made their way to the US from France. The midget racer looks like one of the home-made motorcycle-engined cars we've discussed a few times.

 

I see the Curtis motorcycle is shaft driven. I'm impressed yet again by his engineering.

 

Duncan Dragonfly, built c.1947. 500cc BSA twin powering the the front wheels, Moulton rubber front suspension. It was doomed by the Duncan company's tax problems and sold to Austin during Duncan's receivership. In the background is Duncan's primary product, bodies for the Healey coupe. Duncan also bodied some Alvis cars in the roughly two years of their existence.

 

Hello, SR and thank you on wonderful photo and information about Duncan's small car Dragonfly!

As I could read and see, it was a real small automobile, not just one more of bubble-cars, descendants of vintage cyclecars. Here is more information about most of Duncan's work:
http://www.acmefluid.com.au/larry/duncan.html
https://www.classicdriver.com/en/car/healey/duncan-sports-saloon/1948/188306
For me, small Dragonfly looks as mini-replica of big and elegant Duncan-Healey? It is always difficult to design cute and elegant small cars, especially sport-style coupe. This one was for 3 person seating in one row, as I understand. Unfortunately, not any information I could find about chassis and mechanicals. But, with BSA 500 cc engine, it could be really fast small sports coupe.
*** Correction: I just found this roentgen sketch of Dragonfly (it seems that it had chassis-less, monocoque body shell with rubber suspension, at the front):

A few more photos with Dragonfly:



Maybe there are more examples from the after-War era, but I am familiar with Italian designers that made wonderful carrosseries on Fiat 500 Topolino chassis, later used Fiat 1100-1500 chassis (successors of Ballila) and even "modern" chassis-less Fiat 600 as a base... They made "Torpedo Carrosseries" (open-wheel spiders), or "Barchetta Carrosseries" (wide-body) even "berlinette" (closed coupés)...

Ciao,
Zoran​

 

Seating for 3 Europeans or one American!!

 

Or two Americans, if they were the models who posed in 1930s car ads sitting 3 abreast...

 

Benjamin for sale
http://carrosso.nl/for sale/benjami...LjHlBVYSKSjzfGMA4nCyHjP4yUEBbpJQmkxj_IqfAQuTs

 

Morris Minor SV found in TX:

www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/what-make-and-vintage-is-this-frame-and-engine.1135341

 

Morgan in the snow.

 

SR100, how old is that pic- that's a great find!!!

 

Apparently fairly recent. It comes from www.hotrodders.com, where it shows up as the most recent pic posted. @roger55 says he knows the owner, so its probably in West Texas. I wonder if the owner has any other pieces. The side-valve Minor was the loss-leader in the Morris line (the OHC Minor of the same era was almost identical to an MG M-type Midget and much more desirable). The SV was only good for 50mph, & I'm not sure whether that top speed is only with the later 4spd. That said, if it was local, I'd probably try to buy it.

 

That Morris is early ..probally late 30's ..it has no water pump and cools by thermosyphon..had one of these in 1952.....

 

Marc pic......

 

Thinking about Frazer Nashes:

This past holiday season my wife and I spent a few days at a place in the Hemel-en-Aarde valley just inland of Hermanus in the Western Cape. The road which snakes up through the valley put me in mind of the sort of road in which something like a Frazer Nash would be in its element: twisty and relatively narrow, far outside integralness with a cohesive system of vehicular mobility. For that reason it was also quite bumpy; so bumpy, in fact, that truck-based SUVs were breathing down my neck, which SUVs would on smoother roads have been no match for the DD on its stiff aftermarket springs and custom dampers.

To some the chain-drive FN represents the experience of a slice of history best taken as accurately as possible. The then-conventional wisdom of getting suspension to work by not letting it would be part and parcel of this experience. For me it instead represents a line of technological development prematurely abandoned, and hence my understanding of what the FN essentially is is such that it could stand fertile lines of elaboration without ceasing to be just that. My experience of the Hemel-en-Aarde valley road reveals a contradiction: the Frazer Nash approach to suspension makes it quite unsuitable for the very sorts of roads which conceptually suit the FN best. Its springing should not be rock-hard but rather softer than normal; and hence it needs some clever suspension innovations to resist roll within the torsional stiffness constraints of the simple ladder chassis – which is to my mind very much part of the car's essence. Some Citroën 2CV thinking would not go amiss here.

This, I fear, opened something along the lines of floodgates. The difficulty of shifting a dog clutch at a leisurely pace got me to thinking of a spring-loaded over-centre sliding detent mechanism in the fore-aft action of the gearshift, which snaps an output lever rapidly from the midpoint to the end of its travel, in both directions, however slowly one moves the input lever. It would be a pure add-on which changes nothing except the shifter, but which might make the transmission system as practical for pottering-about as it is for spirited use. I scratched my head over this just enough to satisfy myself that there are several ways to do it.

The GN/FN chain system progressed from two to three to four speeds. There is no reason it could not progress to five or six if there were the option of having the 5-6 dog slider riding on the rear axle, in the space directly behind the bevel box. Of course this entails adding mass to the axle, which under the standard arrangement is unsprung. Likewise the simple expedient of housing a differential concentrically within a hollow axle would add unsprung mass unless we make use of the opportunity to widen the rear track afforded by the differential, by mounting the output shaft to the frame and introducing a DeDion axle, which could very easily be sprung by quarter-elliptics as before. Because the chains would no longer have to deal with suspension movement, the shaft centre spacing could be reduced quite a bit.

Finally, one of the great advantages of the chain transmission system is the relative ease with which one can make the respective speeds do different things. I can see possibilities in a torque converter in series with the first-speed chain only, combined with an overall fairly tall close-ratio set of speeds. Because it is inactive in all the other speeds, the converter would need no lock-up facility, but because it receives torque already multiplied at a speed already reduced by the bevel box, it would have to be a relatively bulky low-stall unit. This would enable clutchless launches and a 2+:1 torque multiplication throughout a very long first speed, yet remove the torque converter entirely from action as soon as the second speed is engaged.

Here, then, is a sketch of my ultimate Frazer Nash chain drive setup:

 

Dawie, you've taken me down a rabbit hole and I'm looking around somewhat in the dark.
But I like the english as well as the sketch.

 

Duncan Pittaway in his GN at Circuit des Remparts.

 

Hello, Dawie!​

I was always attracted to your unorthodox technical solutions for motorized vehicles, especially components of transmission and suspension!
Some of them were shown here in our beloved Forum and some at your magnificent website/blog " Artisanal Cars "... (pity that I couldn't open it, for a year-two)


--- ---
As I understand about your new G.N. transmission:

1. entire transmission system, except half-shafts, is fixed to chassis?
2. front "BMW-diff" does not have a differential function - it is blocked and both half-shafts turn at the same speed all the times?
3. G.N. cyclecars (original or modified racers) didn't have any kind of differential (or maybe did, in some versions?)!
4. the functional differential is in a tube (hollow half-shaft), maybe limited-slip or with a blockade?
5. there is not any kind of the clutch, except hydraulic torque converter at the left of "BMW-diff", giving clutch-function just to the 1st speed?
6. G.N. cyclecars (original or modified racers) didn't have any clutch (or maybe did, in some variants?)!

I am sure that I should study your system a lot, just for brain-fitness: not any chances for constructing something like that! However, never too late for learning something new, even if it couldn't be used?
As Jack said: your English language is top-level and explanations clear!

Regards,
Zoran​

 

That's correct, Zoran. Neither GNs nor chain-drive Frazer Nashes had differentials, which is why the Frazer Nash's rear track was so much narrower than the front. As far as I know, they all had clutches, though the very first belt-drive GNs might have worked by fast-and-loose belts in lieu of a clutch.

 

Hallo, Dawie!​

You are right, for sure, G.N. and F-N must have a clutch, at least for starting and stopping!
I am not sure if other speeds could be changed without friction clutch, just using dog-clutches, with a result of really hard changing and jumping if a driver isn't master for "chain-gang" vehicles.
--- ---
I had, quite old, experience driving Trabant where I could change gears without the clutch, especially between 2nd and 3rd speed, or carefully from the 4th to the 1st, trough all other gears... The 4th speed had free-wheel so there weren't problems. But, that was a light car, with a small two-stroke two-cylinder engine. The same situation was with my brother's Jawa 175 or 350 - clutch was use just for start and stop and all other speeds could be changed without it, with a little sense for drive and machinery. Both motorcycles were with two-stroke engines.

I had a friend, amateur rally driver, who was driving me half an hour through the centre of Belgrade, without using a clutch at all, just changing speeds by "hearing" (he was deaf a lot, but feel vibrations of engine and transmission)... I knew for such stories but didn't believe until I was his passenger and he showed me that. The automobile was Zastava 750 (aka Fiat 600d, produced under licence in Serbia), with 770 ccs, four-cylinder, four-stroke engine and 25 HP...

I tried that when I was alone and couldn't do: too much ugly noise from gerbox, with vibrations and car jumping...

Regards,
Zoran​

P.S.: old belt-driven G.N. had a friction clutch, as I could see. (maybe the first prototype didn't have?)

​

 

Thanks Bob, the piano is kind of creepy.

 

Is that a single cylinder at 3:02? Must be 6 liter.

 

I never much liked the idea of sitting over a bunch of chains spinning at high speed, or the early Dragsters, sitting directly over the third member with both feet next to the bell housing with no scatter shield,.....eh ,what could go wrong?

 

Voiturette racing in that era limited the bore but not the stroke. The regs for the 1908 Grand Prix de Voiturettes in Dieppe, France allowed for one cylinder engines with up to a 100mm bore, two cylinder engines up to 78mm, and four cylinders with a bore no larger than 62mm. This was a crude equivalency formula, and like most equivalency systems, it didn't work. The regs for the Coupe de Voiturettes (the race in the footage) appear to be similar. In both cases the single cylinder cars dominated. The winning Sizaire-Naudin at 100x170=1335cc. The Lion-Peugeot was also 100x170=1335cc. The Martini 4-cylinder at 62x90=1087cc had a best finish of 7th. I don't have specs for either Corre-La Licorne or La Joyeuse.

(sorry about the tiny print)

 

Didn't Don Garlits loose a foot that way?

 

Hello, SR,​

and thank you for good and useful information for anybody that like light automobiles – generally known as "voiturettes" from the early days of motorisation. Of course, voiturettes from the 19th century were different than new “GP racing formula” that started in 1908 and lasted for a few years. later, that name was used mostly in France for classification of smaller versions of the "real" automobiles...

If I remembered well, later Lion-Peugeot racers had a stroke almost 2.4-2.5 times bigger than stroke ~ around 240-250 mm, with 2.7-litre capacity. Similar was with a few other unorthodox single-cylinder voiturettes, but they didn't have any practical influence on the design and production of light and cheap automobiles – for masses. That was the most important goal posted by “L' Automobile” magazine that started all that. The most known single-cylinder that was made as a practical automobile, besides being successful in the races – was Sizaire-Naudin. But, there were developed a few quite successful automobiles with four cylinders – the best known was Bugatti T-10 predecessor of the later famous T-13.








Anyway, instead of planned good and cheap, light automobiles appeared “cycle-cars” as the first step to real automobiles for the masses that conquered filed of so-called baby-automobiles in Europe during the twenties. Before that – Ford Model-T in the USA...
(good design, good quality - and mass production was the clue for the success)

No matter on that, voiturettes GP-races became very popular during a few years, giving joy and fun for designers, constructors, racers and public – showing some quite effective and successful examples. Some of the best were not much slower than some of the big and heavy GP old-style monsters. Good oiling and cooling for fast-revolving engines were one of the most important results – good valve-mechanism (mostly OHC and some multi-valve) for high revolutions was a useful improvement, too...

Ciao,
Zoran​

 

Just remembered I had these in an old album. No date can someone see how old they are? Bob

 

Your clippings come from the July 1, 1909 issue of the American magazine The Automobile.

 

Thank You Very Much!! This helps date the whole album, it is filled with other clippings that may be from The Automobile. Best wishes, Bob

 

An advert in prewar car https://www.prewarcar.com/282478-britain-s-smallest-road-car-barn-find-project