Do any of you folks know where I can get my hands on a WW1 Liberty motor or something similar for a 1920's inspired racer? A liberty motor might be a bit big, maybe you know of something a bit smaller like an inline 6? Let me know if you have a motor or know of one in storage somewhere. Looking for something unique that will turn heads. Thanks Todd
http://www.warbirdalley.com/maint.htm#Engine General Aviation Services caught my eye. For an engine as rare as you're looking for, it's going to take some leg work. Definately not a craigslist deal. Start calling people... someone knows where theres some old guy, out somewhere, with a barn full of 'em.... I've also heard of people finding odd ball antique aircraft engines at the swap meets of huge airshows like Oshkosh.
Don't know if this will help,but in the time frame/1918 to 1920's Peugeot was being used a lot for race cars and they had some sexy looking motors for the time ,heim stuff,and the over all motors look stayed the same for many years in to the 1960's
I'll have to check out those links tomorrow but buying an early engine from some airplane restorer sounds like the most expensive route. There has to be some engines out there in the general publics hands, I just need patience to find it. I will also look into those French engines, sounds cool.
Well first off a Liberty was a V-12 . Second if you want a teens -20s vintage engine that can be made to run bring $$$$. 40s Ranger engines were inverted 6s and used in sprint cars in the 40s-50s but even they are now pricey. The OX-5 out of a Curtis Jenney was a V-8 and they made a shit load of them so you might have better luck finding one of them. In line 6s were never the most popular style ,mostly radials and Vs.
Almost forgot to mention... cruise around to the older airstrips that are close to you. Go into the terminal grab a cup of coffee and try to make friends with the locals. I fly out of Georgetown, and I can't tell you how many wierd and rare things are stored in those hangars. There's a guy that has TWO original A/C cobras stored in a hangar. Some other guy has a P-51 that nobody has seen for 40 years... and a bunch of other wierd crap. The old terminal guys like to talk for the most part and love to tell you what's out there if you're cool. There is a bunch of old airport equipment just laying around at the smaller rural airports...
Ranger also made an inverted V-12 of about 1400 cu. in.; pretty rare though. Keep in mind that just about any aircraft engine is going to be expensive unless you get lucky and find someone who doesn't know what they have. Even then parts are going to be comparatively expensive. Another thing to think about is that the early aviation engines like the Liberty or OX-5, or Hisso are not all that reliable. But having said all that, good luck. Hope you can pull it off!
actually the Franklin idea may not be that bad....there's one on epay that ends soon....here's the engine, but it comes with the rest of the car.
my friend found an old merlin motor that he put in his restored 20's racing boat. what a cool motor!!!
Mark Brislawn in Vancouver, WA has a toruing made out of numerous bodies on a '32 Ford truck frame, engine is a Franklin air cooled. Works great. I think it's been in a magazine or two. It's called the Franklinstein. He has extras, also some Ranger engines that were run in midgets in the 50s.
My buddy has a franklin carcass with a motor that would get you started. The problem with old airplane stuff is it's going to be like the stuff we found out about. The people who had it had no idea what it was or what it was worth. So they scrapped it. When scrap was up, that might have been your best bet to get one - hang out at the yard and hand out cards offering double scale weight for early motors and airplane parts. Just plan to buy a bunch of stuff so word gets around you're for real. And if you get other parts, sell them to the collectors for collector prices.
I like that Franklin engine but only with the fan shroud removed and I suspect that if I tried to run it without the shroud it would overheat.
Does it have to be an early aircraft engine, or "just" a big air cooled motor ? Deutz diesels come in 6 cyl models,and are aircooled. Should be other similar options.
With the shroud, it looks exactly like a Briggs&Stratton from the front! Somebody around here was selling a so-called speedster Frnklin cheap a few years back, really just a bodyless Franklin.
The Ranger engine looks perfect when it's flipped over with the pistons aiming towards the sky but I wonder if it would run this way? Is this engine a two cycle? How does the crank stay oiled with it running in this position? I saw one of these on Ebay a while back and it went for under $2000 but I didn't know enough about it to warant a bid. Were these inlines run upside down in the racers? I live about 20 minutes from Willow Run airfield where most of the B-24's were built during WWII. I don't have any connections with the folks that fly out of this field but perhaps I should start hanging out down there. There are still many quonset huts at this field and I bet they are filled with good stuff.
Doesn't have to be a real aircraft engine or even be air cooled for that matter, it just has to look the part and make most folks scratch their head. I have a Jag motor in my model T and even that motor makes most people ask questions. If they recognize it as a Jag engine then they almost always ask if I have put oil in my carbs yet.
Menasco built some pretty impressive 4 and six cylinder inline air cooled engines, some with centrifugal superchargers for air racing in the thirties. Nice stuff but rare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menasco_C4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menasco_Buccaneer Also, Ranger built some air cooled inline 6's as well. Normally aspirated, if memory serves.
The common Ranger is a big-displacement inverted 6 from a WWII trainer...it was used upright in at least on hot rod, a fairly well known T racer featured in a number of early magazines.
Aircooled Deutz diesels come in 3,4,5,6 cyl inline, and V8,V10,V12. The inlines are more common. Since they are a stationary motor, I imagine they are not light weight.
There was a roadster run at Bonneville built this way, it ran at one time with a crank driven blower too. No matter what deal you get on a motor the re-build (Dont kid yourself here, unless you buy from a restorer its going to need one) is going to cost you a FUCK load of money. Seriously this motor is easily going to cost you 20g +. Doc.
I used to get the oil thing all the time when i'd show my TR6. Even AFTER I put triple Webers on it... oh well.
Well 20K is outside the budget for a rebuild but I have a small machine shop in my gagage and I'm not afraid to use it. I'm sure with some creativity, one of these old engines could be made to run for a quarter of that. Remember, it's not going back in an airplane so reliability isn't as high of a concern. It just needs to run as well as a Harley or a Briggs and Stratton.
Hell man, if a briggs and stratton is what you need Im sure you can built a V12 from a bunch of them!! Thats just crazy, what was I thinking?
You have probably seen these: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105871 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=201625 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221543
Well I'm not going to say it can't be done but I will say you ain't gona like the results. Aircraft engines are designed to run at speed for long periods of time. For an example I will use my Lycoming 0-360 in my Mooney. I run it in cruise at 2150RPMs for 4 hours at a time. That same RPM is used for climb and decent as well. It is also run at full throttle in all but decent. So if you try to use it in a car which uses a set of gears to transmit power you are constantly changing power settings, aircraft engines hate that. By using run out unairworthy parts you could keep the cost at a minimum. It would be an uphill battle with cooling being your biggest problem. Good luck.
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