Let's Talk Cyclecars

So,was the Johnson engine made in the U.S. ?

 

Yes, apparently they were used by the US army during WW1 to run pumps for clearing water out of the trenches & etc and a great many were sold on the surplus market after the war. The Johnson engine was also known as the 'Economic'.

 

Image from Marco in Italy...

 

Growing up in Milwaukee ,Wisconsin I was familiar with the Johnson name.I knew that Johnson and Evinrude were pretty much the same.So,I did further investigation.

Johnson first sold the engine that that would become to the Economic to a firm in Chicago.They in turn sold it to a company in England where it was renamed the Economic.

Sister Holy Rose ,thanks for spurring me on to find more information!

 

That's the thing I enjoy most about this topic Bob, - all the bits and pieces of knowledge and ancient cyclecar lore that are shared by everyone until it all comes together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Is that Italian (I'm guessing it's Italian) cyclecar electric? It looks familiar, but I can't remember where I last saw a picture of something similiar.

 

It does look electric.So far it is just a good looking picture.I'll contact marco to see if has any other information.

 

Marco knows nothing about the little car.

 

Oh dear I'm so disappointed......

I shall have to cheer myself up with this lovely old Bedelia advertisement

 

I really like Bedelia cyclecars, - to my mind they are a perfect example of the breed. Completely simple and practical, but with their own unique and original take on the the business of taking four wheels and an engine and making something driveable out of them.
The other thing I like about the Bedelia is that it would be possible to make one in your own garage with a minimum of ordinary handtools. Later period cyclecars while very nice and certainly thrilling enough to be around don't hold the same fascination for me as do the earlier wooden chassis, wire and string examples of the breed.

Over the past few days I've been doing some spare time reading and research about centre pivot steering and while everyone agrees that it's perilous and an accident waiting to happen I was interested to find a reference that said that if the centre pivot was set ahead of the axle it would somewhat improve things by providing much a needed castoring effect.
Fair enough I thought, only when I looked at pictures of Bedelia cyclecars what did I see? Bedelia's seem to have their front axle set ahead of the centre pivot! Plainly nobody told Henri Devaux and Robert Bourdeau anything about the benefits of the front axle trailing the centre pivot and doing the just the opposite seemed to have worked out for them

 

Those issues informed much of my thinking in post 2157. Roll issues upset the centre-pivot axle, too. I can't quite make out if the Bedelia front end has any roll stiffness, but it doesn't look as if the steering axis is angled back at all. That might have solved the caster issue. Making the axle an articulated parallelogram, as in my sketch, allows the front end to behave like a pair of bicycle front ends for all geometric purposes, whether the vehicle tilts or not. My feeling is that without that articulation one might quite easily run into all sorts of strange geometric effects when steering and roll motions happen simultaneously.

 

The only Bedelia I've ever seen with a tilted back centre pivot was this one in a museum in Australia. It was used a good deal by its first owner in rallies and trials & etc so I wonder if he modified the steering.

I loved that cool tilting Bedelia drawing you did Ned and posted back then.

 

Thanks!

In those photos one can clearly see that there is no provision to allow roll motion in the front suspension. The axle is effectively constrained in its orientation. That being so, tilting the steering axis will induce a small measure of outward roll with steering, which I'd expect would defeat anything gained by improving the trail situation.

This suspension is just all wrong on so many levels! But the resulting character is simultaneously irresistable. That's why I can't help trying to fix the former without ruining the latter.

 

This Spacke Deluxe cyclecar was built with provision for roll motion.

 

just been hunting down some info , while my laser cutter is running at school and found this

http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/Cyclecar

a huge and i mean huge list of companies that built cyclecars a great resource of information

 

I found this new advertisement today:
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C392091
picture of a finished example:
http://auta5p.eu/srazy/roztoky_2004/roztoky_03.jpg

 

Imagine that with a large UJM four over the front wheel!

 

So a 1927 Buick isn't exactly a cyclecar....just imagine it was much smaller

 

Looks like the body was based on a SPAD biplane!

 

1916 David cyclecar with JAP V-twin, found under pictures to share on www.prewarcar.com and on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(car)

 

More Phanomobil The first three photos are of a 1920 'kit of parts' that I thought I'd post because they show some details not normally seen in most photos.

 

I must say that I've always preferred the look of the two cylinder cars to the four cylinder ones. This is a 1913 model.

 

Frazer - Nash Jean-Jacques images

 

It looks light enough for a cyclecar.Maybe a 3 wheeled motorcycle...

 

Mrs Scaldwell driving. G.L. image

 

That certainly is an interesting utility box carrier Bob, but I'm going to hazard a guess and say that it's most probably pedal powered rather than being motorised.

 

Morgan G.L. image

 

I'm not terribly well today, but I spent some time reviewing prices of old car parts on our local on-line auction website here in New Zealand. With the recession biting hard here everyone seems to be looking for maximum dollar for parts that I used to get for $NZ5.00 a well heaped wheelbarrowful back in my late teenage years. Still it's no use doing the, 'When I was a girl you could buy a whole Austin 10 for $20.00 and still have change,' type of moan because it's certainly not going to bring those good times back again now is it?

It seems to me that with everything related to vintage and classic motoring being so expensive these days that it's well time for the backyard constructed cyclecar to come back into its own again. A great many spare parts are around for quad bikes these days and living in a farming district as I do dead quad bikes are constantly being parted out and being sold off by the local farmers. Around here they get ridden hard and put away very wet and muddy so they tend to have short, but exciting lives before they finally terminally bust something and get sold off for parts.
Last time I counted I had 4 quad bike rear axles of various sorts stashed in the garage and it's well time I did something with them. I have go-kart stub axles too and I've been collecting 21inch front wheels from scrap dirt bikes. Cleaned and painted these look a good match for skinny heroic era cyclecar wheels.

A picture of a Henderson powered midget car, - note the wooden chassis. The other picture is of the 1903 Packard Grey Wolf speed record car. Look at that lovely wooden chassis!

 

I think I may have mentioned this book before; - it's a good read ( so long as you can read French ) with good drawings and diagrams to help the home builder on their way.

Edit: A scanned copy can be found here.......http://www.gueniffey.com/systemed/

 

I've come to a decision, - now that the weather is improving and Spring is on the way I am going to build myself a cyclecar using one of the plans in the French book I posted about above.
Certainly one of the reasons why I want to do this is that I spent a day earlier in the week attempting to get my daughter's Rover 216 functioning again after it broke down miles from home. After discovering that the ECU was fried my daughter decided to send the Rover off to the local scrappy since a new ECU is unobtainium. I no longer drive my 1977 Datsun 120Y so I gave it to my daughter which will at least put some reliable wheels under her as it possesses no black box electrickery at all and can be repaired with the most basic of handtools. The benefit is of course that there is now more garage room for me to work on my own projects.

I already have a suitable engine and gearbox and I'm going to use one of the ATV rear axles from my stash. For sometime now I've had an 8x4 sheet of plywood salted away so I've got enough to hand to start with. Several boxes in the garage contain all manner of hubs, brake parts and other useful objects. I have a suitable steering wheel and a steering rack as well, Wheel rims, stub axles......... So if i can't do something with that lot I really have gone and lost my touch.
The final result won't be exquisite as some of the projects that are presently under way in this thread, but if it looks neat and tidy and works like it's supposed to I'll be happy.

Anyway, here are the plans.........

 

Frazer-Nash W/ 3 litre Alvis engine G.L. image