Aircraft engines

Grab ya a JT-8 from a 737-200, 727, or Diesel-9 (Dc-9). That'll get ya where you need to go.

 

Back in the '80's Porsche was building 911 (opposed 6 cyl) engines for aircraft and putting them in Mooneys - they were geared down and ran at 5500 rpm, using fuel injection - and kept the cooling fan too.

This allowed the engineers to redesign the front of the plane for more efficiency and IIRC the fuel mileage went up to about 11 mpg, quite a bit more than they could get with a Continental or Lycoming, plus it had a lot more power, especially the turbo versions.

Lastly, the 911 engine was so smooth it really cut down on vibration in the plane - a real win/win deal, except for the cost.....

So there's an aircraft engine you could put in a car too...

 

Jot Horne/Bob Taylor ran a Ranger 6 in this '27 T roadster, was featured in Feb. '52 Hop Up.

 

Thanks for posting those Jimmy. I hadn't seen the first 2 photos yet.

I have a Ranger, and have dreams of building a similar car someday.

 

Don`t forget the Tucker

 

A good friend of mine owns the" Nelson Ranger Special" vintage sprint car. It was campaigned out of Portland Or. It did well here on the west coast and was run for about 10 years with a Ranger 440 aircraft engine. P.M. me if you need more info.

 

I'd like to see a rod with an engine from a Curtiss Jenny, where the engine spun and the crankshaft stood still. Did you ever hear one landing? It sounds like the engine is cutting out and dying. That's because they had no throttle so they controlled the engine speed by turning the ignition off and on.

 

There were engines like that, they are called Rotary engines...very similar to Radial engines in appearance except, as noted, the crank was stationary and the block/cylinders rotated.

That said however, I don't think they were used on the Curtiss Jenny JN1. If I recall correctly, the Jenny's used Curtis OX-5 engines, a V8 configuration.

The Rotary style, I believe, was earlier and short lived for a variety of reasons. That style had many shortcomings.

Ray

 

the best part about putting an aircraft engine in a car is if it stalls. you dont fall from the sky.

 

Tucker...

 

---------------------
If you want to learn just about all there is
to know about Corvair 'aero-conversions',
Mark Langsford has an excellent and very
detailed website detailing his more than 10
years of building and modifying a series of
different Corvair engines for his 190-plus
mph KR2 homebuilt airplane.
(www.n56ml.com/corvair )

Mart3406
==================

 

I spent part of my working life building Lycoming and Continental 4,6 &8 cylinder horizontally opposed aircraft engines. With every overhaul, the oil cooler was thoroughly flushed or replaced. Yes they have fins on the barrels, but they don't rely on air cooling alone. Yep, barrels like a motorcycle, but with the head as one piece. One for each cylinder. You'll never ever blow a head gasket.

 

The car you are thinking of is the Lycoming Special, built by Ralph Watson in the 1950s. He was a very clever engineer and put a lot of thought into the build. There is a very complete article about the car here - http://ralphwatson.scienceontheweb.net/lycoming.html - written many years ago by the builder. More info can be found in Trevor Sheffield's privatley published book Ralph Watson - Special Engineer. If you can find a copy, read it. The Lycoming Special is still active in cl***ic events today.

 

One of my first cars when I was a teenager was a Checker Marathon, ex-NYC taxi cab. Cant remember for sure, but it was either a '63 or a '68. It had a factory installed Continental 6 cylinder.
That engine was the clankiest rattliest thing you ever saw. Sounded like every bearing in it was spun. Leaked oil like the pan was made out of window screen.

The power band was wierd. No power at all off the line, then the torque came on above 2500 R's. About 3500 R's it ran out of torque, but had great HP. You really had to pay attention to how you drove it as the BorgWarner transmission had a mind of it's own... Probably didn't make a bit of difference on the flat streets of Harlem, but in the hills of Kentucky, you had to feather the pedal to keep it in the gear you needed for the uphill runs. Didn't want to downshift on it's own untill it had bogged down to a crawl.

Whatever the case, the firewall tag showed the same engine serial number as the engine, so it was original to the car, and it had 270,**x miles on it. Good chance it was original and never rebuilt too because it was common practice for the taxi companies to pull engines out of wrecked cars, rebuild them, and when a driving car needed an overhaul, just swap the engine out to get the car back on the road ASAP... But it's just a guess because that was damn close to 30 years ago, so anybody's guess.

As a teenager, I ran it pretty hard and nothing ever broke.
After I sold it, a middle aged gentleman bought it and drove it for another 7-8 years, and every time I saw it, it still had that distinctive Continental clatter. Ended up on a used car lot in a rough neighborhood, and then fianlly disappeared forever.

 

Franklin was a Airplane company before it started building cars they used the same motor in them. Inline 6 aircooled. ran very well

 

I think you mean it the other way around. I am not sure exactly when they started building aircraft engines but they built air-cooled cars from 1902 to 1934.

I think they supplied the engines used in the Bell helicopters used in Korea and made famous by the TV series MASH. It was this type of engine that powered the rear engined Tucker.

 

there is another thread on here about aircraft engine powered cars..with some pictures too, mostly drag cars..quick shot down the 1/4 types.
I'll see if i can dig it up

 

Franklin went down the toilet as a car maker in the 1930's and came back around 1938 ,at least in name ,building opposed aircraft engines .

 

Franklin went down the toilet as a car maker in the 1930's and came back around 1938 ,at least in name ,building opposed aircooled aircraft engines .

 

MOST, of the opposed 4 and 6 cylinder aircraft engines, that I have seen, had a type of "moveable" section, on the existing crankshaft counterweights, and, I was told that it was designed so, to accommodate the "gyroscopic precession" forces and stresses imparted by the propeller, when the aircraft maneuvers , thereby moving or re-orienting, the "plane of rotation", that the propeller rotates in................


Sounds expensive, ( to me!), to go screwing with this crankshaft, to get the probably "limited" benefits that you would see, by trying to run it, at a higher rpm....................

 

Not really hot rod but....

http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2006/05/10/radial-engine-powered-motorcycle/

 

Thanks for the link to the Lycoming roadster...fascinating building and developing story.
The HRM article was intriguing but had no real detail.

 

The two Franklin aircraft engines I am most familiar with, were the 165, and the 185. Both were excellent engines.
The 165 was used in my 1947 Stinson 108-2. This was the same basic engine used in the early choppers. The other one is the 185, that used one distributor and one Mag. It was the engine used in a seaplane called the Republic Sea Bee. Parts for that engine were produced in Poland until the mid 1980s.

 

Most aircraft opposed 4 and 6 cyl. engines are big cubic inch and slow turning 2700rpm. designed to turn a big prop slow. 4cly 360 cubic inch fuel injected in some Pitts special aerobatic plane.

also you fart talkers are all ****heads.


Ago

 

This one too...

 

This car was featured in Car Life Magazine in Jan 1963. Then owned by Leonard Williams. Here is the article.

 

Looks like it came out of a Herman Nelson..

 

You are correct. I have that copy of Hot Rod in my shop office. I will try taking photos of the article. I believe it was a four cylinder Lycoming.

 

See my post #43 which has the basic info. There was another Lycoming-powered car as well which Duncan Rutherford drove in the 1960s which is mentioned in the article in the link, but that was not as sophisticated as Ralph Watson's one. Duncan died a coupe of years ago, but as far as I know the car is still in his collection.

 

A more well-known NZ-built aero-engined special is the Stanton Special first built in 1953 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bento_dan/3704502951/ - which still holds some speed records. The current owner has had it for more than 40 years and uses it regularly. The link is to its appearance at Goodwood in 2009. There were no transaxles readily available in the early 1950s so it has an ingenious chain drive set-up.