old stuff at the London Science Museum
A recent trip to the London Science Museum was all too short in duration. If you are an inventor, scientist, engineer or tinkerer, you will be very pleased to see the items in the museum. It would be easy to spend a few days in there, but with just one day available, I limited my viewing only to things that were 100 years old or older. Still, there wasn’t enough time to view it all, read about the exhibits and photograph things. Here are a few snapshots, and yes I know that it is time to get a new camera. This one will be retired and given to the kiddos!
This model of a workshop was built in 1850-1880. The placard reads:
Before the development of electric motors to run individual machines, sa shingle steam engine could power a whole workshop. This model shows how different types of machines would receive power from line shafts – although the engine driving them was usually located in a separate room. This overall arrangement continued well into the twentieth century. This model shows the types of machines you would have seen in the a general machine building workshop. Some small lathes would be worked by foo-treadle, giving greater flexibility than the line shaft. Rough preparation of parts and delicate finishing was done by hand at the fitters benches with vices. There’s also an enclosed area to store small stools and drawings. copyright London Science Museum.
A beautiful machine. The ornamental ball and wings are a very nice touch.
A Grout “Tension” bicycle of 1871, aka a penny-farthing. And a 1867 Michaux Velocipede
A view from the driver’s seat.
Can you see the three cylinder Buchet motor behind the bike?
An air pump by George Adams of 1761, made for the pleasure of King George III.
A silver microscope by George Adams 1763, for George III. The “Universal Double Microscope”
Minden, NV pre16 ride 2011
Late every summer, a few guys meet in Minden to ride their old motorbikes around for a few days on the quiet backroads just east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The roads are pretty flat, free of traffic and full of good views. Which are all Good Things for enjoying an early bike on the open roads. Here are some photos from the 2011 run.
At the Cutthroat Bar in Markleeville. Our stop on the Thursday ride.
A few friendly faces. How many can you name? send your comments in via the link at the bottom of the page. 
Greg and his Exclesior. more pics here.
Wes and his Excelsior
Somebody told me that I needed more readers, and they way to get them was to feature young girls and motorcycles in my photos. So here is one.
A nice Indian
At Nevada’s Oldest Thirst Parlor in Genoa. Since 1853.
Overland Stage in 1883
1918ish Excelsior
When Lane went to bed, somebody rolled his Cyclone into a hotel room for the night.
Cushman and Indian. The Cushman is setup to run well and has enough power and brakes to keep up with the old bikes. Chuck V. brought it out this year, a toy for an 85(?) year old to play with.
View from a restaurant in Carson City. Victorian architecture and lighting. And yes, that’s a horses ass outside the window.
Day three, out in Wellington, NV. We had a great day’s ride out in the valley, until the big wildfire started. It closed the road back toward civilization. Most of the folks waited for the road to open, but I got itchy and put the truck into 4 wheel drive for a 15 mile dirt path up and out of the valley that touched down back in California. We came across a group on modern HD’s that had just done the route on their bikes, with about 50% of them losing fork seals in the process. But nobody burned up in the fire, and everybody made it home ok.
Buster’s Yale
A shot of the business end of the Yale muffler.
Rear fender has some neat details.
MFD by The Consolidated MFG Co. Toledo, OH.
1915 1916 1917 Minnesota plate.
If you are going to adjust the timing in a parking lot, you might as well bring plenty of tools and a chair to sit on.
some local color.
No apology for featuring yet another shot of that beautiful 1911 Excelsior.
Boxing Day 1910
Happy holidays from OL. If you can’t get out for a ride today, maybe you’ll enjoy reading about a cold run from London to Exeter in the old days. 101 years ago, this write up was published in The Motor Cycle. Click on the photos to see the larger versions of them.
In the last image, did you spot the motor accessories in the border? -An early B&B carb, tri-note horn, adjustable pulley and other goodies.
Patents #3: OHC, Chevy and Cyclone
In the earlier articles on early combustion engines, we looked at automatic inlet valves, IOE and sidevalves, and combined rockers. This time I’d like to share some images regarding overhead camshafts (OHC).
Louis Chevrolet (yes THAT Chevrolet) patented a motor design in 1917 that shows OHC valve actuation clearly. In fact, this motor is a DOHC, 4 valve per cylinder motor; Much like what you have in your modern Honda or BMW car. The exhaust valves are shown in the top view, on the right side, numbered #20 and #21, or #35 in the bottom view. (we can tell they are exhaust valves by the Ex. Lifter #33). The camshaft is shown in section as #29, which has a simple follower #31. The tappet is #30, which pushes the valve open, fighting the force of the spring #34. Interestingly, there appears to be no way to adjust the tappet clearance… As the valve tip and spring were exposed, possibly a shim or cap could have been fitted to the valve tip under the tappet. A few other interesting things can be seen in that lower left image, including the empty pockets in the cross section above and below the valve pockets. These are the water jackets, of course they were common on cars of that era. But there is no joint shown between the cylinder block and the head, which would typically be horizontal, near the top of the bore (just below the valve heads). No lubrication details are shown, but that cam and follower would have worn fairly quickly. The cam diameter is pretty small, which helps to decrease the rubbing speed on the follower, but a constant supply of pressure-fed oil would go a long way to decrease wear.
The next patent is titled Lubricating System, but it shows us much more than a simple oil pump and passageways! Awarded to Garnet Brown in 1922, this patent shows a novel approach to OHC actuation. At first glance, we see a cam #28, centrally mounted with some rather long cam followers. But upon further examination, you will see that this one camshaft operates the inlet and exhaust valves for BOTH cylinders of a V engine. We’ll start with the inlet, shown on the left #24. The cam lifts a roller follower #32, which directly actuates the inlet valve. The inlet plenum is #26, valve seat is #19. To operate the exhaust valves, the cam depresses rocker #33, which lifts rocker 48, both shown in the right side of the view.
Fans of the Rudge radial 4 valve motors of the 1930s will immediately glean what is happening with those rockers. While Rudge used the same idea to turn the mechanical motion into a different plane than the primary rockers, the idea is the same.
Rudge radial 4 valve:
Mr. Brown had some good ideas with this patent, including dual spark plugs per cylinder #16, and roller bearings on all rockers #46. The roller cam followers #53 help to decrease wear. He also wisely shared the shafts for the inlet and ex rockers #31, used water cooling and enclosed the valve gear to keep oil in and dust out. But the big holes in the rockers give away one of the downsides to this arrangement: Mass. These long rockers and secondary rockers have a lot of mass that must be accelerated to lift the valve, stopped, and then accelerated in the other direction to close the valve. Since one of the biggest advantages of using OHC is that the mass of the valve train is minimized, this layout must not have been ideal. Drilling those holes was a good start, but those long secondary rockers look like they must have flexed a bit at high rpms.
Next up is the OHC V twin motor patented by Andrew Strand, manufactured by Joerns Mfg and used by Cyclone motorcycles for a few years in the mid-teens.
This motor was extremely advanced in comparison to what was on offer by most motorcycle manufacturers of the time. While most motors used plain bearings (bushings or ‘sleeves’ of bronze) for the main bearing, big end, cam, etc, the Cyclone motor used ball or roller bearings throughout. The only bushings in the motor were in the little end of the connecting rods. By replacing the bushings with rolling element bearings, Strand reduced the friction in the motor. And he had to, since his design required a LOT more bearings than a typical motor…
Starting at the bottom, the end of the crankshaft #3 has a bevel gear #4 which meshes with another bevel gear #10. This second gear rotates the shaft #6, which in turn provides motion to everything else. If you look to the top of the shaft, another set of bevel gears #36 & #44 spin the camshaft #42. Don’t forget, each of those bevel gears is supported in a ball bearing #7, #34, etc…
The cam has roller followers, seen in the view on the left. Rockers #65 take the motion out to the valves #49, but via an interesting detour. Strand used stirrups #59 to give the valve operating linkage an extra degree of freedom. As the stirrups were free to rotate on their pivots, they eliminated the side load on the valves, which helped to decrease side loads and increase valve guide life.
To take the motion from that main vertical shaft back to the rear cylinder, and also to the magneto, several more bevel gears (and bearings!) were used, #67 #73 #17 #18 #68, etc. In all, 12 bevel gears were used, and at least twelve ball bearings just for the timing and ignition. Add in the main bearings and big end bearings, significant machining and assembly efforts, and we can start to see that the cost of this motor was much higher than what the competition was selling. We should not be surprised the Strand used quality SKF bearings, sourcing them from Sweden to his Minnesota factory, as the numerous immigrants from Sweden to MN must have brought a local connection.
A good question is “how did it all work out?” Well, the motors ran very well, and very strong. While racing a Cyclone in 1914 J.A. McNeil set a new record at 111 mph, besting the Excelsior of Lee Hummiston at 100mph. The quality of the workmanship was very high in most regards, as the motors were machined to very high accuracy. In fact, they claimed that no shims were used to set preload of the various bevel gears, requiring a tolerance stack up of the machined parts to be better than .001” accuracy. I’ve designed and built a fair number of machined parts and systems, and I’m a bit doubtful of that claim. But since I have never opened up one of these motors to verify it, I’ll have to ask a friend this summer who has one if he knows the truth. It certainly could have been done, but not quickly or cheaply.
Ultimately, the motors and the bikes were not as reliable as more conventional designs. Some races were lost while Cyclones were in the lead, due to mundane issues like cracked fuel tanks or broken chains, but also due to exhaust valve and piston breakages. Racing wins help to sell street bikes, but not nearly enough bikes were sold to keep up with the high costs of R&D and racing efforts. In just a few years, these motors were gone, and it took some time before British and European factories developed these ideas further (see Velocette KSS/KTT, Norton International/Manx, etc). Other than a few subsequent experiments by Reading Standard and Excelsior, the American manufacturers stayed with sidevalves, IOE or OHV.
Lane P.’s street-ridden Cyclone:
Other discussions of patents on OcchioLungo are here.
London, Dec 2011
Oh lucky me! My employer asked if I could be bothered to travel to England for a project in the Midlands. Knowing that a quick weekend furlough would give me some time in London, I jumped on the 747.
The Victoria and Albert Museum. Quite a colorful place, showing some of the huge variety of things that were common during the Victorian era. I really enjoyed the fabrics and wallpapers, sculpture and the exhibit on the Crystal Palace. (19 acres enclosed by iron and glass!). Not much stuff for a gearhead to see, but I did find this wooded gingerbread mould from the 1830s-50s, showing a man on a hobby horse cycle:
Walking around the neighborhood, on my way to find Pd’O, I stumbled upon the Michelin Restaurant. Built in 1909 as a factory for the tire company, it has some great artwork on the tile walls. After being decommissioned as a factory, Sir Terence Conran converted it to a restaurant. I’m not going to write about him here, but his name is all over the streets of London this season.
FYI, Bibendum is the name of the fat tire guy.
Sloane Avenue in Chelsea is a highbrow highstreet, with all the best shops complete with million dollar sports cars parked on the curbs.
Richard Gauntlett, esquire. His eponymous gallery offers many great items, “toys for boys” in his words. One of the front windows has an exquisitely restored DKW, with a deluxe picnic basket and Ruby Helmet.
My favorite item in Richard’s shop was Conrad Leach’s painting “Norton Duke”
Paul and an old 1890’s Bayliss Thomas highwheeler. Richard bought is as part of a television show on BBC or Discovery or something. Look for it on your local broadcast featuring a few guys reviewing antiques and buying or not buying them, and telling the owners that their old whatsit just might not be worth a million bucks, even if the owner is positively sure that it must be.
Around the corner on the high street, you can buy your kiddo a swell little pedal car. It looks just like a Bugatti, and costs about $10,000 US (plus VAT!).
1911 Excelsior twin. “Silent and sure as the flight of time”
Jumping back 100 years from this holiday season, Excelsior had a great line up of motorbikes for their customers. For their new 1911 models, Excelsior modified the bikes to bring the seat down lower, and make it easier for riders touch their feet down while stopped. Excelsior was not the only manufacturer who saw the need to lower the seat, as riders worldwide had been asking for the change. Builders in the US, UK, OZ and Europe gradually revised their frames prior to The Great War, some adding other novel features such as rear springing or suspended footboards. The Chicago team continued in 1913, with the rear portion of the gas tank sloping down further, culminating in the streamlined design of the beautiful 1915 X, which became a trend for the whole bike industry.
The 1910 X twin. Note the frame top tube, straight back from the steering head to the seat post. Also see the neatly curved intake manifold.
A humorous cartoon from the 1909 Motorcycle Illustrated magazine, showing a suggestion multi-cylinder, low seat motorbike, with some very interesting features. Dogs and cats beware!
Greg N’s 1911 Excelsior, belt drive 50ci twin, as seen at the Atascadero Rally and Minden too. He’s had the bike for years, and knows how to get the most out of it. I enjoyed following him through Peachy Canyon, and watched as the bike kept its speed up and down the various hills, with no need for a gear change. Indeed, there was no possibility for a gear change, as the bike has a single speed on the fixed belt and pullies. He would adjust the throttle and timing as needed, and never had to resort to any L.P.A. going up the hills (light pedal assistance!) In the background is Wes’s 1913 X,with the later frame design and two speed gearing, in addition to the leaf spring front forks. The constant development of the bikes year after year kept the design engineers and factory workers very busy.
The original tank, with some patina. Where the paint has worn away, the copper is visible. These early tanks were soldered from copper, before the change to steel sheet. One advantage of the copper is that it won’t rust out in the presence of moisture.
The 50ci motor can be identified by the base flanges of the cylinders. On the larger 61ci (1000cc) motors, the base flange had to be larger to accommodate the large bore and pistons. They have a round protrusion on the flanges bulging out around the four studs and nuts that attach them to the crankcases.
The rear wheel pulley is made from wood, but I haven’t been able to identify it. Maybe hickory? From this angle you can also see the gentle curve of the pulley’s cross section.
A series of snaps as we rode down the road:
An old photo I bought on eBay a while back, showing a similar 1911 X belt drive twin. Note that this bike does not have an Eclipse clutch on the end of the motor’s mainshaft, nor the long clutch lever up to the gas tank.
