Word: crankshafts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...press, he displayed (but did not demonstrate) a radical new internal combustion engine billed as the greatest advance since the diesel. It has no pistons or valves, only two moving parts; there is a carburetor to mix air and gasoline, a single spark plug, a rotor that drives the crankshaft. Beyond that. Hurley refused details. CW, he said, had developed the engine in conjunction with West Germany's NSU Werke, makers of autos and motorcycles, and had exclusive North American rights. In the works, said Hurley, was a whole string of models from...
...seemingly indirect way of generating power has its points. Since the combustion gases start their work cycle at extremely high pressure and temperature, the thermal efficiency of the engine (the amount of mechanical energy that it gets out of the fuel) can be very good. It has no flywheel, crankshaft or connecting rods. It has many valves to shunt air through the various chambers, but they are all self-operating, and none are exposed to high temperature. The engine can be made to run on almost any combustible liquid, even thick black bunker oil. Since the gases that spin...
...dollar than any tractor currently on the market, was shown by Ford Motor Co. Ford's "Typhoon" is powered by the same turbine-like free-piston engine (TIME, Nov. 14, 1955) already being tested in trucks and boats, has the advantage of low fuel cost, simpler construction (no crankshaft, no spark plugs), less vibration and no need for early-morning warmups. The company hopes to put a free-piston tractor on the market within the next few years...
This engine has many qualities that may endear it to Detroit and the motoring public. Like the gas turbine engine, it will run on the lowest grades of fuel, will even run on peanut oil. It needs no crankshaft or connecting rods, and it has so few rotating parts that friction and wear are far less than in standard piston engines. Furthermore, unlike the gas turbine, its turbine wheel runs cool, hence does not require costly heat-resistant alloys. General Motors has no immediate plans to produce the free-piston engine. But G.M.'s engineers hope that its debut...
...true gas turbine. It may well be a "free-piston engine," a combination of the piston engine and turbine. The idea of the engine is old, but only recently have automakers been able to eliminate many of the bugs. In the present engine, the pistons turn the crankshaft as the explosions in the cylinders drive them down, thus transfer power to the transmission and move the car. In the free-piston engine, there is no crankshaft. Instead, there are two pistons, at opposing ends of the cylinder, which force gas at tremendously high pressure into a turbine. The turbine...