1906 Adams-Farwell 5-cylinder rotary engine

[Jon]

This video is from the 2011 Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance. It's the only remaining Adams-Farwell car, a 6A Convertible Roundabout from 1906.

The car is powered by an extremely unusual rotary engine in which the crank is mounted to the frame, and the engine crankcase spins around it. The spinning crankcase and cylinders act as their own flywheel, and the air-cooled design meant that a radiator is not necessary. See it run at 3:55.

[mklotz]

Let's see...huge gyroscopic moment with spin axis necessarily vertical. Roads back in those days were primitive. Every time the car lurches over a bump that lifts one side of the car the resultant torque on the gyro-motor wants to steer the car in a different direction.

It's fortunate that the design disappeared before higher speeds and banked turns made their appearance.

[Jon]

Even just sitting there stationary and running, it doubles as an arm shortener. As if it wasn't dangerous enough, the inventor later got into early experimental helicopters. One of his rotary engines is in the Early Flight exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum: https://airandspace.si.edu/collectio...otary-5-engine .

[Shiseiji]

A design prominent in many WWI aircraft. Also made for asymmetrical turning speeds.

Ron

[Jon]

1939 Plymouth truck with a radial engine.

[bruce.desertrat]

That's an awesome rod. There were some retty hot radials built during WWII, Rare Bear still holds a world record they set in 1989 with a Wright radial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Bear

That truck looks even better with it's full metal on https://www.motortrend.com/news/airp...ically-radial/

[wizard69]

Cool "upgrade". I'd put a propeller on the thing Just because but cool none the less.

This makes me wonder about oil usage in such an engine. Or more specifically how do they keep the oil out of the lower cylinders. This one mystery about radials I never fully understood.

[bob47907]

Cool "upgrade". I'd put a propeller on the thing Just because but cool none the less.

This makes me wonder about oil usage in such an engine. Or more specifically how do they keep the oil out of the lower cylinders. This one mystery about radials I never fully understood.

You are right-oil did collect in the lower cylinders. The solution was a process termed “Turning out” the engine, where, with the ignition off, workers would rotate the prop by hand for three or four rotations. This would slowly force the oil out to the exhaust.

As an anecdotal aside, I attended the 2001 Mt. Comfort air show. They had a B29 Superfortress bomber (four radial engines, and the backbone of the air effort in WWII) there. Near the end of the day, as crews were preparing to depart, they asked for volunteers to turn out the engines. I did that alongside my dad, who spent the war working on the B29s at an English airfield. A golden moment.