Art Anderson

Well, considering that the word "Turbosupercharger" is used to describe a centrifugal supercharger driven by hot exhaust gasses run through a turbine connected to the supercharger impeller, it's not hard to use that definition. Whether driven by a direct gear drive (as most all centrifugal blowers were--and BTW, it was GE who developed the centrifugal blower into a viable power-boosting unit, and a ton of the development work was done on racetracks like Indianapolis, and the wooden "board" superspeedways of the 20's here in the US) or a form of automatic transmission drive, the German superchargers did use power from the engine, mechanically, to drive them. Perhaps one real reason for this compact arrangement was that the Bf109 for which the DB-601 was primarily designed, was anything but a large plane--if you have ever seen one in person, it's only about 3/4 the size of a P51 Mustang--a fully grown 6' man can practically wrap his arms around the empennage (rear most part of the fuselage, just ahead of the tail surfaces) and lock his hands together, that Messerschmitt is THAT small. On the other hand, turbocharged engines used in US Army and US Navy practice in WW-II were also variable in boost, but by a much simpler method--called a "waste gate". These, witht the exception of the Allison V1710 variants used in the P-38, were all radial engines, which powered much larger planes--if you've ever seen a P-47 Thunderbolt, you have probably wondered just how a single engine could get 13-tons of massive fighter plane off the ground! The rationale behind varying the boost in an aircraft engine isn't as much for the purpose of gaining additional bursts of power, as in "war emergency" power--that was handled by the throttle, and at the extreme end, by injecting a water/methanol fuel blend directly into the carburetor or air intake. Rather, the superchargers and turbochargers were there to provide pressurized air, pretty much at sea level atmospheric pressure, or slightly higher, at high altitudes. It just wasn't wise to use them for any more than a few seconds to give extra boost for more HP--not very productive to endanger the engine in an aircraft when there isn't any place to pull over and stop if you blow the engine (Mercedes racing engines of the late 20's-early 30's, with their Rootes type superchargers (same principle as the famed GMC Jimmy blowers drag racers used for years, BTW) suffering catastrophic engine failures when forced to run their blowers for any extended length of time in a race. Rolls Royce, with the Merlin, as with Bristol's radial engines, and the awesome H-16 engines used in the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest fighters, used a 2-stage centrifugal supercharger, the second stage being variable in boost as well, for these same reasons. However, the early Merlins were handicapped by their rather primitive (for military aircraft use) carburetors, which would simply stall the engine if rolled even 90-degrees from horizontal without going through a very tight turn which would keep the fuel in the float bowl where it would be if straight and level. Once that problem was cured, Merlin-powered fighters could treat the Bf109 like "meat on the table". Merlins continued to serve in the USAF and the RAF to the end of the 1950's in fighters (the last P51-D Mustang was retired to the USAF Museum from the West VA ANG in 1958), and in RAF Shackleton patrol bombers into the 1960's, until those were replaced by the Nimrod, itself a modification of the DeHavilland Comet jet airliners of the early 1950's. Incidently, the last Messershmitt Bf-109's built used Merlins (some of those performed as Luftwaffe fighters in the movie "Battle of Britain", provided by the last air force to use the design, the Spanish Air Force). The failing of the Allison was that the US Army Air Corps specification called for a single stage centrifugal supercharger, to be augmented by a turbocharger, with waste gate controls to give the boost necessary to maintain sea level power at altitude. However, in it's first use, that being the Curtiss P-40 "Kittyhawk, Tomahawk, Warhawk" series of fighters, that airframe (itself adapted from the somewhat smaller radial engine powered Curtiss P-36 Hawk 75 of 1936) lacked any room in it's rather small fuselage for a turbocharger and the large and heavy exhaust ducting to get the power to the turbo. Nor did the rather radical, but compact Bell P-39 and P-63 Airacobra and King Cobra fighters. Only the Lockheed P-38 Lightning had the airframe space, and the size to take advantage of the added turbocharger the Army brass insisted the engine be designed around, and it did that in spades, being the first operational fighter aircraft to reach (but not exceed) the speed of sound in a power dive. Art

Preston Tucker's promoting the idea of a racing team of cars by the still-legendary Harry A. Miller, powered by Ford's flathead V8 wasn't all that bad, certainly not on paper. Race car design and development in the 1930's wasn't the long, drawn-out, highly involved process it is today--during the Great Depression years, most new race cars that showed up at Indianapolis were merely pipe-dreams on January 1st of their given year, finding sponsorship money was an even harder scramble than it can be today. In addition, given the depressed state of the small machine shops, including the rather lofty Offenhauser Engineering Company who had taken over building the 255cid Miller 4-cyl, evolving it that year into the even more famous Offenhauser engine, was such that cars as complex and finely engineered as any $15,000 Miller 91 Front Drives of just ten years earlier could be built, and quickly so, for a fraction of that money. If there was a problem with the Miller-Ford, it was Miller's intransigent obsession with compactness and light weight. The "Achilles Heel" of the Miller Ford was its rather small, and extremely tightly machined steering gearbox, which, due to Miller's insistence on a cleanly built, very artistically styled race car, was mounted in too-close proximity to the left side exhaust manifold of the Ford V8 engine, which itself had already earned a reputation for being a very hot (temperature-wise) engine. The cars ran very well in practice, right out of the box, their flathead V8's hopped up to something like 160hp (bear in mind, the then new 255cid Offenhauser exceeded that output by only about 20hp, and at a much higher cost (something like $1500 a copy, or about the price of the soon-to-be-announced Lincoln Zephyr). But the car's undoing was the steering gear, which in itself would not have failed, had it not been exposed to the red heat of the exhaust manifold, coupled with the high temperatures that were present in the engine bay of nearly every other car in the 1935 500 Mile Race. The extreme heat boiled the heavy oil out of the steering gears, and they seized up on the track about half way through the event. Yes, for Henry Ford, by then a rather crotchety old man of 71, it was a major embarrassment, but those cars had another development barrier. The Miller-Fords were front drive cars, intended for Indianapolis. By 1935, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was the only hard-surfaced race track available in the US, all the famed board superspeedways, where front-drive cars had once been fierce competitors, had rotted and weathered away, a couple burned to the ground, others torn down to make way for residential or commercial development. The only paved tracks in existence that year, other than Indianapolis were a handful of quarter-mile ovals, built around the "new kids on the block" racecars, the midgets--not nearly enough room for any Indy car to do much more than idle around those tracks, if that. The rear-drive AAA Championship cars could run dirt tracks with the same ease they exhibited on the 2.5 mile Brickyard, then come to Indianapolis, with no changes in setups beyond different camshafts for the longer straightaways and much longer, 1/4 mile turns. Front-drives, still the darlings of many at Indianapolis, simply had to sit idle, from one month of May until the next one, a year later. Front drive speedway cars always promised much, but delivered very little at Indianapolis--where a rear drive car had 4 straights to run full throttle (two 5/8 mile straights, the front and back stretches) and two 1/8 mile straights (the north and south short chutes), all of which exist to this day, front drive cars had to drive a very smooth line through the turns, and treat the short chutes as an curved extension of the turns at either end of them--drivers also had to set up for the first and third turns much earlier than drivers in rear drives, no sudden backing out of the throttle--any sudden engine deceleration carried a severe risk of throwing a front-drive car into a slide that soon became a spin. As a result, front drive wins at Indianapolis came but very rarely: 1930 and 1932, and 1947-49, which given the sheer number of FWD cars built and entered in the 30 years from 1925 to 1955 (last year that a Novi FWD entered and tried to make the field--it did not), that was a very poor showing for what seemed to be the fast way around an oval track. Had Ford not gotten his nose so far out of joint, those cars may well have given a very good account of themselves for 1936, in fact several of them did race, and one of the chassis saw the installation of the first of what became known as the Novi V8 (which generated an unheard-of 550hp from just 3-liters in 1941) which ran well enough in the 1941 500 to claim 4th place, slowed only by tire wear, and too many fuel stops. Another, very famous young guy from the south side of Chicago, campaigned a Miller Ford, with a postwar hotrodded flathead V8, sponsored by Grancor, wrenched by the Granitelli Brothers (Andy Granitelli was listed as the car owner). There's little doubt that Preston Tucker was first and foremost a promoter. In many ways, he was the "black sheep" of the Tucker family (his younger brother, Fred, founded what is still the largest real estate agency in Indiana, FC Tucker), and had the reputation of being a flamboyant, hard-sell salesman. His real entry into industry was an armored car he concieved, and tried to sell to the US Army--an armored car capable of 80mph. But it was too fast to fit the tactics the Army had in mind at the time. However, the electric machine gun turret atop that armored car proved to be just the ticket for the US Army Air Corps--it was capable of tracking any fighter plane in the sky at the time, and became the standard turret used in the top position on the A-20 Havoc and A-26 Invader light bombers, the B-25 and B-26 medium bombers, and the heavies, the B-24 Liberator and B-17 Flying Fortress. Of course, all those turrets had to be made under license from Tucker, his own company not being large enough to supply all the AAC and later USAAF needs. But, his prewar (and possibly wartime) dealings put him squarely in the sights of Westbrook Pegler, then the leading muckracker newspaper columnist of the postwar years. Pegler, much like his rival Walter Winchell, thrived on the salacious, the scandals. So when Tucker's often unorthodox methods of raising capital brought him under the scrutiny of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Pegler jumped all over the story like flies on manure Tucker was arrested, charged with fraud, tried in the US District Court in Chicago, and found Not Guilty. But, the damage had been done, his company was done, and that was that. Would Tucker have succeeded, even survived? Many business historians aren't so sure--after all, Tucker managed to raise about 25 million dollars in capital to start his outfit. Lots of money, right? Wrong! GM alone spent over 150,000,000 dollars just to restyle and tool up for 1949. Ford spent nearly that much to develop the 1949 Ford, Mercury and Lincoln. Tucker would have found it pretty tough to even get his car into mass production, let alone carry on into a second model by say, 1950. Shoot, Henry J Kaiser laid out some $80,000,000 to found Kaiser-Frazer, and by 1955, the Kaiser car was history, only their ownership of Jeep carried the famed California construction and ship-building wizard and his offspring forward until they threw in the final towel, selling Jeep to AMC in 1968. The movie doesn't tell of all the troubles, the scandal, but it does allude to all that throughout the film, while mostly telling the story (highly enhanced by Hollywood screenwriters taking considerable license with the truty) from the Tucker family's point of view. All in all, an interesting man, and an interesting story. Art

Jairus, Neither the Daimler Benz DB601 (Messerschmitt Bf109) or the Junkers Jumo's were turbocharged, but rather used conventional engine-driven centrifugal superchargers, much as did the Merlin and the Allison. The only turbocharged V12 aircraft engines of WW-II that I can think of were the Allison V1710's used in the Lockheed P-38 Lightnings. All the other turbocharged engines of WW-II were American radials, the Wright Cyclones, Double Cyclones, and the Pratt & Whitney Wasp, Double Wasp and the Wasp Major (that 28-cylinder "corncob" engine). The Germans perfected fuel injection, while the Allison used what we later knew as a throttle body system. The earliest Merlins used a float bowl carbruretor, which limited their flying to anything BUT inverted, until changed in mid-summer 1940, just in time for the Battle of Britain. Art

lordairgtar, That would be correct! Buick, from their very beginnings in 1915, produced only "valve-in-head" engines, never seriously considering any sort of flathead (or side-valve) engine designs. (Incidently, Chevrolet never produced a flathead engine in the US, either!) The carmaker who never produced an inline 6, nor a straight 8, under their own brand is Cadillac. Some may argue that the '34-'36 LaSalle straight 8 was a Cadillac engine, but it was more correctly and Oldsmobile straight 8, assembled as a LaSalle engine only (and now you know how LaSalle could have those gorgeous tall, narrow, "electric razor" grilles, but there was never a straight 8 in any car badged as a Cadillac. Art

Everybody give up on this one? Art

Yup, the Allison could be flown in any aerobatic or combat maneuver, due to it's carburetion, which was floatless. By contrast, the early Rolls Royce Merlins could not, until they got fuel injection. The real reason for dry-sumps in aircraft engines has more to do with oil consumption than it does the positioning of the engine, or the flight attitude of the plane--those are engines set up really rather loosely for long-running reliability, which also translates into oil usage that we'd not tolerate in a car. Also, having a remote oil tank (and oil cooling radiators) allowed designers to much more easily balance the plane they were engineering, by putting the weight of oil either somewhere near the balance point, or in the after fuselage, thus offsetting some of the weight of the engine. And yes, the Daimler-Benz DB601 and Junkers Jumo V12 aero engines were almost always mounted inverted, for aerodynamic reasons, mostly I believe. A Messerschmitt Bf-109 is a MUCH smaller aircraft than a Spitfire, smaller than a P-51 Mustang, and positively miniscule next to a P-47 Thunderbolt. Art

The Auburn and Pierce Arrow V12's were both 60-degree engines, as was the Allison. However, the Allison was single overhead cam, the Auburn was OHV, and the Pierce Arrow was a flathead. As for the Allison, yes those are drysump setups, but no Allison V12 was ever mounted upside down in use in aircraft. What makes it look that way is that the Allison engine has a gear-reduction propellor drive, that mounts the propeller shaft above the nose of the crankshaft. Allisons, like any other aircraft engine, were mounted "backwards" to automotive applications though, due to the propellor being in front of the engine, so the crankshaft has to come out that end of the engine. But, WAY too large for truck application, an Allison, even with all it's aluminum and magnesium castings, weighs in at nearly 2000 lbs. An Auburn V12 tips the scales at nearly 1000lbs, and I would assume that the Pierce Arrow V12 is only slightly lighter than the Auburn. Art

The Allison V12 was designated, by US Army Air Forces, as the V-1710, and I bet you can't guess what the "1710" refers to, can you? That's right, 1,710 cubic inch displacement--pretty large for any truck. Of the engines you mention, I believe that Hall-Scott and Waukesha only made inline engines, 6's and straight 8's. Seagrave fire apparatus after about 1937 or so, until about 1965, used variants of the Pierce Arrow V12 from the 30's. American LaFrance bought the tooling and manufacturing rights to the Auburn-Lycoming V12, as used in '32-'33 Auburn Salon series of sedans and boattailed speedsters. Art

OK, Now for an easy one. In business still today, this American marque, in business since the early 20th Century, has NEVER produced a flathead engine for automobile use. Can you name it? (hint: There are actually two of them) And if that's not enough, can you name the one that never produced either a straight 8 under their own badge, and NEVER produced a straight 6? Art

Man! You are quick! Yes, Ford called this wheel the "welded steel spoke wheel". It was made up of a rolled steel rim and pressed steel 5-lug hub. Each spoke is a forged steel piece. The rim, hubs and spokes were set in a jig, and then resistance-welded into a very solid unit. The design and technology were then patented by Ford Motor Company. Rather than set up a production line to make these wheels in-house, Ford contracted with Kelsey-Hayes to produce them, then licensed their patent to the likes of GM and Chrysler, who while using slightly different spoke patterns, and their own unique hubs, began using this type of wheel in the very early 30's. This design was far stronger than any other wheel in use at the time, as it combines the best qualities of a wood-spoke artillery wheel, whose strengh is in the spokes at the bottom of the wheel, under compression; and the laced wire wheel, which spokes do their job under tension, from the top of the wheel. In addition, it was far more resistant to being bent upon receiving a sharp, side-loaded force, such as skidding into a curb--as long as you didn't strike a spoke and bend it, the wheel stayed true. By contrast, the large diameter, relatively flat disc wheels of the 20's were not only MUCH heavier, but were easily bent out of "true" under side impacts. Of course, new steel alloys, and new ways of pressing heavy sheet steel into wheel discs changed all this, and by 1935, nearly every carmaker had gone to the style of steel wheel we still know today (a few independents, Auburn most notably, stayed with welded steel spoke wheels for another year or so). And today, it's still hard to beat the classic look of Kelsey-Hayes '35 Ford-style wires! Art

OK, time for another one! For 1926, Ford introduced a new, all steel wheel as an option, which most buyers of Model T's loved, This wheel, all steel, looks like a wire wheel, but it isn't! What was the name that Ford used to describe the wheel, and how was it built? (hint, this wheel assembly was patented by Ford, and used by a number of other manufacturers, Ford using it through 1935) Art

OK, I think it's time to end this one. Cadillac had a rather stunning group of engineers, headed by Alfred Sloan (who later built GM into the powerhouse it was by the end of the 30's, and Charles Kettering, who came in from Delco, and headed up engine and chassis development. All through the early history of the automobile, one could stand on a street corner, hear the crunching, grinding, clashing of straight cut gears in transmissions, as drivers searched for the right gear, at the right time. This alone was why Henry Ford went with the planetary transmission, with contracting clutch bands inside (several other makes used this type of transmission as well), as he wanted something far simpler to drive than a "crash box". Cadillac's innovation for 1930? The Synchromesh transmission. And, that is something that probably nearly all of us here has used at some point in our driving lifetime, never giving any thought to it, except when we missed a shift, or tore up a synchronizer! Art

There are probably several, conflicting reports then, as I see Portugal on one spread sheet, Australia on another. In addition, AC Nielsen surveys show the US with the greatest penetration of car ownership, 89% of all of us over 18 owned a car as of May 31, 2007. However, the United Nations Statistics Pocketbook, as of November 2008, lists the USA with the most cars per capita by a long way! 765 cars per 100 persons. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tra_mot_...-motor-vehicles Art

Portugal. Art

The Duesenberg Model J came with vacuum-assisted power braking from its inception in 1929. However, if you think of "performance driving", or for that matter, just ordinary convenience in city traffic, you might just figure this one out--it's that common, that ubiquitous! Art

Iowa, 1.141 cars per capita (per person)! As of February 2007 Art

Karl Benz, in 1888, received written permission from the Grand Duke of Mannheim Germany, to operate his Motorwagen on the public roads. It wasn't quite the official license we know today, as Imperial Germany didn't institute mandatory licensing until 1903, that country being the first to do so. Art

ONE BINGO!!!! The Cadillac V16 pioneered a new invention, the hydraulic valve lash adjuster, which we call today, the hydraulic lifter. Now, what is the other one, one which nearly every driver since has noticed the lack of if their car was not so equipped? Believe me, if you have a car without this feature, and you like performance driving, you would MISS it! Art

Nope! Cadillac used composite (wood structure, sheet metal skin) bodies built by both Fisher and Fleetwood until they got all steel bodies, with one-piece steel roofs in 1936, along with the rest of GM's line. As for insulation, there was sound deadening, but that wasn't any innovation then--luxury car makers had been insulating for silence from road noises for years already. Art

George, think of silence as a keyword, to get you deeply in thought on these! Art

Nope! Hint: Neither of these innovations is visible from curbside. Art

There was a Cadillac V16 that had AC installed, but a few years afterward, which was done by some aftermarket outfit. Not the innovations I am talking about--those were from the factory, and YOU most likely have owned a car with both features, millions upon millions of cars have been built with that technology. Art

Bill, Cadillac had hydraulic brakes by 1930, but they didn't introduce them to the automotive world. That honor goes to Duesenberg Inc., in 1922. Both of these innovations were major enough that they were ultimately adopted by just about every automaker on the planet. One gets cursed a lot when it doesn't work right, the other? Uh, people love it for sure! Art

While Cadillac is credited for the introduction of the electric self-starter (designed and built by Alfred P. Sloan and his Dayton Engineering Laboratory Company--Delco), that was in 1912, on a 4-cylinder car. The Model 452 Cadillac was the first series Cadillac V16 (452cid), which was introduced for 1930, and continued in production until the end of the 1937 model year. The two innovations were present on the 1930 Cadillac V16. Care to try again? Art

In 1930, Cadillac unveiled the world's first production V16 engine in an automobile. While unique, this engine's cylinder count wasn't the longest-lasting feature, but two other features of the Cadillac Model 452 and it's drive train are still seen today. What were they? Art