For Nial. Brit Steam Cars.

[Bugeye58]

Nial, I got this today and thought you may enjoy, given your penchant for steam and things British.
Enjoy.

https://www.steamcar.net/index.html

Jeff

 

[DrEntropy]

That's AMAZING, Jeff!!! THX for the link. Gotta send it on to some friends who're steam freaks too.

Aside: Me paternal granf'ar told a story of the Canton Fair in his youth, where Stanley would bring a car to exhibit. ~IF~ you could pilot it on a one mile downhill at WOT and reach the end, the car was yours.
Nobody ever had th' 'nads to DO it. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/devilgrin.gif

He said the estimated speed at the half-way point woulda been the "C"!

 

[smcmanus]

OT but.......the Story re WOT in a Stanley has been told in many permutations. The standard story is "if you can hold the throttle wide open for a mile, the car is yours!" I hear that story is a myth. My favorite Stanley brothers story is that they would drive 2 cars along the same route at break-neck speed. Just as the first brother was being cited for speeding by the local authority, an exact duplicate of the first car, to include the driver, would come speeding through town.

As a boy, my absolute favorite book was "The Story of the Stanley Steamer." I read it dozens of times. I passed on an operable 1917 927(?) touring car in 1987(+/-) for $13K and have always regretted it. But....it would have cleaned out my savings. BTW, my savings is cleaned out anyway!

Have a nice day
Steve

 

[aeronca65t]

Ahh....thanks Jeff! Wonderful stuff!

My dear old Dad was a steam engine mechanic for British Rail...he even saw the Flying Scotsman in action. That is probably why I am so taken with steamers.

For any of you who'd like to build your own steamer, I have a website with many different free plans:

https://npmccabe.tripod.com/steam.htm

 

[Ernst Blofeld]

Apropos of nothing...

In the early Seventies Sir Alec Issigonis worked on a steam engined Mini project.

The car was featured a long time since in a long-forgotten "Car" magazine article, which I have never been able to locate.

Mention of the steam Mini is made in the two Issigonis biographies by Gillian Bardsley and Jonathan Wood, but apparently the project was scuppered by technical problems, and Issigonis' apparent lack of enthusiasm (even though he was passionately interested in steam engines, and built his own extensive model railway.)

What's more back in the late Nineties 'Mr Performance Mini', John Cooper, recalled this very project in one of his monthly articles for 'Mini World' magazine. Mr Cooper thought the Steam Mini project bizarre in the extreme, but related a discussion he had with Dr Alex Moulton, the engineer who conceived the Mini's rubber suspension, and the Flexitor, Hydrolastic and Hydragas suspensions.

According to John Cooper, Dr Moulton was hugely keen on the idea of a steam engine for automobiles, but his knowledge of steam engines was not called upon by Issigonis after he'd fallen out with Dr Moulton following the Leyland takeover of BMH in 1968.