Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Letter: Modern car engines are nothing special
Friday 16th December 2011, 7:56AM GMT.
Further to Trevor Mytton’s letter and reply by John D Taylor.
I also know of the highly-tuned BMM O diesel engines. My dad used to drive their coaches.
The first time was bringing an empty one back from London prior to the official opening of the M1. So he thought he would ‘try it out’. He was going that fast (there were no speed limits) the police thought the coach must have been stolen and pulled him over.
On finding all was bona fide the policeman wanted to know all about the super engine.
My dad always spoke in glowing terms about these engines.
In 1935 a Perkins ‘Wolf’ diesel engine was installed in a Parry Thomas car and 95mph was achieved at Brooklands (Parry Thomas built land speed record cars).
Also about that time Austin engineers achieved 120bhp at 12,000rpm from a diminutive 750cc petrol engine.
Double overhead cams, cylinder heads with four valves per cylinder were used on production machines by Rudge and others.
Don’t let claims to sell modern cars as something special blind you. The development of engines has not progressed that much since around those times.
Ray Adams
Halfway House
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What we have gained is not so much performance as reliability. As a boy my family used to be regularly driven by Dad down to the south of France and Spain, he wouldn’t have dreamed of attempting such a journey without having had the car thoroughly serviced aforehand. Nowadays we expect to jump in the car and drive to wherever with minimal or no such checks having been made, safe in the knowledge that the engine will not fail. 100,000 miles is commonplace for modern engines, with servicing intervals at 10,000 miles or more.
You quote impressive performance figures for 1930s motors, but at what expense in fuel useage and emissions? These are another two areas where vastly improved engine design and manufacture have brought astonishing advances.
It was OK in the 1930s to run the 12 litre monster at 8 to the gallon and you bought petrol from the chemist’s rather than the filling station. But today with motor fuel at absurd prices, I think I’ll go for the modern computer-controlled engine, even if its annual service is more in the care of a laptop than a spanner.
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I should amplify my earlier comment by saying that the same applies to my motorcycles; oil tight, stone reliable, smooth running, economical, three times the equivalent in performance and longevity as 1930s bikes.
Go back to the days of the Black Shadow or Brough Superior? Great machines of their time and venerable examples of brilliant engineering, but no thanks, I’ll stick with the Hondas.
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You missed out the bit about miles per gallon.
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