View Single Post
Old 04-05-2018, 01:17 PM   #13 (permalink)
acparker
EcoModding Apprentice
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Utah
Posts: 118
Thanks: 1
Thanked 33 Times in 24 Posts
I could not say that the single-crankshaft rocker-arm design is superior to other configurations, but I think it is significant that there were a cluster of patents in the mid to late '30's that resulted in two relatively successful designs being manufactured, Sulzer's ZG9 and MAP's 2H88 (Olds did manufacture some engines, but it is undetermined if they were a licensed Sulzer design, or based on his own patent), followed some twenty years later by the Rootes (Commer) TS3 which proved the most successful and most widely distributed.

Commer pursued this configuration because they wanted a low, compact engine that could be used in a cab-forward truck. The two-crankshaft opposed-piston designs are either very tall or very wide, and conventional diesels of the era were very large and very heavy.

OPOC, the other contemporary single-crankshaft opposed-piston design was based on the Gobron-Brille opposed piston engine, first appearing in 1898 and produced through 1922. With a single bank of cylinders, the height of the engine would be about the same as a conventional overhead cam engine.

Military involvement is no panacea. DARPA has left many good and proven ideas to rot, as the path through military procurement is anything but logical. The involvement of Cummins and Fairbanks-Morse is more significant.
  Reply With Quote