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Old 04-06-2018, 01:24 PM   #14 (permalink)
cRiPpLe_rOoStEr
It's all about Diesel
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by acparker View Post
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.
The first single-crankshaft opposed-piston engine I heard of was the Rootes TS3 anyway...


Quote:
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.
In the end it was a great engine, not just relatively compact but, apart from the particulate matter emission, it actually fares better than many electronically-governed Euro-3 engines fitted to vehicles with a comparable load capacity.


Quote:
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.
Now comes another question: which company would be more likely to actually make the Achates-designed engine? Cummins has its 4-stroke tradition, while Fairbanks-Morse opposed-piston 2-stroke engines are still used not just for large-scale powerplants but also in military ships and even as backup power for submarines. So, even though Fairbanks-Morse engines tend to be more associated with off-highway applications, and in sizes not suitable to road-going vehicles, I'd still bet they could resort to the "battlefield-proven" marketing approach which had already been extremely successful with the Jeep CJ, the Hummer, the AR-15 and many other stuff.
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