enginehistory.org

jaymerich · Last edited by jaymerich on Sat Mar 31, 2012 07:36; edited 1 time in total

When looking in patent databases, one realizes that Continental engines of USA, patented some Sleeve-Valve general aviation engines. I would like knowing if someone has data on the results obtained with these S-V air cooled small aircraft engines, and the reason why no further development of this kind of distribution by Continental is known. From an aircraft engine producer point of view, that kind of engines may have a drawback: as they last longer tan other types, in long term the demand for engines can suffer losses, but it will have also an advantage in driving boughts from worse engines produced by competitors to the S-V producer.
The fate or the cause that there are not such engines in production today, neither for airplanes nor for cars and bykes, would give light on the issues related to industrial production of engines. Salut +

kmccutcheon · Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 05:43 Post subject:

On May 19, 1926 Continental Motors announced acquisition of world rights to the Burt-McCollum single-sleeve valve. By 1933 Continental held 175 US sleeve-valve patents with another 325 applications pending.

Engines developed to the point of production, but never produced, included: 6 and 8-cyl inline water-cooled automobile engines; 6, 7, and 14-cyl air-cooled radial aircraft engines (the 6-cyl was a two-stroke); a 10-cyl two-stroke water-cooled radial submarine diesel engine; a 5-cyl two-stroke radial water-cooled electric generator engine.

While successful developments, none of these engines offered any real advantage over poppet valve competitors. All were very expensive projects, for the most part internally funded by Continental, and nearly broke the company. Continental began selling its British, French and German sleeve-valve patents in 1937.

Most of this is paraphrased from Carl Bachle’s (one of Continental’s key sleeve-valve developers) account in William Wagner’s book “Continental! Its Motors and Its People, Aero Publishers Inc, 1983.
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Kimble D. McCutcheon

jaymerich · Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 01:58 Post subject:

Thank you for your information Kimble. It was surprising to me, as my idea was that Bristol and Napier Sleeve-Valve engines were the top of aviation reciprocating engines, in terms of performance, reliability and fuel economy, being displaced only by turbines. Are there any major differences between the british and the Continental SV engines that can explain the different fate ?. Are you aware of some publication or site where more info on Continental SV engines can be obtained ?. Maybe somebody connected to Continental would like writing a detailed story of their SV engines. Salud +

kmccutcheon · Posted: Tue May 10, 2011 05:06 Post subject:

jaymerich · Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 07:09 Post subject:

Hi Kimble !: I read with interest the sections of the book on Continental engines and its people dealing with the subject of Single Sleeve Valve ( SSV ) engines. To my surprise, the author points that SSV engines were easy to produce, and that the cost of production was lower than for a poppet valve engine ( Pag 33 ). He tells that a poppet valve engine was able to meet the performance of the SSV engine in just 4 months, by adding Sodium cooled poppet valves and other changes, probably expensive. It seems that an oil consumption problem persisted, but Mike Hewland claims having solved this. A profile publication on the Argyll single sleeve valve engined cars claims an oil use of one gallon every thousand miles, it sounds as too much, but , what is the oil thirst of today's Wankel rotary engines, some consider fully acceptable ?. After reading the book, and being aware of the very extensive research and prototype building in the field of SSV engines conducted by Continental, one has the feeling that the ill fate of this SSV engines line was just another consequence of the 1929 recession. The book informs that GM conducted also some research on SSV engines, and that they too finally discarded them. Is there somebody that can provide a reference for the GM work on SSV engines ? It's hard to imagine a comeback of SSV engines today, as aviation is dominated by turbines, Wankel engines are making a powerful entry in the general aviation field, and the line in automobile engines is moving towards variable valve timing and electronic control, but it's nice dreaming in an engine with low wear, high output, able to use low cost fuel in an economical way, and little maintenance needs, also well adapted to air cooling, air cooling being a very convenient approach for engines having to work under extreme weather conditions, and all this are features of SSV engines. Thanks, salut +

kmccutcheon · Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 06:24 Post subject:

jwells · Joined: 16 Sep 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Victoria, AUSTRALIA

Jaymerich,

A. L. Niven was the Scottish engineer who was employed by Continental to design and develop SSV engines.

During his time with Continental, he filed about 75 patents concerning SSV engines. If you Google ARCHIE MACPHAIL NIVEN, many references to his patents will come up. The Espacenet patent site will list the US patent numbers and you can look at them on the uspto.gov website. Most concern road vehicle engines but US 1,937,123 if for a radial aero-engine.

Good hunting!

jaymerich

Hi !: thank you for your suggestion. I did make a fishing in the ESPACENET patent database, and found many of them related to SSV engines, at least I had a lot of fun doing it. I put in the Wikipedia article Sleeve Valve a summary of the data I gathered since I begun interested in SSVs. My interest in this started after reading the interview with Mike Hewland on the subject in the July 1974 issue of Car & Driver. My feeling is that this arrangement for engines was not discarded in the USA because of futility, several of the last aircraft engine prototypes around the end of WWII used SSVs, but because piston engines being made obsolete for big aircraft with the arrival of turbines. This kind of distribution may be also well adapted to Atkinson cycle engines, having a high geometrical compression ratio but a lesser effective one, because of late closing of intake valves and the related blow-back of air-fuel mixture to the admission manifold, Atkinson cycle being used as a fuel economical engine in hybrid vehicles. Anyway, I still like SSV engines. Salut +

jaymerich · Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 19:51 Post subject: Non-British Sleeve-Valve engines

The very good article by K McCutcheon on Liquid-Cooled Pratt & Whitney engines gives more than ample information about the way Sleeves were produced in the US, and with a mix of the sleeve-valve engines chapter in several editions of the books by Harry Ricardo on the High Speed Internal Combustion Engine, you'll get the data about the materials used in the GB's S-V engines, a summary for hobbyists is in the Wikipedia Sleeve-Valve engine article talk. No information is available, or at least I've been unable to find it, about the way the french automakers and also airplane engine producers that used the Knight double sleeve-valve in their engines had for machining and producing the sleeves, but there's a recent replica of a Voisin race car with a Knight double sleeve valve system engine, the car having the name "Laboratoire", the replica was built by a french side-car racer, Philippe Moch, he must have some data about this.