MOTOR-CAR ENGINES

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1930, Page 7

MOTOR-CAR ENGINES

CARBONISATION ELIMINATED. London, Sept. 10. A Scottish engineer, who had laboured ever since the war upon a device for employing the steam generated by a motorcar engine in helping to run the engine, has at last brought his invention to a point where it is ready for expert testing. If a motorist saw a man putting a gallon of water into the petrol tank, says the motoring correspondent I of the NewsChronicle, and if he were told that the power and efficiency of the engine were improved thereby, enabling it to run without carbonisation, the' motorist would label the man a simpleton. “Yet,” says the correspondent, “I have seen a simple ’ device working in a car which does all these things, convincing leading English and American engineers, who signed statements vouching, for the results.

“It is the simplest of all gadgets and can be fitted within half an hour. In the heater tank of the radiator, after the engine has been running, is steam, which is sucked through a valve and passes through a metal barrel condenser, thence, via superheater, to the combustion chamber. There it smashes up the fuel into an almost perfect state of atomisation, eliminating carbonisation. “A certain quantity of water in the steam-saturated gas, falling on the top of the piston and on the cylinder walls, seals the piston rings.” The' invention is that of a Scottish scientist and locomotive engineer, Mr. Robert Wood. The News-Chronicle estimates that the saving by this device to British motorists on fuel and decarbonising expenditure would exceed £10,090,000 a year.