To Prolong the Life of the Engine

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 5, Issue 5, 1 November 1926, Page 48

To Prolong the Life of the Engine

written primarily for the use of the heavy goodscarrying vehicle, a note in a recent issue of The Commercial Motor has considerable interest for the private car owner. After pointing out that although design and efficiency of engines have greatly advanced during the past few years, the writer goes on to say that the length of life of the modern engine is much the same as it always has been, and to ask why this is so. From one point of view it is, of course, a sign of progress that the life of the engine remains much the same as in the past, for the modern engine does much more work, for its size, than did its ancestor, and that this extra work can be obtained from it without any loss in durability is an emphatic sign that real progress has taken place. But, as has been pointed out in these pages on previous occasions, the search for still higher efficiency and performance from the modern engine is not now so vigorous as it has been during the past few years. It is felt that, under present general conditions. the engine of a modern typical car gives all the power output that is necessary or desirable, and that further progress should be directed towards increasing the already long life and already satisfactory reliability of the engine rather Evidence of the working of this tendency is generously provided by than towards still higher efficiency, the diminution of high efficiency small cars on our roads and by the adoption of slightly larger engines by many makers of well-reputed cars. Small cars, of course, still exist in large numbers, and they actually arc increasing; but the number of makers catering for this market is decreasing rather than otherwise, and it is the success of established models and not the introduction of

new which maintains the small car in its present position. It is pointed out in The Commercial Motor that one of the chief wearing factors in the modern engine is the abrasive material drawn in with the air through the carburettor, and that with higher engine speeds than used to be common the effect of this abrasive material is, naturally accentuated. If, therefore, anything could be done to purify the air entering through the carburettor, the life of the engine should be much prolonged. There is no great difficulty about providing this cleansing, and that something for the purpose is not already standard on British cars is largely due to the fact that the need for it is only just becoming evident. If we had the dusty macadam roads of a decade ago, then our high-speed engines would long ago have demanded some protection in the form of an air cleanser, and in America, where roads are dustier than they are here, “air washers” are fitted to the majority of good-class cars. It is certainly strange that no such device is usual on cars made on the Continent of Europe, and especially Italy, where the dust of the majority of the highways lies several inches thick throughout the long summers, except when it is disturbed by passing vehicles to form vast and choking clouds. An air washer does not involve added mechanical complication in a car. It consists essentially of a fan mounted in the main air intake pipe, and the fan is turned at high speed simply by 'the air rushing past it—it does not need an independent drive. Centrifugal dispersion by the fan throws particles of dust and solid matter out of the air into a rcccptable in the side of the fan chamber, and the air passes into the engine deprived of much, if not all, of its solid impurities.