Now the good old Commer TS3 has featured already with its distinctive sound. If you wind back the inspirations for that engine you may well arrive at Junkers diesel aircraft engines of the 1930's. Wiki does a decent enough article on aircraft diesel engines. Yes even the famous (or notorious!) airships Hindenberg, Graf Zeppelin II, and R101 had diesel engines!
...and for those who prefer sound and vision, after the boring still walk round shots, it gets started up and goes for a ride round the neighbourhood with the engine burbling away in its 2-stroke fashion quite nicely!
The engine itself wasn't that odd other than having an uneven number of cylinders, but the setup in the old Audis in the 80s with the five cylinder engines is worth a mention. Mainly for the downright strange way it was packaged. Engine is tilted right over to the right hand side, and is set way further forward than usual in the engine bay, meaning that it sticks out a good foot past the radiator.
Just looks really strange...
Current fleet:
06 Peugeot Partner Escapade 1.6HDi, 88 Renault 25 Monaco, 85 Sinclair C5, 84 Trabant 601S, 75 Rover 3500, 73 AC Model 70.
I can see the sense of developing a bi-rotor GS, a generally sophisticated and fairly complex car already, but a mono rotor wankel + 'proper' DS suspension in an Ami may have been a step to far....
Last edited by myglaren on 05 Nov 2018, 15:22, edited 1 time in total.
Reason:YouTube link
Richard_C
Current: , C4 Picasso 120 BlueHdi, C3 1.2 Auto
Past Citroens: Dyane (x2), 2CV, Visa, BX (x2), Xantia, Xsara Picasso, C3 (x2) C5 X7 Tourer, Synergie 1.9TD, C1
Others: Hillman Hunter, Cortina Mk 1, Maxi, VW Type 2, Granada, SAAB 900, SAAB 9-5, R5 Gordini
Richard_C wrote: ↑05 Nov 2018, 13:28
I can see the sense of developing a bi-rotor GS, a generally sophisticated and fairly complex car already...
Was scanning down a Classic Car Restorer in Jersey's stock list and my curiosity was captured by a Citroen GS Birotor (which I misread as "Biro" "Tor"). Firstly I wondered what a biro-tor was! and also why was a Citroen GS priced at £29,950 GBP, which needed further investigation.
This is very similar to the engine in my Velocette project...
He touches on the oil system - it's reasonably advanced for the 20's - the oil lever that he shows is actually a needle valve with a drilling from the oil tank into the crank shaft bushing - the crank case vacuum as the piston rotates sucks the oil along the bushing to lubricate it, before mixing it with the petrol before it is sucked into the cylinder. Not that brilliant mind you, as mine has about 1/4" of play in the end of the crank bushing....
Rover engineers always thought 'outside the box' - prior to adopting the Buick V8, and knowing that their 4-cylinder engine in the P6 was outclassed by Triumph's 6-pot 2000, they came up with this 5-cylinder development in 1964 -
They could never get it to run properly though as they only had carbs to work with, not injection - look at the odd SU setup! Fortunately, the V8 had been spotted the year before....and the rest, as they say, is history!
That Rover engine was cobbled together using a couple of 2000TC 4-cyl engines. There was never budget nor time to sort a bespoke inlet arrangement, so an extra SU carb was just tacked on for the fifth cylinder. Apparently, although engine balancing issues remained to be resolved, the power output was not significantly better than could be obtained from the standard 4-cyl TC engine, so it was shelved. A 6-cylinder version of the 2000 was also considered, but this would have meant elongating both engine bay and bonnet, so this never got further than prototype in the UK. Leyland Australia did develop a 6-pot however (for their P76), but not derived from the Rover lump.
As you say, the Buick V8 removed the need for anything longer than a 'four'. Sixies would have to wait until SD1, when Rover were obliged to take Triumph's 2300 and 2600, after Triumph has no more saloons to put them into.
