> > As for the rest of your interesting article, I'll note only that there
> > were also several corresponding developments after the period of time
> > you mention, notably the thin-walled lead-indium bearing replacing
> > the babbitted white-metal bearing of the vintage you describe. The
> > thin-wall bearings were pioneered by Vandervell, and used what was at
> > the time considered to be a ridiculously thin layer of lead-indium on
> > a copper shell.
>
> The Vandervell bearings, according to my dim recollection of articles
> in auto rags long gone by, were pioneered in racing application on the
> VanWall, a very nice "what would be retro now" open-wheeled racer of the
> Champ car variety.
If you mean World Champ, you've got it dead to rights. Stirling Moss
drove the Vanwall, as did (I believe) Tony Brooks. Moss won a few races
with it, but couldn't defeat Fangio and the well-established teams of
Mercedes and Maserati to win the championship. In fact, many racing
historians feel that Moss' nationalistic support of Vanwall in lieu of
taking a seat with one of the more established teams helped contribute
to his inability to win a World Championship. The Vanwall was an
interesting machine, with a body almost lenticular in cross-section
and nearly as wide as the track, in an effort to smooth the airflow
between the front and rear wheels. I can't remember anything about
the Vanwall's engine now except of course for the bearings. It was
in use between roughly 1955 and 1960, during which time John Cooper
set the world on its ear by turning the chassis round with the driver
in front of the engine. By 1961 or 1962, there were no more front-
engined F1 cars of note. The Brickyard followed suit, with the years
being 1963 to 1965; by 1966, none of the front-engined "roadsters"
was able to qualify for the 500.
(If you meant US-style champ cars, well, the wheels did stick out. :-)
Actually, US-style champ cars of the Fifties were surprisingly sophisticated
for their purpose, but this is british-cars@hoosier, not hoosier-cars@british.
> The Van part of the name was short for Vandervell,
> the Wall part I don't seem to have on my rapid-recall stack...
Wall, see Bearings, Thin-.
> > The Hirth roller bearing crank is another way to achieve high BMEP
> > and RPM levels, but at a very high cost.
>
> Yet another method, used for very high RPM and specific output, is
> the crank-pumped, premix or oil-injected two-stroke mechanism, which
> it might be argued is also a low-pressure or no-pressure oiling system.
> The highly mobile gasoline serves to wash the oil into the crevices and
> journals quite effectively, with the disadvantage of having to deal with
> oil smoke emissions somehow (like, uh, venting it to the atmosphere...).
Yeah, and two-strokes are possibly (IMHO) the ultimate sporting engine,
what with power on every downward piston stroke. The last two-stroke
motor I piloted had a centrifugal clutch that caught between 6K and 9K
RPM, the powerband started at 11,000, and redline was 14,000 RPM. When
that motor got into the fat part of its powerband, it made a noise
(assisted by the fact that I was basically resting my right shoulder
on the engine) that would have made all the world's Twin Cams quail in
shame, and the scenery starts turning red in front of you and blue
behind you...
However, the point remains that while there have been a number of
engines, including many definitely sporting varieties of them, that
have used low- or no-pressure oiling systems to good effect, I can
assure you that the BMC B Series engine as used in M.G. sports cars
since 1956 is most definitely *not* one of them. :-) There are also
many superheroes in the comics who wear capes and fly, but that
doesn't mean you'll get away with it if you pin a towel around your
neck and jump off the garage roof.
--Scott "But it WORKED in the MOVIES!" Fisher
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