As Bob stated, not a tractor engine at all. Below is an article written
by Jerry Felper, tracing the origin of the engine right back to the good
old USA!
THE ORIGIN OF THE XPAG ENGINE
Jerry Felper
Did you ever wonder why the threads on a XPAG and XPEG engines are
French Metric or where this great engine came from.Well here is the
whole story.
It all started in Connecticut in 1826 with the birth of Benjamin Berkely
Hotchkiss.Benjamin served an apprenticeship as a machinist and worked in
the Sharps Rifle Factory.He participated in the development of the early
Colt Revolver.
In the mid 1850, he and his older brother returned to the family
business, where the two spent their spare time experimenting with cannon
shells.Hotchkiss projectiles were especially lethal and after proving
themselves in the Mexican War, small orders came from the U.S.
government and Japan.With the advent of the Civil War, their new
enterprise grew into a giant.By 1865 they were filthy rich.
Their problem was that peace kept breaking out, so Benjamin traveled to
Europe in search of additional markets. Here he met Napoleon III.
Emperor of France, who sensing a threat from the East persuaded him to
set up an armament factory in France, this was 1867.It was located in
St. Denis, also home of the famous boiler and steam engine builder
Delaunay-Belleville.
France was soundly trounced in the Franco Prussian War and it was not
until 1872 that the new Hotchkiss gas-operated automatic "rapid- firing"
gun, the first modern machine gun, was adopted by Chile, China, Britain,
Russia and the USA.By this time there were five Hotchkiss factories
operating in Europe.
When peace broke out again, Hotchkiss found themselves with too much
production floor space and not enough production.By this time Benjamin
died and there were a number of creative Presidents of Hotchkiss.In
1898, President Mr. Parsons figured that any company that could turn out
precision gun parts could just as well turn out parts for the new auto
industry.By the turn of the century, the slack on armaments had been
taken up by large component orders from Panhard and De Dietrich. Parson
hired George Terrasse who was an experienced auto designer and Hotchkiss
started to build autos.
One of their first cars had a 19L Engine.Their autos had many state of
the art features and were very reliable. Now the connection with our
engines starts.Hotchkiss built autos until the First World War broke out
and were back making guns.The French decided it would be best to move
the Hotchkiss armaments factory to England to keep it away from German
hands.The plant was moved to Coventry.
After the war they needed some thing to build, since they saturated the
machine gun market.They built 1,100cc engines for BSA and in 1921 they
took a contract with Morris to build copies of the American Continental
engines that were originally built for the Morris Cowley.
This proved to be a big operation and 1923 William Morris purchased
Hotchkiss-Coventry.
*Editor's Insert:* Since the factory had been moved from France, all the
tooling was French Metric.It was considered too expensive to convert all
the tooling to British specifications.So Leonard Lord came up with the
idea of using Whitworth heads on the metric bolts and nuts so British
mechanics could use their regular tools on the engines.Thus was born the
"Nuffield Mad Metric" nuts and bolts used on all engines and
transmissions made from 1923 thru 1956 in the now Morris Coventry engine
factory.
/The overhead cam engines used in the early MGs all were this strange
combination of French Metric threads with Whitworth heads./
/In 1936 MG adapted a Wolseley overhead valve engine for the new series
MG, the TA/
This is where the XPA- series engines came from and why they use French
Metric Threads.Our engines were derived from copies of an engine of the
1920s, built by Continental in the USA (The Continental engine was a
version of the engine designed before WW I by William Morris).
If you would like to read more about Hotchkiss please get a copy of
Skinned Knuckles Vol. 30 No.] A UG. 2005, Foreign Affairs by John
Kuerzi. This is where most of my information came from and l thank
Skinned Knuckles for allowing me to copy much of the article.
______________________________________________
Mg-t@autox.team.net
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