My oldest outboards are "only" 70 or 80 years old, and I've worked on a few that were closing in on 100 -- and they still ran. But I never got a chance to spend much time on the 2-cycle (2-stroke) marine engines that the watermen bought to replace oars and sails -- before there were outboards. They are rare today, but people still find them and get them running. Here's a good place to find out more about them: www.oldmarineengine.com/index.html.
It might be surprising to learn that gasoline engines were invented almost 150 years ago, shortly after the Civil War. In 1859, before the war, Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in Titusville, PA. The "black gold" was used to produce kerosene -- to replace whale oil that was used for lighting. The lighter, more flammable components, like gasoline and naptha, were discarded. And the cheap waste products presented a brand new opportunity...
The earliest engines to use gasoline looked very similar to steam engines and began to be built around 1872 (Brayton cycle, oldmachinepress.com/2016/12/05/brayton-ready-motor-hydrocarbon-engine/). After 14 years of development, Nicholaus Otto and Eugen Langen produced the first gas compression engine in 1876. These were heavy engines, like 1,000 pounds per horsepower, and were mainly used for "instant start" stationary applications, replacing steam engines that took hours to fire up.
In 1885 Gottlieb Daimler, who had helped develop Otto's compression engine, patented a lightweight, four-cycle gas engine -- around 200 pounds/hp. The first modern automobile was invented by Karl Benz -- or by Daimler and his colleague Wilhelm Maybach depending on who you believe -- in 1886. Before too long there were hundreds of big and small shops building engines. Ford produced his first gasoline-powered automobile, the "Quadricycle" (not the Model T), ten years later in 1896; the mass-produced Model T didn't show up until 1908.
Aluminum, 40 per cent lighter than cast iron, was more expensive but widely available beginning in the 1890s. The Wright brothers built their own lightweight gas engine, with a cast aluminum block, and flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Their engine, with oil and cooling water, weighed about 180 pounds and produced at least 12 horsepower (15 pound/hp).
https://wrightbros.org/Information_Desk/Just_the_Facts/Engines_&_Props/1903_Engine.htm
Once Daimler demonstrated that powerful gas engines could built at less than 200 pounds/hp, applications for them rapidly expanded. So when Ole Evinrude began to produce outboards in 1909 there were already plenty of gasoline-powered contrivances around the farm, on the dirt roads (the Lincoln Highway that crossed the country project didn't get started until 1913), in the air, and on the water. With weight of the engine hanging out on the transom, outboard motors put greater emphasis on lightweight materials (i.e., aluminum), simple valveless 2-stroke designs, and higher compression ratios for more specific power. In the 1920s outboard motors weighed in at around 20 pounds/hp. By the 1950s non-racing outboards typically weighed less than 10 pounds/hp, and the larger displacement outboards (which was around 25 hp at that time) were less than 5 pounds/hp.
Now back to the waterman's cast-iron engines...Stan Grayson wrote "Old Marine Engines" in 1985 and you can still find copies of it listed on Amazon (for over $900 new? I got mine for a LOT less). And Grayson notes that Union Gas Engineering, which was "affiliated" with the Philadelphia engine builder, Globe, produced a 4-cycle engine with a make-and-break ignition in 1884. And Globe added marine engines to their product line starting in 1886. Apparently they were a big hit. The "horseless carriage" makers also jumped into the fray, building 4-cycle gas engines for marine applications. Grayson lists Winton, Lozier, Stanley (of steamer fame), Simplex, Duesenberg, and Buick. All well and good for big yachts with hired mechanics. Not so good for DIY watermen and farmers.
Simple is reliable; simple is cheap. While the 4-cycle required valves, like the steam engines they replaced, a 2-cycle engine eliminated the complicated valve train, reduced the parts count, the complexity of assembly, and the costs -- to assemble and to maintain. And the 2-cycle engine was amenable to construction by even small machine shops. Grayson says that there were thousands of shops producing marine motors. The most well-know engines of that era, at least by the number that didn't end up as anchors or wartime scrap, are Palmer, Acadia, Luenberg, Lozier, Mianus, and Standard.
Here is a video of a 2-cycle Acadia engine with a make-and-break ignition, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQrpp0dtV7o
A few years ago I had an opportunity to get some photos of old single-cylinder motors that were found around the upper Chesapeake Bay. The motor shown below is a 2-cycle, 2-hp "Sandow" built by the Detroit Motor Car Supply Company in Detroit, MI around 1910. It looks like it has the original paint and the original Schebler carburetor (on the left side), and it still turns over. Note the priming cup and the broken spark plug at the top of the cylinder. The "buzz box" ignition coil is missing; the lever behind flywheel advances the spark timing.
The "Sandow" nameplate was a mystery to me -- no serial number. Detroit Motor built many stationary motors and marine engines under many different plates. Turns out that John Davis has collected a HUGE amount of information on Detroit Engine Works and the history of their engines, www.antiquengines.com/Detroit_Engine_Works_Menu.htm. The stationary engines have an open “hopper” for cooling while this marine engine has a “tank” attached to the right side of the cylinder to cool the exhaust. The photo below shows the exhaust and water pump driven from the output. Note the “damper” on the exhaust leg -- to make sure the engine would not suck in water from a submerged exhaust pipe? Need to research that.
Here is a video of John Davis' restored Detroit Auto "Sandow" running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FbLzBkH4Ic
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