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| If your car runs on petrol, be sure not to fill it up with Ackroyd Stuart by mistake |
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An alert reader recently pointed out my error in claiming that Fiat was the first to develop commonrail diesel engines. In about 1918, apparently, Doxfords – a British shipbuilder based in Sunderland – developed the Doxford two-stroke marine diesel engine and yes, it operated on a commonrail system.
I can only apologise – but what does the reader mean by ‘diesel’ engines? Rudolph Diesel didn’t patent his version of the technology till 1892 and, at the time, Rudolph favoured coal dust as fuel. However, Herbert Ackroyd Stuart had already invented the compression ignition oil-burning engine, in England, two years before.
But I accept the point that Fiat was not the first to use commonrail technology in its Ackroyd Stuart engines.
Charis. A voice from the past - are you by any chance the Charis Whitcombe I used to know at Harrison Sadler when I was Chief Exec at the Retail Motor Industry Federation?
Christopher Macgowan | 21 Jan 08 - 10:49I’ve been rumbled. Yes, I am. Most journalists move over to The Dark Side (PR) because it offers better financial incentives. I was too thick to notice that, so I gave up a lucrative career for the more ascetic (ahem) pursuit of motoring journalism. Well, that and all the lovely cars we get to drive…
Charis Whitcombe | 22 Jan 08 - 19:11As a psychologist, psychoanalyst but also an incredible petrolhead, I have been seeving through miles of magazines. In fact I learned my English at a Jesuit boarding school courtesy of Classic Cars and old copies of Motor magazine.
Denis Jenkinson, L Setright: heroes from my past but all in the up-there. I get a fairly regular fix from the likes of Martin Buckley and occasionally Rob Coucher, but one Maserati article in a magazine later and I have been craving for that other sharp pen since. Who on earth is Charis Whitcombe?! In fact, nevermind who she is: where does she publish?
At the moment, we have to trawl the depths of She Drives and Classic driver. Well, I can do the ascetic but prefer a glossy.
We appreciate that we all have to eat and feed the pets etc but Charis darling, don’t give up just yet. Some of us are looking for those pearls irrespective where we need to go to find them.
Wishing you many happy blinkin’ cursors,
BCR
Bert Charles Roex | 25 Jan 08 - 2:53BCR,
Like yourself one of my major journalistic heroes is LJK Setright…
One of his comments, which I will never forget, is in his road test review on the launch of the Lamborghini Miura, stating that unleashing the Miura on a downhill section of road was the closest you could get to free-fall parachuting without actually leaving the ground.
As for Charis Whitcombe, she is everywhere, and she wields a very sharp pen!! ….. Beware!!
AM
AlfaMartini | 29 Jan 08 - 19:20Whilst Ackroyd Stuart and Rudolf Diesel both came up with the thermodynamic priinciple of the diesel engine, neither could make it work. Ackroyd Stuart went on to evolve the hot bulb types of engine and Diesel to evolve the Air Blast Diesel but neither are true “diesels” as we know them. The modern “Solid Injection” and “Common Rail Diesel” were invented by the team of engineers designing diesel engines for submarines at Vickers Sons and Maxims under the cloak of World War 1 secrecy. By the end of the First World War all new Royal Navy submarines were being fitted with solid injection, common rail diesels. These were more efficient and smaller than the air blast diesels being fitted by all other Navies. In 1919 the Admiralty released all the technical details to the world (much to the disgust of Vickers) and L’Orange, Bosch and others developed it further.
John Sykes | 25 Feb 08 - 15:02Solid Injection became the universal standard but comon rail was forgotten until FIAT re-invented it 80 years later.
Further details are in Lyle Cummins’ recent book “Diesels. For the First Stealth Weapon; Submarine Power 1902 1945