Certainly different!

If like me, some of you guys have an abiding interest in engines of all types the...Duke Engines... concept will amaze you, completely off the wall!
A quick Google of the name will lead you to a fascinating video, there are some damn clever designers around. Not Bantam related, but educational all the same, but I`m not even certain of the category the thing should be placed in?
Take a look.

Trevor

Fascinating, Trevor!
Hoping you don´t mind -- I´d like to add my bit on this unusual design:-

In Montreal I had a group of young engineers and mechanics volunteeringly activated into brainwashing ideas of unusual translation of power in IC/C! engines where we were all determined to replace the existing con-rod and crankshaft with .... .... well, eh!? ... yeah well! eh -- something else....

In the summer of 1971 I attended a meeting at the IMechE HQ in Birdcage Walk, London on "Some Unusual Engines". One of the speakers was George White -- an old chap dressed as if he had just come out from under a bus of the Bristol Tramways & Wagon Company he had worked for in the Thirties. He spoke of his boss,Major C G Nevatt who was tempted -- then determined -- to do away with the reciprocating-rotating connecting rod and the massiveness of the crankshaft in multi-cylinder IC -- CI engines. George said that in spite of many setbacks the BT&W Co manged to get their "Wobbleplate" engine to work well enough on the test bed to try it out on the road. It was a nine cylinder (axial in a circluar drum of a crankcase) engine of seven litres displacement featuring what was known as the "Z" crankshaft. The con-rods only had to reciprocate their strokes onto a swashplate attached to the Z crankshaft. George had the audience in fits of laughter at how many times this engine destroyed itself and the test-bus had to be towed back into the workshop by a trusty horse (the BT&W Co were still using horse drawn trams in the thirties and no engined vehicle was available...). Despite a tremendous number of these disasters the `Galloping Major´, as George described him, never gave up but the unreliability was never solved.
Also, a patent was taken out by D K West for a swashplate STEAM-engine in 1875 and then in 1912 there was an axial-cylinder - petrol - engine propelling a car named Macomber. This was a five cylinder engine which was truly rotary in that the drum-like crankcase rotated about the crankshaft. About 95% of the total mass revolved -- smoothly so it was said but the Macomber did not survive. .

I had a look, as you suggested, and this Duke is surely a resuscitation of the Swashplate principle and I just wonder if it is modern materials and modern machining methods that get over the unreliabilty problem. That it is a multi-fuel engine is just bullshine -- many `normal´ engines are also.

Thank you for giving me a chance to resurrect the enthusiasm of that Montreal group trying to do what Major Nevatt had failed to achieve. We had a sort of rack & pinion arrangement that looked promising until one of the lads showed us a report by a Frenchman who had already taken out a patent on a similar arrangement. That was three decades back and it seems the French connection must have had its problems too....

Take care: Go well and stay well,

JayBee.,

John,
There must be hundreds of aspiring designers that had great ideas for alternatives to the traditional engine function. Equally large numbers were defeated by inferior materials and poor manufacturing facilities, and yet to be discovered techniques. Were they able to be replicated today I`m quite sure a lot of they would be successful. However, commercial interests usually hold sway and eventually come to dominate. Money talks!
One simple example is the humble valve spring, inclusions in the steel imposed a limited working life for pioneers of racing. Once the defects were eliminated, springs in engines are now rendered virtually unbreakable, fit and forget.
So tell me John, why are we still plonking around with obsolescent 3speed motor bikes that had their genesis in the pre-war years?

Trevor

1. `Cos they are just that,Trevor: DIFFERENT! And the 125 having 3 gears is much more of a challenge to race.

2. Fun.

3. Something of an expereince not to be missed.

Think of it -- the longevity of BSA Bantam racing has extended beyond half a century by 13 years and will it make the full century?
With the way our politicians play at war and the public make a fuss about a little bit of noise & smell, I doubt it.

While I am on this subject of club racing -- what about Marshalls?
We always had unpaid volunteers and the committee debated one time about paying them which had Scrooge (John Sawyer) a bit up-tight. Maybe the club did pay them after 1974 -- my time.

I suppose with GP and national events the marshals are paid. Who knows??

Cheers!