Team Steam USA

Hi Rolly
To have a planing nearly flat hull with twin 12deg. angle shafts it would require about 9#/hp. The diesel record did not go over 60 mph untill1964.
That would be very impressive indeed.

Harry

Harry
It looks like an early version of an airboat,(air cushion) but no pusher prop is shown.
Might be propeller driven. They’re a lot about G. M. Bellanca even a museum, on the Internet. But I can’t find anything about F. M Bellanca. Might be his son.
It looks pre military, numbers on the side of the boat are 10F170
A caption says many of aerial and navy weapons now in development by F. M Bellanca cannot be revealed at this time.
Using a scale of the men on deck as six feet it scale’s about thirty feet.
Rolly



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2013 07:30PM by Rolly.

Rolly,

This has nothing to do with this discussion; but it is a funny story about ARROW.

She was later owned by J. Stewart Blackton one of the founders of the Vitagraph movie studio in New York.
Seems one of the things he liked to do for his guests was to show their latest film, only he did it in a rather unique fashion. The projector was on ARROW using her electric plant and the screen was the sail of his 72' sailing yacht which slowly cruised along side of ARROW down the Long Island Sound in the evening.
While the latest cowboy and indian western film was in progress, some grande dame in one of the neighboring estates, who had imbibed far too much during the day, meandered out on to the balcony. She saw this going on and ran screaming through the mansion bellowing that the indians were attacking Long Island.

Jim



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2013 01:38PM by Jim Crank.

Great story Jim,
But maybe not so far off topic as Team Steam is also doing the boat project, however Frankie will still drive.
Harry

Digressing a bit further on Arrow, Frank M. Bellanca was the brother of the aircraft Bellanca. They were both born in Scicca, Sicily. Frank's wife was Claudia and they had three daughters, two in Milano and one in Brooklyn. On his citizenship application he was an experimental aircraft engineer. In 1942 on his WWII draft application (he was 62) he lived in Forest Hills, Queens, Long Island, and was running American Aero-Marine Industries Corp, 122 E 42nd St, NYC. He appears in the press often in Yonkers where he was given a cut rate lease on land in 1941 to build a factory for military boats and aircraft. I have found absolutely zero information about a Lamont boilered landing craft other than Rolly's find in the May 1942 Mechanix Illustrated. I would like to get a high resolution scan to do an article for the Bulletin.

Karl
Thanks for the information.
Tomorrow I am headed to the model show Cabin Fever Expo York PA
Our model club has a table; I think 10 or 15 of our members will be there.
If any one is going look for us at the New England model engineering table.

When I get back I will bring the book somewhere to have the article scanned.

PS December issue Vol XX1X No.2
Rolly

[www.cabinfeverexpo.com]

Jim I think I would have liked to have been on the deck of Herreshoff Stiletto running circles around the Mary Powell in 1880 sixteen years before Arrow. Not as fast but had more publicity as the falsest boat in the world at the time. She became our Navy’s first torpedo boat she remained in service for over thirty years.

Rolly

Rolly,

I recall reading that. What an era!!!
Wonder if ARROW had a small Wurlitzer on board to accompany the films? There were some pipe organs on yachts, biggest was on Dodges DELPHINE.

Jim

Snore. Steam CARS? For the ROAD?

Last time I checked, this was "The Steam AUTOMOBILE Club of America", not "The Steam Efficiency Club" or "The Steam Boat Club".

Focus.

Peter



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2013 05:27AM by Peter Brow.

Hi Peter
The thread is about Team Steam and there desire to promote steam for cars motorcycles and boats. The club is also charted to promote steam boats,so join in it is only fun lively talk. Suggestions in these areas are always welcome. also a good debate as we all have a different point of view and that is where good ideas are spawnend.
Harry

Peter,

The main focus of SACA started out as a common ground for many to get information about how to keep their Stanleys running. I got into it in 1958 at the first meet out here at Buena Park. Since then, modern steam came up and became the prime focus.

There were quite a few homemade cars then, mostly not so good; but if it ran on steam that was good enough. That is when the terms "Parking Lot Dribblers" and "Steam Thingy Club" originated.
Then recently the Cyclone project emerged and Harry opened the door to just how good the Rankine cycle can be if the road blocks were removed and the cycle was taken to the upper levels that it is capable of reaching in a car sized package. Global warming and use of fuels other than petroleum pushed this new development hard, like never done in the past with small steam systems. Just because something runs on steam is no longer good enough, some of us want to advance it a long way beyond that. And I for one sure want to help push it along.
Similarly, George Nutz opened my eyes to just what a problem solver and how good the Lamont was compared to the Doble type that I was familiar with at that meet and hill climb at Mt. Washington that Susan Davis organized a few years ago. In other words, like all of us, I was still learning, a process that never ends. Just like Harry has done, he forced me to expand my thinking beyond what Abner and Warren had done decades earlier, where I had been content to wallow for far too long.

Now, what with the advances made in the Cyclone engine, those of us that pursue top efficiency and power levels in the smallest possible package, have jumped on board and are doing our utmost to see the Cyclone succeed.
Deviations like talking about ARROW are only memory refreshers of how good and what went on in fast express yachts, along with using our site as a common ground for discussion when we are spread all over the country.
Indeed, SACA has evolved over the years and I think is the better for not only expanding our thinking from vintage steam cars and their technology; but for using our site to dabble a bit in other things like ARROW still holding the speed record for steam and why she was able to go that fast. Unless carried on for far too long with endless prattle, modest deviation on our site is great fun and that too is a function of SACA. I enjoy steam in all it's many forms and ARROW sure is of great interest, she was the benchmark.

Jim



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2013 05:27PM by Jim Crank.

These are good explanations, in case anyone checks out steamautomobile.com and wonders why there is so little discussion of steam automobiles lately.

Peter



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2013 05:51AM by Peter Brow.

SACA Articles of Incorporation registered in Illinois July 15, 1958 have as the #2 purpose for which the corporation is organized: "To aid in the development of modern steam applications in cars and boats through publicity of new developments." Thank you for reminding me that we should print the articles of incorporation on each Bulletin. What happened during the big flurry of modern steam car development in the late 1960's to early 1970's is that the club became the depository of knowledge about monotube boilers and high speed engines. Thus, ever since, when anyone wanted to make a modern and efficient steam power plant, whether for stationary use or mobile, we are the only people with that information. As a practical matter anything being developed needs to go through a bread-board stage and it is always easier to make a stationary power plant than a mobile one, and always easier to make a boat power plant than an automobile one that that easier than an airplane. Because not all of us inherited money and we are all interested in steam power some of us make small parking lot vehicles or even lawn mowers that use steam. It is all a start and it keeps the knowledge alive and the interest percolating. I understand that each of us in the club or on the Phorum, and many Phorum participants are not club members, has a different interest in steam power. It is my job to keep everyone informed with relevant information. It is also my job to encourage all to be polite to each other, and this on a subject that we are all passionate about, a job that I would be much better at if paid more. Tom Kimmel

It may not be necessary to regularly remind people of the purpose of the club if it would have a name which more accurately represents that purpose. I honestly didn't know that boats were in the Articles. Steam Automobile Club certainly gives the wrong impression of what we intend to do.

Is it time to make the name more inclusive? "Steam Power Club" is clean and clear, but would have some baggage from the past. It's a challenge for me to come up with a simple name that addresses all compact powerplants and leaves out industrial steam, but there are people here smarter than I am, and something better than what we have should certainly be possible.

Kelly

Glad Kelly bought this one up! Last time I did the flack got intense and we almost didn't make it to our release point....

Dear Karl
I had the article scanned and the article is about a new 100 MPH Torpedo boat.
Re-reading the article it implies the boat has passed the design testing and is ready to go into mass production. However we have never seen one. The government may have never issued a contract for them, but I wonder if the prototype ever did the 100 MPH in the test.
Page three shows the photo of the landing craft with the caption stating the speed of 65 MPH.
I e-mailed you the PDF file and photo jpeg. Very good information on the Lamont boiler.

Rolly

Hi Rolly
The speed of 65 mph is doutful with a conventional mono-plane hull and submerged propellors. that would be 9#/hp. The hull looks very low in relation to the cabin and could be a Hickman sea sled with surface drives. In that case it could be more probable. The Seasled is inverted and box like, having a deeper water line at the chines. They were the fast hulls of the day. Hickman also developed the surfaceing propellors. We would hate to try for the wrong record with Frankie's boat.

Harry, Frankie's boat looks great. Have you opened out in the water with a Cyclone engine in it? If so, how did it do?

Are we any closer to getting that LSR attempt this summer?

All the very best.

Hi Scotty
The boat engine was run a while ago but was put aside to do the LSR project. The boat engine can be seen running on U-Tube. We still have the other LSR targets to run this year the only firm date is Bonneville in August for the car. These projects are fun and very use full in research and marketing but we have our day jobs in getting out engines. The boat was originaly sponsored by a good friend who was a boat pioneer. He left us at the age of 92 two years ago and he is missed. The boat is well along and with sponsorship it could run this year. Of course we have to be sure about the record as this boat as set up should run just below 60 mph.
Harry

Hi Harry,

"we have our day jobs in getting out engines" - this is fantastic. It's tremendously cool that someone is making a living, today, selling small reciprocating steam powerplants. How many units are you able to get out in a month? What industry seems to purchase the majority of them?

Thanks,

Kelly

HI Kelly
Sorry about the way I wrote "getting out engines". Sounded like a production line. That is not what we do. We are developing modern
steam technology and testing protype engines that will go to licenced manufactures.
Harry

I am a little late getting to this topic but here is some attempt at clarification. The Steam Automobile Club of America is the name that I inherited and I am not paid enough to even begin to think about changing anything. For one thing the only steam vehicles, or the most of the steam vehicles and the only ones that run legally on the road, with maybe an exception, are historically designed automobiles. These would be Locomobiles, Whites, Grouts, and Stanleys with a high percentage of the Stanleys being reproductions. Therefore the basis of our club are these real steam cars. They are the ones that prove that steam can work. They are the ones that give us all rides. As the owner of more modern steam cars than anyone else I feel free to talk about this issue. Very few people have enjoyed rides in my vehicles. Secondly, After the California based Steam Power Club broke away from SACA, then dissolved and attempted to re-join, there were many and long debates about changing the name. All that I need to know to dishearten me from attempting a name change is to remember the many and long debates. Club VP Ken Helmick has suggested to me that we put a name up on our website which is possibly a SACA Chapter, with wide geographical range, that caters to the back yard home made wood burning steam power people. I notice that even the Stanley Museum has a presence at the big back-to-the-earth Unity Fair in Maine every year. That is because of the interest in back yard steam power. Therefore, it is a good point that our expertise in modern steam is not well advertised by the name. And no, I am not going to do anything about it. Harry made mention about being criticized in the SACA Bulletin for his engine. I was around then and can speak to the situation, even though it was about ten years ago. My memory may be as good as other people's memories. The Bulletin editor at that time misunderstood a fine point Harry was making. Whether or not Harry was talking too fast or the other fellow listening too slow is a matter of debate for another time. Harry was explaining the two things he was doing with cooling air being blown into the condenser for condensation. One thing was to condense all of the exhaust steam and the other thing was to pre-heat combustion air. The then-editor thought that the claim was that it was the same volume of air for both purposes. We all know, me, Harry, and the then-editor, that it takes about 30 times as much by volume ambient air to cool the condenser as is needed for combustion. It would have been preferable if that fine point had been checked before a comment made in the Bulletin. As for any comments made about Cyclone and Harry personally on other internet forums than this one, I suggest that we are not responsible for those and do not need to be held accountable. On second thought, as for any comments made on this Phorum, half of the participants are not club members in the first place and in the second place I have neither the skills nor the omniscience to control what other people post. We can take off unnecessarily rude posts as fast as we can and that is all we can do. On a personal note, I have been keeping careful track and I have been accused of supporting Harry as many times as I have been accused of being against him. Therefore I want to take credit for walking the fine line. Tom Kimmel

Tom,
I had calculated the amount of condensor air required for a 100HP Cyclone many years ago--it was a much greater amount then some college PHD had told Harry was necessary. It is such a relatively simple analysis. To have a fully self condensing system run under all curcumstances using distilled deionized water would require total condensing, a closed loop system theoretically.
George

Condencing on the MK5 occours around the cylinder. we had to remove part of this feature from the LSR car as there was almost no
steam comming from the stack and the lube water return to the tank was over heating . This was corrected long ago but it proved how
effective this type of condencing works. The bottom of the engine we call the condencer but it cools down the water for the condencing process. This holds 9 gallons of Di-water and has 140 sq ft of surface area and the blowers use 6,000 cu ft per min. This is a box shape 6.75 X 24X24 With a 1.5" deep collector below. The total engine is 24 "X 24" X24" Complete with the heat exchanger engine and condencer and pumps. The cooling fans do protude in the front of the condencer. The LSR car has no real condenser but does condense some.
Hope this clears up some questions otherwise I am glad to answer them.

Harry

I basically think Tom K is doing the best with his actions and I don't blame him for that. We had a meeting scheduled for Tom to meet with me back a few years ago in Miami. But Tom opted to visit with Harry instead (time ran out etc).

That day I had got the cornburner out and set up in the parking lot of where I was working at the time (Im a part owner there) I spent about 3 hours prepping the machine and had things good to go. The visit never happened.

Sometime later Tom did manage to meet me to were I moved in Tennessee, but the cornburner was still in Miami at that time and instead we walked carefully across a new painted floor. Well that was that and its how it went. However "at this time" the cornburner is here now in TN.

On this air flow thing, I asked Harry if he was preheating combustion air and I was stunned he denied or diverted of topic, at that time... its common practice to preheat combustion air into any burner and raises combustion eff. actually if you look at the first Cyclone patent there is no method to preheat the burners air supply.

After Kalebs criticism of my convection hybrid combustion system I decided to hell with the club even thoug he is not an active member of the club...

My latest posting activity is here [flashsteam.com]

Ive actually had a few donations : )

Best

Jeremy Holmes



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2013 06:51PM by Jeremy Holmes.

Hi Jeremy,
Good to hear from you. As you know I always liked your corn burner as I think it has some real possibilities and would like to work with it.
Only have two hands and 7 days a week, so later.
There is an air preheaters on the combustion air. I am sorry I was not clear on that. This engine package has been under development for a while and some things change slightly from testing. Some for durability ,performance and some for production ease.
It took a while to develop a fuel atomizer that is as good as it is. It has even burned powered coal, This is the primary air sourse,secondary is on the perimiter. There are hundreds of parts that have to be developed that are not off the shelf and it takes time and money. We have learned a lot from this and these engines work. It takes time to do durability testing and it has to be done right. I feel that pressures to come to market too soon would spell disaster such as the GM Volt.
Questions on the combustion chamber and air flow are different than what have been perceived. Think of it as a Lamont in reverse. The combustion gases are recycled and the water at SC makes for high heat transfer. The gas side is the hardest side to transfer heat from combustion gasses or fluffy steam. I guess that stirred the pot...
Harry

I withdraw my implied suggestion that members of "The Steam Automobile Club" talk more about steam automobiles. No point changing the Club name to something non-automotive. No fiddling with the name or charter makes any difference. At least the established name mentions steam cars, and perhaps that is the best that can be expected. Maybe that will give somebody the idea. I will continue working on a new steam car, as I did before I even discovered SACA, and as many others did long before SACA existed, and as some always will.

Perhaps I should change my suggestion from "let's _talk_ more about steam cars", to "let's _build and drive_ more steam cars". Any takers?

Best wishes to all, whatever your steam power project. I have built non-car steam power projects myself; those are cool too, and I would not like to see them excluded from SACA discussions.

As Shakespeare said, "what's in a name?".

Peter

after some internal deliberation I have decided to renew my club membership for 2 years. I really like the pay pal feature for paying dues, hope all is well with everyone.

Best
Jeremy Holmes

I have been unwillingly diverted away from Team Steam USA topics, and wish to ask what the records are that the team can go after.

The water mile record officially is the 1903 Arrow record of 45 mph, I think, and the land records are those for the km set by the Brits and the mile set by Ken Barber. You can see that, for me, the accurately measured runs are what count rather than which group of officials was doing the timing. It would be good to know if any 1942 steam boat runs discussed above were actually timed and recorded.

On a completely different platform, has any timing been recorded for steam motorcycles, or is that all in the hand waving area? The only track numbers published in the media were of Roper.

Are there other records? Yes, I know about the locomotive speed records, but it may be a little while before flanged wheels can be put on the team's steam LSR car, though that gives me ideas....

Karl Petersen



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2013 11:50PM by Karl Petersen.

Harry,

Good web site and certainly very well done.

Our car was never submitted to those micromanager idiots at the FIA and I couldn't care less.
Just read the FIA Constructors Regulations and the Sporting Regulations for Formula One if you want to see blundering, mindless, rampant stupidity from start to finish. Why the teams and their sponsors put up with this is a mystery, it costs them tens of millions for each car. FIA on Google.
It set the mile record and held it for fifteen years and broke the oldest standing record in the history of automobiles powered by steam, the 1906 Stanley record and that's enough.

Am going to do my best to come to Berrien Springs if at all possible too.

Jim



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2013 06:54PM by Jim Crank.

The fascinating idea that the water speed record might be 60mph is still limited to a single magazine article. Does anyone have further information? Google is unusually empty of references to any of the names or events. I did buy the Mechanix Illustrated copy for the corrected month on eBay but it hasn't been delivered after a month's wait. Sigh.

Karl Petersen

All files from this thread

File Name	File Size		Posted by	Date
LSR new.jpg	26.3 KB	open | download	HLS	06/07/2012	Read message
photo.jpg	22.7 KB	open | download	HLS	06/07/2012	Read message
New LSR body.jpg	364.7 KB	open | download	HLS	07/17/2012	Read message
drag3.JPG	248.4 KB	open | download	HLS	07/17/2012	Read message
DRAGSTER FRAME.jpg	164.5 KB	open | download	HLS	07/17/2012	Read message
new LSR nelson chassis.jpg	520 KB	open | download	HLS	07/21/2012	Read message
LSR car.jpg	109.1 KB	open | download	HLS	11/27/2012	Read message
photo1.jpg	822.2 KB	open | download	HLS	11/28/2012	Read message
RacecarTeamSteamUSA-1.jpg	109.9 KB	open | download	Karl Petersen	02/05/2013	Read message
RacecarTeamSteamUSA-2.jpg	107.8 KB	open | download	Karl Petersen	02/05/2013	Read message
RacecarTeamSteamUSA-3.jpg	110.5 KB	open | download	Karl Petersen	02/05/2013	Read message
RacecarTeamSteamUSA-4.jpg	129.3 KB	open | download	Karl Petersen	02/05/2013	Read message
scan0001.jpg	787.8 KB	open | download	HLS	04/09/2013	Read message
Landing Craft..jpg	182.2 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/15/2013	Read message
GG MOM finished.jpg	140.4 KB	open | download	HLS	04/15/2013	Read message
LSR Dyno.jpg	428.5 KB	open | download	HLS	05/22/2013	Read message