what is this

a kit of bits? what chassis? is that the Besler engine up front?????

Chris,
Picture taken where and when??

Definitely a Doble steam generator, first series E draft booster, D-1 also had the auxiliary unit in front if the steam generator and no draft booster, Besler F auxiliary unit had the cylinders inverted. D series Dobles did not have a fan turbine, D-1 didn't have four wheel brakes, firewall in the wrong place., hub caps are wrong. D Series Dobles did not have a frame with the big kick up above the rear axle. Any photos of the engine?

I suspect built up by Sentinel or someone using old Sentinel parts leftover from their Doble truck project. Looks like the same chassis I was sent pictures of dismantled in Ireland and badly corroded. May be the same car before someone took it apart let it badly deteriorate.
Jim

yes I think that there is some connection with Ireland, the engine if F type and has a Sentinel lubricator, so I am pretty sure that the Engine is from shrewsbury, Someone then collected other bits and built this up? does it have a value?

If you put the picture on the Prewarcar.com site someone will no doubt identify the make of the chassis which is very unusual - the wheels look European not American - but anyway Chris stop teasing us - have you got it!!!

Just an observation but the engine in Chris's chassis has the cut-off lever exiting to the right. On Tom's site [modernsteampower.wordpress.com]
there is only one engine in the bottom picture which has a right hand lever and the middle picture shows an almost complete assembly again with right hand lever.
In the attached picture is a surviving Henschel F type engine for comparison.

I can not match the auxiliary engine but if Sentinel derived it could have been built by Weir who also supplied units for the French Rail cars.

Brian

So,

Is this up for sale? If so I'm interested. Please tell us more!

Keith

Yes it's forsale, I am trying to buy it, however the vendor wants in excess of $300,000

Chris,

I hope your able to make a deal. Seems to me that's asking a lot for a pile of bits, IMHO.

Keith

Chris,
Please don't tell me that Preston Services is the vender. Their prices are highway robbery considering they get the stuff for scrap prices. Several friends know them.
The asking price is pure outright gouging. No more than $10-20,000 U.S. for the whole thing.
Even if you get it, you are facing one big problem unless all the Sentinel blueprints and technical data is available and goes with it. If not, where do you expect to get it? No one in England has a clue how to make this collection of worn out and corroded parts work as they should. They may tell you they do, but they don't.
jim



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/2015 06:57PM by Jim Crank.

I will have some better detailed pictures later today, it is not Preston services, it is a private vendor, he has had the car in the UK for 3 weeks, I was the first to see, and made a strong offer, because I wanted it, however not that badly. My appraisal is as follows, the engine is seized and has a very small drive gear on the crank, therefore I am assuming that it is low geared and so probably a test engine from the Sentinel lorry project, there is another bigger gear sitting loosely on top of the drive gear, this is thought to be the diff gear, however it is possibly the car gear ratio which was originally on the crank when the engine came fresh from the states,(Besler engine I think), the generator is in quite reasonable shape and measures 25" diameter over the cases, the pressurestat is present and is mounted on the firewall (I did not see if the typical case had the thermostat bits inside) there is an aluminium bodied boost blower, with cut off solenoids and points for the spark ignition present, there is also an ordinary blower placed on the chassis at the front for some reason,
then there is the (Sentinel?) auxiliary unit, which actually is only an air pump (Vacuum) for scavenging the condenser and a feed pump, this is far too big and not suitable for a car project, then the condenser, which is just a large vintage lorry radiator.
All in all, there is a kit of bits engine. generator, blower, and that's about it. The cassis is very nice but has no rear axle, diff etc, and is off a very big European car, not really suitable either, however the chassis may turn out to be the valuable part, time will tell, the vendor thinks that this kit of bits will make a $2,000,000 car and is therefore worth a small fortune as is.........................

Hi Chris,
This does sound like a kit from old Sentinel parts. The auxiliary unit does sound like the one from the first Sentinel truck is a good indicator where these parts came from, as does the present gear ratio. It was once fitted in E-24 when Abner was experimenting using his car for testing out some ideas. The wheelbase might give an indicator what car or possibly truck it came from. I will watch for your photos with interest.

The sellers delusion that the finished car would be worth $2,000,000.00 is so typical these days, he must be watching the inflated prices the crooked auction houses get for some cars. Even a perfectly restored Doble with the original body would only bring $1.25-1.5 million or so if you could find a buyer. The major collectors know nothing about Dobles and thus stay away from them . Also, their staff have not one clue about running one or keeping it going.
Jim

Hi Jim
Minor thing but is there any significance of the cutoff lever being to the right side of Chris's engine as I noted in my post above? If there were records then the origin of the engine might be found.
Thomas Hindle did some drawings of a Doble F type engine for the Light Steam Power Society and some were built but I have no idea how accurate a recreation they were.
Brian

There is a possibility it is an ex A&G Price engine two were salvaged and shipped to the UK in the 1950's supposedly. One car size one bus size but I only have the recollections of Athol Jonas who owned a couple of them briefly in New Zealand and thought they went from an Australian buyer to the UK. I never found proof but there is the Daimler Doble Hybrid which has a large engine but that is probably ex Sentinal. All these engines were the 2 cylinder compound F type design. If you have a good picture of the engine I could compare it to my prints of A& G Prices work and try to see if it matches.
Cheers
Mark

Was Athol Jonas the guy who had the Doble bus remains in NZ ? I seem to remember there was some talk of a land speed record attempt using bus parts?
The story is that the recent purchase is from Southern Ireland, however previously the bits came from Australia, on one of the parts the name R Bell, Ballina , New South Wales if that means anything to anyone

some possible identification on the crank web

[www.dropbox.com]

not sure if this link will work

This engine looks like the Omnibus engine but with a larger gear on the crank shaft.
The F engine had a single valve operating both high and low pressure cylinders.
Rolly



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/2015 03:21PM by Rolly.

Rolly,
The F engines had individual piston valves for each cylinder. The E engines had that stupid single valve serving both cylinders, the Woolf compound. See picture of F engines at the plant.

Brian,
I thought I had answered you earlier.
The two rods serving the cutoff link and the pawl went straight back from the pedal and the latch button to the link on the side of the engine.
The position of the cutoff shaft depended on who got the engines. England being right hand drive, the shaft extended to the right. Germany and the U.S. being left hand drive, it extended to the left side of the engine.
The first two engines in the photo show both.

Mark,
Does this other picture help?
Jim



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/2015 04:28PM by Jim Crank.

Thanks Jim I should have remembered that
Years ago I did a cad drawing on the E
Rolly

Rolly,
That's a beautiful drawing. The second version of the E engine, the first one had the valve bore parallel to the cylinders. They only built one of those.
So now all new cylinder and crankcase patterns and core boxes and people wonder why Dobles went broke, besides those stock fraud trials. Now the clearances and port volumes were not identical for both ends, which resulted in endless changes in sleeve port locations and valve dimensions.

In fact, could I buy a full sized copy from you? Allen and I have to machine the new castings for E-19 and I don't trust the drawings I do have. Especially the matching valve and sleeve drawings too, if you would.
Jim

So we're the F type bus/lorry engines the same bore and stroke to the F type car engine?

Chris,
The Besler built bus engines were the same as the car engines except for the gear ratios.
The Sentinel blueprints I have show some larger truck engines and definitely the locomotive engines were larger. Sentinel built quite a few nicely engineered engines on their own.

For Henschel and Borsig, you need to get a copy of the British report done right after the war. Tom Kimmel might have a copy in his library. Quite an interesting report.
I had little interest in them except that Roy Renner and I needed to get a good list of how many trucks and busses were made in Europe for a report Roy made. I had contacted some friends at Porsche who were also interested in the steam vehicles Henschel made.

If I could get the book published, I have all that well described in that chapter.
Jim

good information as always Jim, thanks a lot, does the mark on the crank weight mean anything to you, with the small crank gear the engine in the chassis must be lorry or bus ?????

Chris,
The small crank gear means it is from a truck or bus.
The mark might be just a drawing number and means nothing.
Trying to see if this counterweight is the regular one on the crank pin or is one of two Besler added next to the drive gear to stop the massive shaking the F engine had. Cannot select just one of your photos to see.

Trying to look at your collection of pictures of the contraption; but it is on some file called Dropbox which will not open on individual pictures and keeps trying to get me to sign up to Dropbpx, which I won't do.
Also the Mac does not let me file it and then go to it on that file. Says "Unknown file developer."
Jim

yes I get that too, but if you just click the X on the box and close the create an account bit , it then asks you if you want to see the doble photo's


chris

SHello Jim
Is there any record of how many F engines were built? Guess that would be too easy.
The Steam Car magazine describes Ray Clark's Daimler - Doble as having an ex Sentinel Doble engine.

Hi Chris
I know you will have the following information available but sharing it here for the benefit of the wider community.
A.R. Thomas produced a booklet about Sentinel and Doble which briefly mentions the A. G. Price project but describes the AEC bus engine as an enlarged 'D' Type. In the A. G. Price history 'Men of Steel' page 40 is about the bus project and shows Abner in the seat of the AEC test chassis but there is no technical information. It does confirm 4 buses were built. A newspaper article describes the new (second) steam bus as having the auxiliaries driven by a small independent steam engine mounted in the bonnet, this was in preference to the previous drive from the back axle and turbine blower.
[thamesnz-genealogy.blogspot.co.uk]
The first Sentinel truck and subsequent rail engines were a substantial 4.25 + 7.5 x 6
The figure I have for the F type is 3 + 5.5 x 5
In the 1934 article by Imfield & Roosen they mention a 80hp Private Steam Car power unit trial in a Henschel omnibus leading to the development of 110hp for buses and 150hp unit for trucks and railcar. Various sources give the 110hp engine as 3.15 + 5.52 x 5.12 (80mm + 140mm x 130mm) but I can find no dimensions for the 150hp. Maybe some one can help with this?

Intrigued by the car chassis, similar to RR, HS and Minerva but distinctive by having the sliding spring hangers which I would think isn't good for racing!!
Good luck in purchasing it at the right price.
Brian



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2015 08:11AM by Brian McMorran.

Sorry been a bit distracted recently. The electric driven auxiliary fan in the pictures has a fan scroll identical to one I found at Athols house when I collected anything even vaguely steam looking. It is hanging on the workshop wall currently, I also had the intake diffuser but it was 30% missing. Miserable casting quality, very porous, and being left on a wet dirt under a house did it no favours. I hung on to the bits but eventually the parts went to Doble owners who needed them, ie Jim, Bill Lloyd and Brian Rankine.
I will get pictures of the fan housing and the other bits of Doble jewellery I have hung onto. Couldn't part with a genuine foot throttle, a bus pulsation damper, a possible auto LP HP balance /sampling valve (Athols description but no one else knows what it is) and a strange oil preheater.
Cheers
Mark

Chris,
Tried that; but I will not sign up for some flakey program I don't want. Have had lots of trouble in the past with them harvesting names and selling them to marketing firms. Until you use something else, I cannot go any further on this.
Jim

Hi jim, you don't sign up for anything, just close the box asking you if you want to. And the pictures are there, easy,

Chris,
No they won't. It will not open and keeps putting up that sign up form before I can view the photos.,
Let's just forget this car if that is the only way you can post your photos.
Jim

All files from this thread

File Name	File Size		Posted by	Date
doble39.jpg	942.9 KB	open | download	chris Wedgwood	07/13/2015	Read message
Henschel.jpg	113.2 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/14/2015	Read message
crackweb (800x600).jpg	267.7 KB	open | download	chris Wedgwood	07/19/2015	Read message
Doble F engines.jpg	303.9 KB	open | download	Jim Crank	07/20/2015	Read message
Doble F engine.jpg	221.5 KB	open | download	Jim Crank	07/20/2015	Read message
Correct position.jpg	65.1 KB	open | download	Rolly	07/20/2015	Read message
IMG_6279.jpg	655.3 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6304.jpg	779.1 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6297.jpg	728.7 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6280.jpg	784.1 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6292.jpg	724.2 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6336.jpg	794.4 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6353.jpg	800.8 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6315BW.JPG	326.7 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6355.JPG	537.6 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
IMG_6279 (2).JPG	396.3 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	07/23/2015	Read message
2 JACKET Steam Stewart - Don Hoke - Goosepen-2 SMALL.jpg	876.2 KB	open | download	Don Hoke	08/24/2015	Read message
IMG_20151017_093125.jpg	997.1 KB	open | download	chris Wedgwood	10/17/2015	Read message
IMG_20151017_093125.jpg	997.1 KB	open | download	chris Wedgwood	10/17/2015	Read message
pump1.jpg	13.6 KB	open | download	chris Wedgwood	10/21/2015	Read message