Cruban burner and the Empire Pilot

Cruban burner and the Empire Pilot

This is a burner that several Northeast Chapter members have and is the same type David Nerrgaard is using in his 1920 Stanley. Now I believe nearing 200,000 miles.
I can’t say it’s trouble free as I know the parts are old and David’s looks to have a lot of welding on some of the pilot parts. I know I have made some parts for his and one in Texas.
Riding in the car it has been quite and steady under all trips I know about. There rare as far as I know. If you can find one snatch it up if you have a car. The round pipe on the side of the square extension box is the air intake.
The photos are of some I took of Coburn Benison’s before he past away.


Rolly

Hi Rolly,

I think I can add something to this, see attachments in this and following post.

I like the word "EMPIRE" drilled into the pilot flame holder.

Regards,

ken



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2022 08:46PM by frustrated.

Patent text

Backer Boiler

I think the Backer boiler is one of the worst boilers I have ever studied compaired with most of the orher automoble boilers and generators used. The superheater section alone has more tubing then White Generator. It’s high up in the top section of the boiler.
The Backer burner is the only good thing that came out of the design. I just don’t think enough were made to be widely used by others or maybe just two late in the steam car development and much more costly to duplicate for the cars used today.
But very nice workmanship patterns and castings.
I made a model of the generator as I have for a lot of boilers I have built full size but to scale the burner to ¼ size with my ageing eye site the parts are just two small.

Rolly

Hi Rolly,

I am more or less finished with the Baker book, there is one control on Jay Leno's car that I simply cannot identify. This is a bit surprising in that just about everything but the boiler and burner is pretty much pure Stanley. In MS Word, the thing comes out at a bit over 450 pages, but will probably be about half that in book form.

I suspect that I have spent more time looking at Baker boiler patents than anyone in the last 100 years, and I have figured out that Hartley O. Baker did not understand boilers. In fact, after looking at all the patents, I have to assume that he was just trying one thing after another and seeing what, if anything, stuck to the wall. I say that he did not understand boilers because he kept violating the counterflow principle in so many ways; I mean, who puts an economizer next to a burner? By far the best of the boilers was the one that went in the cars, and this was jointly invented by Baker and Carleton Orr, who was an engineer with experience designing and building generating plants. As near as I can tell, these were all steam turbine, but I cannot be sure. He also designed some boiler systems to provide process steam. The final Baker design seems to look as it does because it resembles all the previous Baker boilers in some way or another. I found an extract of an engineers test report for the Baker and after wading through terms like "equivalent evaporation", I concluded that the boiler tested was about 72.2 percent efficient. That's within the limits for a small power boiler, but just barely. Based on that data, one would assume that the Baker steam was a gas guzzler given that most steam car boilers were seemingly in the 80 to 85 percent range. Abner Doble claimed about 92 percent for the Doble-Detroit boiler, but he lied a lot. Also, the context makes it appear that he wasn't taking equivalent evaporation into account and was assuming unrealistically cold feed water. You simply can't judge condensing cars without taking equivalent evaporation into consideration.

If I had to guess, there was too much volume in the Baker boiler that provided too little heating surface -- such as the storage coils, "backbone" and the central drum. My best guess is that they really needed a larger economizer. Strangely enough, there was a cutaway drawing of a boiler in a single sheet flyer which also showed a photo of the R.C. Stevens semiuniflow engine that they apparently never manufactured. That boiler appears much simpler and seemingly possesses more economizer surface. I can find no proof that it was ever built or tested, unfortunately.

Regards,

Ken



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2022 08:18AM by frustrated.

All files from this thread

File Name	File Size		Posted by	Date
P1010037.JPG	207.5 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/19/2022	Read message
Button.jpg	49.4 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/19/2022	Read message
Empire burner.jpg	116.5 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/19/2022	Read message
P1010031.JPG	168.3 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/19/2022	Read message
P1010036.JPG	194.7 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/19/2022	Read message
P1010028.JPG	201 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/19/2022	Read message
Cruban Burner Card 2 Front.jpg	106.7 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/19/2022	Read message
DWG 1.png	61.7 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
DWG 2.png	55.8 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
DWG 3.png	58.9 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
DWG 4.png	41 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
TEXT 1.png	111.6 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
TEXT 2.png	138.8 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
TEXT 3.png	137.6 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
TEXT 4.png	131.7 KB	open | download	frustrated	04/20/2022	Read message
Empire Pilot.jpg	857.4 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/21/2022	Read message
Empire Pilot-3.jpg	844 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/21/2022	Read message
Empire Valve.jpg	435.4 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/21/2022	Read message
Throttle.jpg	420 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/21/2022	Read message
superheater section.jpg	87.9 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/21/2022	Read message
DSC_0018.JPG	372.6 KB	open | download	Rolly	04/21/2022	Read message