The Early Days Of Motors And Motor-Driving - Steam Cars

By H. Walter Staner

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jun 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446549636

Book preview

STEAM CARS

BY H. WALTER STANER, EDITOR OF ‘THE AUTOCAR’

A STEAM car, although driven by a steam engine, really derives its power from heat, but, instead of the combustible or fuel being burned and converted into pressure in the cylinder of the engine, as in the internal combustion engine of the petrol car, it is burned under a boiler. The expansive or elastic force of the steam pressure generated by the heat of the fire in its turn drives the engine, which gives the car its motion. The heat energy of the fuel is released by combustion; this heat is used to generate steam in the boiler, and the energy of the steam is transformed into motion after being admitted into the engine. Thus the three main essentials of the propelling apparatus of a steam car are the fire or burner, the steam boiler or generator, and the engine.

Fuel.—Coal or coke is not used for pleasure cars, as either is too cumbersome and dirty, and the fire requires constant attention, liquid fuel in the form of petroleum (paraffin), or petroleum spirit (petrol or motor spirit), being universally adopted. Although petrol will ignite instantly if a match be applied to it, and paraffin will not, both must be vaporised or transformed into a gas by heat before they can be economically and cleanly used as heating agents. Not only so, but when vaporised, they must be burned mixed with air on the Bunsen principle.

Examples.—An ordinary domestic gaslight is produced by burning gas in air, but the atmospheric or Bunsen burner burns a mixture of gas and air in air.

Petrol Burners.—Assume for a moment that the petrol for the burner has been vaporised (method to be described later) and transformed into gas, which we will for the future call ‘vapour.’ The Locomobile burner (figs. 1 and 2) takes the form of a shallow circular metal box about one and a quarter inch deep, and of slightly less diameter than the boiler under which it is placed. There are 107 half-inch tubes, which pass through the bottom and top plates of the box. In the top plate twenty small holes are drilled round each of the half-inch tubes, and as the vapour is injected into the box at the pipe A it passes up these small holes round each of the air-tubes, mixed with the air continually sucked in with it as it enters from the vapour nozzle, and it issues from the twenty small holes round each air-tube, and burns with a solid blue flame above the top plate of the burner, the air for combustion of the mixture (air and vapour) being supplied through the 107 half-inch air-tubes. The tube A at the side of the burner, which is about one inch in diameter, is open