Ever wonder how a radial engine works?

[k0ua]

Some of you might enjoy this article about World War 1 aircraft engines.

History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Air & Space Magazine

 

[Ken]

In Clinton ,Ark there is a company that still rebuilds aircraft engines. See flat bed trucks hauling the engines into the company all the time.
Airmotive Inc. 290 Airport road.
Talking to the owners it has become hard to locate the repair tools and very few locations still do the rebuilding.
ken

 

[MossRoad]

When I worked at an airport back in the 80's some guys (Doctors, or course) found about a dozen T-6 Texans and a couple/three C-47s sitting in a desert in Spain (as I recall). They got them running and flew them back here with a bunch of spare parts, engines, etc... and sold them to other doctors that wanted to play war bird pilot. It was pretty neat. I recall large, round shipping/storage containers with radial engines showing up every so often.

 

[mjarrels]

Dynamic Aviation in Bridgewater Virginia just bought a C-121A Constellation that was once Airforce one for Dwight Eisenhower. Flew it in from Arizona and plan to restore the four engine aircraft and fly it to airshows. Whats strange is the aircraft has a marble floor!

mark

 

[MossRoad]

I was sitting in my living room today and heard radial engines. Ran outside and the Commemorative Air Force's C-45 "Bucket of Bolts" was just landing at the airport.

CAF AirPower History Tour featuring the B-29 Superfortress FIFI

They're on their Air Power History Tour and brought that, a P-51 and FIFI, the B-29 in for the week. The Mustang flew over the house today, too. I've spent some time around all those types of planes in the past as they were frequently in town doing air shows back on the late 70's and 80's. That B-29 was then, and still is as far as I know, the only one currently flying. The Mustangs were a dime a dozen back then and the C-45 is pretty much the same plane as a Beech 18, which is the only type of radial engine plane I've ever flown in. Did that when I was in grade school.

 

[BleedingOrange]

We machined an entire engine called a sleeve valve for a company in the 90's. The cylinder moved up and down and rotated several degrees which opened and closed ports that acted as valves. The pistons operated like a normal engine. It was a 2 cylinder, about 500cc, and made 220 HP.

Very impresive HP numbers from such a small engine. Any idea what they used that engine for ? I would love to know more about that engine design.

 

[Oldpath05]

That was a good demo model on a radial engine, so is there any other way for a internal combustion motor to run, from the 1 cylinder, V6 V8...inline, rotary, too the bigger and better, cheaper and cleaner, or the impossible dream, or just impossible.......

GEET - engine running on water.mp4 - YouTube

 

[crash325]

I have worked on them from the R3350 down to model size. Fairly easy to figure out how they work.
Hard part is how do the get so much HP out of them.
The original dream was 1 HP for 1# That has been well exceeded with Reno Race plains.
Part of that is ADI & over busting the engine to more than double manifold pressure. They do blow fairly often when that is done.
R3350 is fairly fragile compared to the 2800. When in a flight crew 5 # of over boost for 3 minutes was an automatic engine.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. May or may not have an answer.

 

[moriboy]

Very impresive HP numbers from such a small engine. Any idea what they used that engine for ? I would love to know more about that engine design.

No idea, the customer was pretty light on details.
It was in the mid 90's, we concluded it might have been for drones but that's a complete guess.

 

[Taylortractornut]

Had a friend give me an old mechanix illustrated one time from 64 that had a floating piston engine. A horizontally opposed twin cylinder with no crank. It was a cylinder with two floating Pistons it fired and the Pistons compressed the air at the end of the cylinder s and would bounce back to the center and the compression and cool would fire and send them back again . The Pistons had magnets I'm them and the cylinder had coils wrapped around them. It's purpose was to compress air and make electricity. I got to see one and i made a god awful noise.