Stanley steam engines
Small Stanley Steamer Model EX 1909
In the early years of the 1896 century, more and more cars were produced with an internal combustion engine. However, steam engines were so easy to handle that they enjoyed great success in the United States for decades. The cars of the Stanley brothers were considered among the best. They developed the first car design in 100. They entrusted the construction of the steam engine to a specialist. Unfortunately, it was so heavy that it didn't fit in their car, as it itself weighed 35 pounds more than the overall design suggested. Therefore, the brothers themselves tried to build a steam engine. Their engine weighed only 26 kg, and its power was greater than that of a heavy one made by a specialist. The two-cylinder double-acting steam engine matched the operation of an eight-cylinder gasoline engine and was powered by steam from a tube boiler. This boiler was in the form of a cylinder with a diameter of 66 inches, i.e. approximately 99 cm, containing 12 water pipes with a diameter of approximately 40 mm and a length of approximately XNUMX cm. The boiler was wrapped with steel wire and covered with an insulating layer of asbestos. The heating of the boiler was provided by the main burner, working on liquid fuel, automatically regulated depending on the need for steam. An additional parking burner was used to maintain steam pressure in the parking lot and during the night. Since the burner flame was as pale blue as a Bunsen burner, there was no smoke at all, and only a slight trickle of condensate indicated the movement of a silent machine. This is how Stanley Witold Richter describes the steam mechanism of a car in his book The History of the Car.
Stanley Motor Carriage clearly advertised their cars. Potential buyers may have learned from the advertisement that: “(?) Our current car has only 22 moving parts, including the highest quality starter. We do not use clutches, gearboxes, flywheels, carburetors, magnetos, spark plugs, breakers and distributors, or other delicate and complex mechanisms required in gasoline vehicles.
The most popular model of the Stanley brand was the 20/30 HP model. “His steam engine had two double-acting cylinders, 4 inches in diameter and 5 inches of stroke. The engine was connected directly to the rear axle, swinging relative to the front axle on two long wishbones. The wooden frame was sprung with elliptical leaf springs (as in horse-drawn carts). (?) The drive mechanism had two pumps for supplying water to the boiler and one for fuel and one for lubricating oil, driven by the rear axle. This axle also powered the Apple lighting system generator. In front of the machine was a radiator, which was a vapor condenser. The boiler, located in the free space under the hood and heated by a self-regulating kerosene or diesel burner, produced steam at high pressure. The time for readiness for driving at the first start of the car on a given day did not exceed a minute, and on subsequent ones, the start took place in ten seconds?. We read in Witold Richter's History of the Automobile. Production of Stanley cars was stopped in 1927. For more photos and a brief history of these vehicles visit http://oldcarandtruckpictures.com/StanleySteamer/
