billmac
Stainless
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2004
- Location
- Lancashire, UK
Thank you Asquith for a great bit of research. Is 'The Engineer' searchable?
Designing a diesel engine like this from scratch must have been a big investment for the company. They must have thought that they could do well in this market sector and perhaps their reputation (which I think was fairly high at the time) would have helped them. Unfortunately it didn't work out well and the clue to this might be in the 'not in all respects completely up-to-date'. I have some old books on diesel engines of this era and I will see if there is any reference in them to Hick Hargreaves, but I don't recall anything.
I was a little surprised by GE taking a licence to produce Mirlees engines in the US, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. The first Mirlees diesel engine was made in 1897, only the third diesel engine in the world. Mirlees seemed to have developed their line of engines very quickly after that.
The flywheel hub design sounds like a giant shrink fit collet. Quite an interesting design, but possibly a bit difficult to remove the flywheel from the shaft without cutting the ring.
Incidentally we used a ring assembly like this to secure the flywheel hub on our 'Wasp' tandem compound engine. No collets on that engine though, just keys.
Designing a diesel engine like this from scratch must have been a big investment for the company. They must have thought that they could do well in this market sector and perhaps their reputation (which I think was fairly high at the time) would have helped them. Unfortunately it didn't work out well and the clue to this might be in the 'not in all respects completely up-to-date'. I have some old books on diesel engines of this era and I will see if there is any reference in them to Hick Hargreaves, but I don't recall anything.
I was a little surprised by GE taking a licence to produce Mirlees engines in the US, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. The first Mirlees diesel engine was made in 1897, only the third diesel engine in the world. Mirlees seemed to have developed their line of engines very quickly after that.
The flywheel hub design sounds like a giant shrink fit collet. Quite an interesting design, but possibly a bit difficult to remove the flywheel from the shaft without cutting the ring.
Incidentally we used a ring assembly like this to secure the flywheel hub on our 'Wasp' tandem compound engine. No collets on that engine though, just keys.