Operation Market Garden (The lorry thread)

Here's why I asked did Austin make their own pistons and rings!

D.T.D. 485...

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"Lymalloy"

Remember THIS? Axis History Forum • View topic - Unserviceable Lorries - Jul - Sep 44



Looking here - JEL450 - Homepage for Bristol 2 litre engined cars

...it seems to be a type of cast iron?

Rings 85 Cast Iron 4K6 , 85C Cast Iron DTD 485

 

It certainly looks as if the answer lay in Wellworthy rings ...and not just for lorries if you read this advert :-

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British rings in US aero-engines ! Wouldn't it be interesting to find a report suggesting that the war could be extended by six months due to US aircraft shortages if they didn't change to Wellworthy !

I have nothing but respect for Wellworthy and it may well be that they were called in to find a solution. I have one of theirs in the Norton at the moment and although I can't check the metallurgy, they are less often seen scuffed than Heplex and the quality of machining is better.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, BSA who made their own pistons had wartime quality problems. Norton who used Wellworthy as standard, did not as far as I'm aware so strangely perhaps, maybe the large manufacturers like Austin and BSA were not at the leading edge of technology ?

I believe that cast iron was the standard pre-war ring material. Lymalloy must be an improved iron alloy.

 

Gents,

Thanks for the replies - I'm planning to go back to Kew before Xmas and hope to find out more! Although the technical issues are fascinating, I'm more interested in the "what effect on 21 AGp logistics did the defect cause" question, but I will look out for technical information as well.

Do you think JRR Tolkein had a premonition about the trouble 80 Octane petrol would cause for the British Army during WW2 when he wrote "The Fellowship of the Piston Rings"? Now that would have been a good movie!!

Cheers

Tom

 

Tom, I found THIS online....

It's not - is it???




Rich - spot where Wellworthy had their HQ....

LYMington, Hants!

 

Guys - just had a thought....

Do Wellworthy still exist? Or perhaps do they exist buried away in another company somewhere?

To me it looks as if "D.T.D. 485" was a proprietary grade...and thus IF Wellworthy were commissioned to investigate the problem, somewhere there should be Wellworthy's end of the paperwork or even some recollections?

Tom, if you find out who commissioned Wellworthy - then it might be worth checking that govt. department's records....

Because SOMEWHERE there must be a report that ultimately generated the commission/contract for Wellworthy's.

 

P.S. in '47 Hepco, Brico and Wellworthy were all bought up by what is today AE PLC, formerly AE Pistons...and for several more decades the former Wellworthy plant at Weymouth was part of that. Do AE still exist?

 

Gents,

I think I have found the technical 'holy grail' - a Ministry of Supply Chief Scientist report on "Use of 80 Octane Fuel in Petrol Engines on Motor Vehicles" published in 1950 but dated in the text as September 1945. I only managed to get a quick look at it yesterday at Kew as, per normal, I was photographing like mad to try to get as much in. But I have it here on my laptop and will try to transcribe it as soon as I have time.

Suffice to say, from a v quick look, that the problem was definitely not confined to Austins, was more wide ranging in both time and space than I had thought and seems only to have been really solved post war when the amount of lead added to petrol was decreased taking it down to 72 Octane. Even then the performance of some military vehicles is described as less than satisfactory.

The teasing nature of the report is really, however, in the long bibliography of war-time reports - they start in May 43, and also refer to meetings of the D of M (Mechanization??). Yippee, another enormous set of files to wade through...

There are a few references to road tests of vehicles (Bedfords and Fords from a quick look), and the only reference to Austins is that they were present at a meeting of manufacturers and MoS and Petroleum Industry in August 1943 when the issue was first briefed to them.

Oh, and the reason why we were using 80 Octane fuel appears to be the use of American tanks with aero engines.

I shall slowly transcribe the report and, hopefully, post it here some time soon (-ish). Now if only I didn't have to work I could get it done sooner - all donations to the "Austin - MT80 lunatic"!!

Regards,

Tom

 

Front cover of report:

 

I look forward to seeing more detail Tom. it all sounds odd to me as apart from the aspect of lead fouling on spark plugs, I'd never been aware that too high an octane rating could be a problem, simply a waste of money.

 

Mapping across my AHF reply...

Hi Tom, can't wait to see the transcribed report!

To recap on the problems - as I noted way back in time now - the change in octane rating would have a number of issues connected to it...

1/ Potential overheating and the need to change ignition timing - was there enough built-in variation in the magnetos to allow this?

2/ the actual mix of chemicals used to achieve the 80 octane rating - it wasn't just a case of adding more tetra-ethyl lead, a mix of anti-knock agents including it was usual, and then a group of "aromatics" had to be added to bring the actual combustibility of the fuel back to normal! And some of these were known to lead to extra wear on valve stems etc by stripping away lubrication.

Interesting that it brought to their attention in 1943....but then, as I noted the K5 was in existence and service for x-amount of time before this. I wonder if we're verging back on something I posited a long time ago - was this simply an engine designed/detuned at the factory for 72-octane Pool that couldn't be re-tuned by users - ignition timing advanced enough etc. - to cope with the change in the field? Cue the Report....and I would guess that somewhere there's a mound of correspondence on the Report itself, if it hasn't been shredded over the years!

BTW the difference appears to have been between 2,000 miles of useful life and 10,000 or so. Which to me today seems pretty paltry.
Well, don't forget what we're talking about - the support of 21st AG right the way from Normandy to the ever-moving-forward front line in Northern France/Belgium/Holland....

How many trips there and back to Normandy would only 2,000 miles allow them to do?

 

Gents,

I'm struggling to find time to transcribe report so thought I'd post a sample page to keep you interested and happy!! It covers the problems identified in 1943.

Regards

Tom

 

Bloody hell, what a mess!

So basically they're noting that British lorry engines were designed ...especially those dating in essence from BEFORE 1939...for octane levels below even M.T.72....perhaps as low as 68 octane!

No wonder they couldn't be tuned again to make up for the whopping octane jump to M.T.80!

Interesting they detail the properties of aero engines there...I'm familiar with what they call "salt-cooled" valves - Norton and some others experimented with sodium-filled valve stems for some years.

And of course the "aero engines" in American tanks had these particular properties and so NEEDED M.T. 80....

I wonder...if the Meteor ALSO demanded it???

But that's a hell of a list of mayhem and destruction there at the end! :p

 

I can't help wondering if the most significant aspect is the extremely poor quality base fuel being artificially boosted with aromatics.

Accepted wisdom in the 1970s was that drivers were throwing money away by putting 5* in their old Morris Minors but there was never any suggestion that it would cause damage. However, the base stock would have been high quality at that time and from memory, there wasn't much aromatic about the smell. TEL levels were high. Two-strokes lead fouled their plugs regularly but four-strokes didn't suffer.

When compared with lorries, tank engines were being rebuilt at very low hours.

 

Two-strokes lead fouled their plugs regularly but four-strokes didn't suffer


Which was really more to do with the fact that two-stroke oil technology took a long time to catch up with the 1970s burst of 2T motors with engine-driven oil pumps; for most of the decade, the poor buggers were still fed a diet of high-ash cheap mineral oils more suitable for premix! :p I suffered...and never owned another stroker in me puff!

I can't help wondering if the most significant aspect is the extremely poor quality base fuel being artificially boosted with aromatics.

LOL well, of course! One thing I remember about poor period fuel - including comments about wartime Pool - was the amount of water it apparently contained! Look at the number of faults in the list at the end that have to do with water/moisture being present...

Let's face it - "Pool" was bad enough, but given some of the conditions it must have been stored in....!

 

Gents,

A copy of my post today on Axis History Forum:

"Spent today at Kew looking at more RASC war diaries and found, at last, at least one GT Company that was equipped with Austin K 5 lorries. In celebration I went for cup of tea
So now we know at least some details of the impact that this problem had on 21 AG logistics:

Source: WO171/2433 - 305 GT Company RASC
15 May 1944
Collected 60 x 3-ton 4 x 4 Austin GS vehs (pre-waterproofed) from 24 VRD.
16 May 1944
Collected 72 x 3-ton 4 x 4 Austin GS vehs (pre-waterproofed) from 27 VRD.

10 September 1944
All task vehs of Coy having completed approx 5000 miles since landing in NORMANDY, considerable engine wear is apparent, particularly with regard to bore and piston rings with consequent heavy oil consumption and unreliability. Authority having been received, wksps officer begins task of taking on charge a fleet of Bedford OY lorries to replace Austin K 5 lorries.

14 September 1944
1600 Drawing of new OY-vehs from AOD completed.


The unit landed on 6 and 7 June on Gold Beach and worked the beaches from then until 1 September 1944. Then in first week of September, the Coy was split up carrying out tasks up to Dieppe mainly.
Between 10 and 14 Sep, these tasks continued.

Hardly a dramatic impact on 21 AG, IMHO.

Regards

Tom

 

Well found, Tom. The speed of replacement suggests that there was no extreme difficulty in supplying needs, although subsequent demands may not have been so successful.

No mention of valve problems. Just good old-fashioned bore wear.

 

...which also puts us back to post #174 and following

 

...which also puts us back to post #174 and following

EDIT:

Rich - what effect would an overly oily combustion chamber and mix have on period valves?

 

No mention of valve problems. Just good old-fashioned bore wear.[/QUOTE]

Having stuck my neck out in post 160, No mention of valve problems makes a lovely read.
Well done to everyone who has stuck at this most interesting thread.

regards lofty

 

Did the RAF have the same problems with their lorry engines?

Would they have used higher octane fuel available for the planes particularly when the planes were found to get better performance and octane was increased?

Chrissie