[SEL] RE: Fuel Savers

Steve Royster steve_royster at hotmail.com
Tue Jul 20 12:36:51 PDT 2004


Hi Curt,  My Gilson Air Cooled has a spring steel arm on the pushrod that 
holds the intake valve closed!  Steve Royster







>From: Curt Holland <curt at imc-group.com>
>Reply-To: The SEL email discussion list <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
>To: The SEL email discussion list <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
>Subject: Re: [SEL] RE: Fuel Savers
>Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 13:08:35 -0400
>
>Patrick,
>I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the fuel savers 
>were adopted on the better engineered engines in the US.
>Three well engineered engines come to mind at the moment.
>1) Hercules - Hercules continued the use of the fuel saver over into the 
>throttle governed engines due to their merit.
>2) IHC - The Famous lines incorporated the fuel saver into the intake valve 
>stand on at least the H&M style. It was no easy task to add this feature 
>but apparently the     fuel savings justified the effort.
>3) Stickney - Charles Stickney was a intense engineer who really pushed the 
>superior engineering features in the Stickney sales literature. The fuel 
>saver on a Stickney     is a complicated bent push rod casting that wraps 
>around the lower portion of the water hopper to get at the intake valve on 
>the front. Again, it was no easy task to     add this feature but 
>apparently the fuel savings justified the effort.
>
>Can anyone name other engines that used the fuel saver feature to this 
>list?
>How about a list of engines that did not use the feature?
>As Reg mentioned, bore size necessitated the use of the fuel saver. Are 
>there some manufacturers of engines that used fuel savers on their larger 
>HP engines but did not use them on their smaller HP engines?
>
>Curt Holland
>Gastonia, NC
>
>Patrick M Livingstone wrote:
>
>>If the fuel savers were such a good idea how come they were not 
>>universally
>>adopted in the USA? I also cannot think of any English engines which used 
>>a
>>fuel saver mechanism.
>>Tangyes would be a good example of an English engine that could have
>>benefited from such a mechanism. They govern by holding the exhaust valve
>>open but have an atmospheric intake valve. The fuel intake is through the
>>valve seat of the atmospheric valve. Any fluttering of this valve would
>>allow fuel in and the engine would not govern properly (if at all).
>>Admittedly the spring tension is critical but it all seems to work fine. 
>>Perhaps the fuel saver was a mechanical way to get around the need for
>>critical spring tensions on the mass produced American engines?
>>
>>Patrick M Livingstone
>>Leichhardt NSW
>>http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/Index.html
>>http://www.users.bigpond.com/pml/
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>This was a much needed item on larger H&M engines.
>>The problem was that the inlet valve spring did not have the strength to
>>hold it shut on the 'miss' strokes and yet be weak enough to allow the 
>>fuel
>>mix free entry on the 'hit cycle'.
>>Under these conditions the fuel loss would have been quite high.
>>It must have been for the makers to go to this extra expense.
>>Some designs would have been worse than others but, makers of engines that
>>sold well took the trouble to add this feature. It was, then as now, easy 
>>to
>>lose customers due to a 'greedy' engine model.
>>After all, the ability to do a job using less fuel than the opposition was 
>>a
>>good selling point.
>>Users of engines were very aware of the cost of fuel. Same as now.
>>If I had a unit that gobbled fuel, I would not replace it with another 
>>like
>>it.
>>I wonder how many makers went under due to this excessive fuel drinking?
>>Reg & Marg Ingold.
>>
>>
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>
>
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