[SEL] RE: One Flywheel or Two?

[Listerdiesel]

On 5/3/05, Rob Skinner <rskinner at rustyiron.com> wrote:
> 
> > My last exhibit your honour, is a genuine original 1905 Richard
> > Hornsby sales leaflet for the Hornsby Oil Engine, showing twin
> > flywheels, on two sizes of engines.
> 
> Hi Peter,
> Despite most of the surviving engines having one flywheel, the catalogs verify
> that the engines originally left the factory with two flywheels.  This is not as
> strange as you might think.
> 
> During the war there were severe shortages of raw materials.  Scrap drives
> consumed many old, worn out engines.  But the Hornsby engines were of such good
> design that they were still running strong and powering industry during the war.
> It would have been foolhardy to scrap the engines that were running the shops
> and factories!  However, it was soon discovered that the engines were so well
> designed that they would perform just fine with a single flywheel.  The
> superfluous flywheels were then removed and melted down into munitions.
> 
> The only two-flywheel engines that you'll see today are those that were owned by
> Nazi sympathizers.
> 
> Now you know the WHOLE story
> ;-)

Notwithstanding your 'colourful' explanation, I should point out that
the catalogue also shows single-flywheel versions of many of the
engines, which tends to blow your theory out of the water
somewhat...:-))

The smaller engines tend to have had single flywheels and the larger
ones twins, but even then there are exceptions to the rule, so it is a
bit of a mixed bag.

The catalogues and information that I have is Ray Hooley's property,
and will go onto his webpages as soon as I get a minute.

Peter
-- 
Peter A Forbes
Email: listerdiesel at gmail.com
Web: www.oldengine.org/members/diesel