Frederick Lanchester (1868 – 1946),
one of the most famous automotive engineers from England, started his career
building engines for boats. In 1895, he developed a four-wheeled, 5 hp petrol
engine vehicle equipped with an epicyclic gear box with 2 forward speeds and a
reverse. Even though this was one of the most advanced motor cars of that time,
it did not run successfully owing to transmission problems.
The 1895 car was modified and was
operated successfully in 1897. The car was very robust with almost no vibration
due the presence of harmonic mass balancer in the engine. Lanchester was the
first British car to use its own engine and transmission on the car.
In 1899, along with brothers George Lanchester (1874 – 1970) and Frank Lanchester, the Lanchester Engine Company was formed to manufacture engines and cars. The company was renamed as Lanchester Motor Company in 1904.
Some of the most famous models were the various models of Lanchester 10 between the 1900s and 1940s and the Lanchester 40 which rivaled Rolls-Royce
Frederick Lanchester was known
for his new innovative technologies and was the first to invent a wick carburetor
to run petrol engines as early as 1890s.
The most famous invention of the Lanchester was the Lanchester Balancer ,
a harmonic mass balancer used to balance a
straight 2-cyl or 4-cyl engines., using 2 balance shafts running at twice
the crankshaft speed in opposite directions. These Lanchester Balancers are used
in many modern straight 4-cylinder engines to balance the typical 2nd
order vibrations. One of the modern example is the Mitsubishi "Silent Shaft" design.
No comments:
Post a Comment