Cylinders of this engine are of nickel steel machined all over and carry water-jackets of spun copper which are attached to the cylinders by brazing. The water jackets are corrugated to permit the cylinder to expand freely. The ignition is similar to that of the fixed crank rotating cylinder engine. An ordinary magneto of the two spark type driven at 13⁄4 times crank-shaft speed is sufficient to ignite the seven-cylinder form, while in the nine-cylinder engines the ignition magneto is of the “shield” type giving four sparks per revolution. The magneto is driven at 11⁄9 times crank-shaft speed. Nickel steel valves are used and are carried in castings or cages which screw into bosses in the cylinder head. Each valve is cam operated through a tappet, push rod and rocker arm, seven cams being used on a seven-cylinder engine and nine cams on the nine-cylinder. One cam serves to open both valves as in its rotation it lifts the tappets in succession and so operates the exhaust and inlet valves respectively. This method of operation involves the same period of intake and exhaust. In normal engine practice the inlet valve opens 12 degrees late and closes 20 degrees late. The exhaust opens 45 degrees early and closes 6 degrees late. This means about 188 degrees in the case of inlet valve and 231 degrees crank-shaft travel for exhaust valves. In the Salmson engine, the exhaust closes and the inlet opens at the outer dead center and the exhaust opens and the inlet closes at about the inner dead center. This engine is also made in a fourteen-cylinder 200 B. H. P. design which is composed of two groups of seven-cylinders, and it has been made in an eighteen-cylinder design of 600 horse-power. The nine-cylinder 130 horse-power has a cylinder bore of 4.73 inches and a stroke of 5.52 inches. Its normal speed of rotation is 1250 R. P. M. Owing to the radial arrangement of the cylinders, the weight is but 41⁄4 pounds per B. H. P.
CONSTRUCTION OF EARLY GNOME MOTOR
It cannot be denied that for a time one of the most widely used of aeroplane motors was the seven-cylinder revolving air-cooled Gnome, made in France. For a total weight of 167 pounds this motor developed 45 to 47 horsepower at 1,000 revolutions, being equal to 3.35 pounds per horse-power, and has proved its reliability by securing many long-distance and endurance records. The same engineers have produced a nine-cylinder and by combining two single engines a fourteen-cylinder revolving Gnome, having a nominal rating of 100 horse-power, with which world’s speed records were broken. A still more powerful engine has been made with eighteen-cylinders. The nine-cylinder “monosoupape” delivers 100 horse-power at 1200 R. P. M., the engine of double that number of cylinders is rated at about 180 horse-power.
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Fig. 200.—Sectional View Outlining Construction of Early Type Gnome Valve-in-Piston Type Motor.
Except in the number of cylinders and a few mechanical details the fourteen-cylinder motor is identical with the seven-cylinder one; fully three-quarters of the parts used by the assemblers would do just as well for one motor as for the other. Owing to the greater power demands of the modern airplane the smaller sizes of Gnome engines are not used as much as they were except for school machines. There is very little in this motor that is common to the standard type of vertical motorcar engine. The cylinders are mounted radially round a circular crank-case; the crank-shaft is fixed, and the entire mass of cylinders and crank-case revolves around it as outlined at [Fig. 200]. The explosive mixture and the lubricating oil are admitted through the fixed hollow crank-shaft, passed into the explosion chamber through an automatic intake valve in the piston head in the early pattern, and the spent gases exhausted through a mechanically operated valve in the cylinder head. The course of the gases is practically a radial one. A peculiarity of the construction of the motor is that nickel steel is used throughout. Aluminum is employed for the two oil pump housings; the single compression ring known as the “obdurator” for each piston is made of brass; there are three or four brass bushes; gun metal is employed for certain pins—the rest is machined out of chrome nickel steel. The crank-case is practically a steel hoop, the depth depending on whether it has to receive seven-or fourteen-cylinders; it has seven or fourteen holes bored as illustrated on its circumference. When fourteen or eighteen cylinders are used the holes are bored in two distinct planes, and offset in relation one to the other.
The cylinders of the small engine which have a bore of 43⁄10 inches and a stroke of 47⁄10 inches, are machined out of the solid bar of steel until the thickness of the walls is only 1.5 millimeters—.05905 inch, or practically 1⁄16 inch. Each one has twenty-two fins which gradually taper down as the region of greatest pressure is departed from. In addition to carrying away heat, the fins assist in strengthening the walls of the cylinder. The barrel of the cylinder is slipped into the hole bored for it on the circumference of the crank-case and secured by a locking member in the nature of a stout compression ring, sprung onto a groove on the base of the cylinder within the crank chamber. On each lateral face of the crank chamber are seven holes, drilled right through the chamber parallel with the crank-shaft. Each one of these holes receives a stout locking-pin of such a diameter that it presses against the split rings of two adjacent cylinders; in addition each cylinder is fitted with a key-way. This construction is not always followed, some of the early Gnome engines using the same system of cylinder retention as used on the latest “monosoupape” pattern.