classic motorcycle forum

Motorcycle Discussions => Identify these bikes! => Topic started by: pepous on January 07, 2009, 08:28:05 PM

Title: unknown engine
Post by: pepous on January 07, 2009, 08:28:05 PM

Hi,

can anyone identify these engine remnants?

Josef

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: pepous on January 07, 2009, 08:30:06 PM

picture 2

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: pepous on January 07, 2009, 08:31:09 PM

picture 3

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: m3bobby on January 08, 2009, 05:55:04 PM

Quote

Hi,

can anyone identify these engine remnants?

Josef

I have no idea what it is but its intresting. Is it a shaft drive? It looks like it fits in line with the frame (if it is a bike engine, could easily be mower or similar)

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: cardan on February 04, 2009, 12:47:46 AM

Nicely made, isn't it? This alone probably suggests motorcycle rather than industrial application. I suppose it sits in the frame (longitudinally, like a little shaft drive 250 BMW) on the "wings" on the crankcase, but who knows how it is held in!

The enclosed push rods and valve gear (I assume there's a top cover missing) suggest 1930s, as does oil-in-sump and coil ignition (I think I see a set of ponts on the front of the crankcase).

So we're looking for an in-line-engined, overhead valve, probably shaft drive motorcycle from the 1930s. It would have to be continental! Can we have another clue? What country is the motor in at present?

A vaguely similar (but probably earlier) motor was discussed in an earlier thread http://www.vintagebike.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1225655015 . The people involved in KG/Cito and Stock must have moved on to somewhere, and with "in line" ideas might have been involved with a motor like this. Franz Gnadig, for example, apparently went on to build his own 350 cc ohv machines, and was involved with Kuhne and Diamant.

Leon

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: Hunter on February 04, 2009, 09:09:43 PM

This is almost certainly a vintage mower engine, the attachment at the side would be for a form of slipping clutch to drive the machine.

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: cardan on February 04, 2009, 09:31:23 PM

It certainly could be, but wouldn't fully-enclosed overhead valves be a bit on the elaborate - and expensive - side for a mower? I plead almost total ignorance of mower technology!
Leon

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: Hunter on February 09, 2009, 09:20:53 PM

I would suggest no more elaborate than the use of a Triumph twin engine to run a generator.

Title: Re: unknown engine
Post by: JFerg on February 10, 2009, 05:38:41 AM

I'd put my money on a mower or garden tractor of some sort.

The front pushrod tube would block critical airflow in a bike application, and who would want to set those points when they'd be tucked in behind the front guard?

The real giveaway, though, is the port arrangement.  Quite why you'd go to the trouble and expense of OHV, and then defeat the main advantage of it by using right angle ports, I do not know.  New Imperial tried it once, and quickly abandoned it.  So why do it?  The one advantage that the right angle inlet tract would allow would be a close-fitting cowling around the engine, perhaps feeding around a fan on the flywheel.

Points ignition obviously needs a battery, yet there are no signs of a generator or any mechanism for starting.  Bet they were somehow tied in with the transmission, an electric start.  Any 350cc mower would be a beast, whatever it's from must have had a powered drive.

cheers,
JFerg