excelsior water cooled engine

[terrycake]

Some time ago some one mentioned that they had come across a water cooled villiers engine frome an Excelsior.  I did write about this model in my book Excelsior the lost pioneer. The model in question was known as the Viking and was co-developed by Excelsior and villiers in the 1930s.  not only did the machine have an water cooled engine but the bike was entirely enclosed so it was realy quite modern by the standards of the day. The engine even had oil injection instead of the petroil mix that all the other manufactures had and kept up untill the demise of the motorcycle trade in this country. terrycake

[Martin_UK]

HRD (yes they made a lightweight for about a year) and SOS also used the same water cooled engine and pressure fed lubrication system. Regards, Martin

[33d6]

I wouldn't call it oil injection, Terry. It was an automatic lubrication system that relied on crankcase pressure to push oil through the system. The slightest air leak in any connection even just not quite tightening up the oil tank cap after a refill and the system stopped working. It is a system that doesn't tolerate the slightest mishandling. That is why it is rarely seen nowadays as the rider didn't know it wasn't working until the engine seized.
It either works well or not at all with nothing in between.  That is why 99% of all prewar Villiers engines today run petroil and not the autolube.
I have a working system on my 1930 Radco but I always add a little oil to the petrol as a backup. So far so good.
Cheers,

[wetdog]

"SOS also used the same water cooled engine" not qiute the same , excel engine had the rad mounted solid to the engine , i have one and will try to post a pic , i only have the engine and not the rest of the bike

[wetdog]

what did vincent use ? with regards to rad mount

[terrycake]

good to find out exactly what the engine was capple of. still think it was a shame no more development work was done on the engine.  33d6 have you any plans for the engine that you have i would be interested to see how things turn out. terrycake

[33d6]

Tain't me that has the watercooled engine unfortunately. A bike fitted with the watercooled 250 Villiers engine is on my bucket list but I don't care what make it is.
According to Phil Irving, HRD made a batch of six 250 Villiers powered bikes when times were really hard but dropped them when things picked up. The first had the straight aircooled engine and they weren't happy with engine stamina. It faded somewhat when the engine got hot but the change to the watercooled version successfully fixed that problem.  So, no greater performance from watercooling but watercooling provided consistent delivery of what was available.
According to the VOC machine registrar some of these watercooled HRD,s survive but I don't know how many.
Anyone know how many watercooled SOS and Excelsior survive?
Cheers,

[Martin_UK]

I know of two water cooled HRD's that survive, one was restored a few years ago in the South of England, and the other one was awaiting restoration when I was offered it for sale 10 years ago for £5K (wish I had bought it now, but that's hindsight). SOS numbers I think most SOS's made survive, between them Alan Curtis and John Guy in the UK seem to have several watercooled examples.

[wetdog]

this is the engine i have , not sos ,,,,,, you need to copy and paste
http://s1205.photobucket.com/albums/bb429/1wetdog/?action=view&current=engineexcel.jpg