Junkyard Yields Gems for Gas Engine Collector
(Page 2 of 3)
July 2009
Leslie C. McManus
Off the beaten path
The gearless 1-1/2 hp Deyo (no. 682) and 1 hp St. Marys share common features: neither has a camshaft or timing gear to work the valves. Both engines use an eccentric on the crankshaft to operate the valves. “It’s a different design, and it’s kind of weird,” Bill admits. “But it must not have been too good, because it didn’t catch on.”
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The Deyo has a little gear that rotates every other time, so it misses the pushrod on the exhaust valve until it fires. The St. Marys has a pushrod on the eccentric that opens the valve by the port. “It comes down and pushes the plunger so the valve will open,” he explains, “using the port from the combustion chamber. The next time it misses, and the engine fires.”
A governor pendulum is another unusual feature of the Deyo. “It’s just a heavy weight on a pushrod. When the engine fires, it moves faster and the weight swings out. When it slows down, it activates the pushrod,” Bill says. “(Early designers) were just trying to come up with a better way. They had new ideas all the time but most proved out wrong.” Some of those unique designs, he speculates, were the result of inventors trying to avoid patent infringement suits.
Manufacture of the Deyo, he notes, probably required extensive machine work. “It’s kind of complicated,” he says, “kind of similar to an Olds engine.” A 1909 model, Bill’s Deyo was built just before Massey-Harris Co., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, bought out the Deyo-Macey line in 1910.
Gearless engines like the Deyo and St. Marys fascinate Bill. “They’re not very good,” he says, “but they’re different.” The St. Marys’ unique design (when it coasts, it fires under compression) allowed the manufacturer to make an unusual claim. “They said that you wouldn’t have to wait two revolutions for the engine to fire if it misfires,” he says. A complicated design, it stumped even the company’s writer, who could not fully explain the engine’s operation, according to C.H. Wendel in American Gasoline Engines.
A 1913 Gade 1-1/2 hp Model C offers a twist. In addition to a standard exhaust valve, the air-cooled 4-stroke engine also uses a port to exhaust spent gases. “It’s almost like a 2-cycle engine,” Bill says. The Gade has a Lunkenheimer mixer and spark plug ignition, making for lower operating costs, the manufacturer boasted.