Jay Leno fires up 1870 steam engine
 

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/index.shtml?vidID=65398

First time it had run in 100 years, he says.

What do you know? A worthwhile thread on OD.

That was cool!

take three

See, I'm not just an opinionated a$$ -- mostly, but there's more going on.

Now that was interesting! Thanks for posting it!

Leno is way cool in my book. At first I thought, 'how can this guy fill Johnny Carson's shoes?' But in his own way, he's just as good, IMO.

Leno is a real car guy. Never met him in person but I get the sense he isn't stuck up, ie you could hang around and talk cars with him.


The gas bill to run the boiler must be amazing!:D

Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh has an old James Watt design/style engine that they run twice or three times a day. I think it was used for pumping water out of a mine originally.

I've been interested in steam engines ever since I met this old guy in Seattle while driving cab. He was an 89 year old widower, born around 1890, no kids, cool as could be and we became buds. He told of his uncle who had had polio and couldn't crank the old gas cars, so he'd had a couple of steamers -- a Stanley and a White.

Jim told me they would get out of mud way quicker than a gas car -- very smooth torque -- and were almost silent.

Bill Lear, of Leer Jet fame, tried to revive auto steamers in the 60s or 70s but he tried to go with turbines. Someone asked him if he was interested in the work done all these years with piston steam by backyard tinkerers and he said "we have a word for those guys: cranks."

Well, he might have had the right idea with jets and 8 track tape players but his turbine steam project never did take off, in spite of $$millions of wasted funds. Maybe if he'd shown a little more respect to the piston "cranks," he might have had some success.

There's an engineer on the foundation board of the college where I teach who holds the world speed record for a steam powered vehicle. I haven't seen the vehicle but I think he ran it at Bonneville. This is him:

http://www.steamcar.co.uk/Challenge/Barber-Nichols.htm

Looks like he may have had something to do with designing the turbine that Lear used.

It's amazing that supposedly a basically stock Stanley Steamer went about that fast at Daytona Beach in 1907. I don't know that much about the turbine but the beauty of the piston design was that the engine was still when the vehicle was at rest. Suppose you were stuck in deep mud, which was fairly common in the early days of motoring.

With a piston steamer, you would let the steam into the cylinder slowly so that the torque was slow and even. With a piston engine, you essentially have a series of rapid taps with a hammer of sorts on the flywheel being transferred by a clutch which if released too fast dumps way too much torque at once on the wheel -- for dealing with mud anyway.

Maybe a turbine could have a similar ability -- it would have to be geared down quite a bit, perhaps the turbine could be still when at a stop but somehow it seems you wouldn't have the same ability.

http://www.stanleymotorcarriage.com/GeneralTechnical/GeneralTechnical.htm

I love this one!
 

Jay Leno Tank Car

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Tank car so-called because it has, a tank engine. Which is a 900bhp 29.5-litre unit and no, that's not a typo...

about 2.5 miles to the gallon
 

There's a difference between the US and the rest of the world: here, you can pretty well drive anything you want... http://www.channel4.com/media/generic/spacer.gifhttp://www.channel4.com/4car/media/generic/prev.gifPreviousNexthttp://www.channel4.com/4car/media/generic/next.gif

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In spite of its rather military provenance, we think Jay's tank car looks terrific.

Jay da Man ...
 

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After clicking the link, you got to scroll down on the page to see the gallery.

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