Marchetti Motor Patents
To date all I have is a flyer I found in a 1926 book on high performance engines. It gives a San Francisco address, but my dad, who grew up in the bay area and has flown since the 40's, never heard of it. The Smithsonian said it's an interesting engine, but they've never seen it before. Not encouraging.....
An
update! I found some info that was forwarded to me
by Mike Halloran
on Compuserve.
Seems the engine was built in 1927, only a single prototype was made,
for Paul Marchetti
of Marchetti Motor Patents Inc, Mills Field, San Bruno, Calif.
I'm not clear on the shorthand in the text he quoted me, but it appears
that a highly
modified Cessna AW with monocoque fuselage, lengthened wings
was setup to accept the prototype Marchetti engine. Paul Marchetti was
killed in a crash
while undergoing flight training.
Keith Rider, who had been employed by Marchetti, acquired the company
in 1930.
It then seems Rider sold the property and assets to United States
Aircraft Ltd. of San
Francisco later in that same year.
No engines beyond the initial prototype were ever produced and nobody
seems to know what
happened to the prototype."
Is there a rare treasure hiding in some dark, dusty SF Bay Area garage??
Caminez-Fairchild
This
engine displaces 447 cubic inches, with a bore
of 5.625" and
stroke of 4.5". On a compression ratio of 5.2 to 1, it produced 135 hp
at 1000 rpm.
Weight is 340 lbs. It would swing a 10 to 10-1/2 foot diameter prop.
Look carefully at the
cams, and the pistons, and work through a full revolution. Yep, each
cylinder fires once
per revolution. This eliminates the need for gearing the cams, as the
cam runs at crank
speed, with the pistons effectively running at twice crank speed
(relative to a
conventional engine). I've got a fair amount of info on this engine and
know where a
couple examples reside. I would really like to build a 1/4 scale
running model of this
engine some day. A dimensioned set of drawings would make that a much
easier task. Anyone
have a set laying around??
Thanks to Tim Irish for catching a typo, I'd written each cylinder
fires twice per
revolution. I'd been thinking as I wrote that
each piston completes two -strokes- for each revolution and typed it
wrong. Sharp eye Tim,
nobody else caught that.
Updated 6/02/2008