Jay Leno's Garage: A Case For Steam
BY JAY LENO
BY JAY LENO
I've always been fascinated with the last days of old technologies. And that's why I'm aware of a guy named Abner Doble. Who? Don't be upset if you're not familiar with that name. Plenty of modern automotive engineers don't know him either. Doble created a revolutionary steam-powered vehicle back when steam was a real alternative to gasoline.
You see, Stanley Steamers, mine included, have some inherent problems. It takes at least 20 minutes from a cold start to get going, and you can only go about 30 miles before you have to fill up with water. Plus, you're carrying an open fire and the volatile fuel for it. A Stanley is one of the few cars where you can burn to death and get scalded at the same time. When you talk to good steam men, you see that they have no hair on their arms or eyebrows. Walk up to one of them and you'll catch a whiff of burned hair.
Doble addressed the Stanley's problems. With my 1925 Doble, I get in, turn the key, and in under a minute I can pull away. And it pulls away silently, whoosh, just like that. It's an amazing feeling. With 1000 ft.-lb. of torque, it's effortless.
Before you can start a Stanley, you've got to heat up 15 gal. of water. How long d'ya think that takes? But with a Doble, you're only heating up 2 quarts at a time. The Doble has about 525 ft. of coiled piping and one spark plug. There's a carburetor, like on a gas car, and an electric fan. You turn the key and the fan blows gasoline over the top of the carburetor. The gas goes through a venturi, into a burner, which Doble calls the generator, to the spark plug and pow!--a 2 million-BTU flame. It's like a blast furnace and it heats up 2 quarts of water in seconds. You could warm a building with this thing. The water goes through the long coil. And as the heated water goes out, more water is coming in, so there's no chance of a boiler blowing up.
I've blown the boiler on my Stanley. What that really means is a tube cracked and water leaked out. There's not enough water to literally blow up, and there are safety valves. Although boilers have blown up for other reasons, a steam boiler itself is safe. Things would break or crack internally before they'd explode.
Besides the cylinders that the steam goes into, Dobles have a draft booster, which is essentially a steam turbine, to blow gas into the generator. It's almost like a supercharger. Boom, boom, boom--you're heating the water just as fast as you can get it in there.
Now, a Stanley has a 2-cylinder engine, but the Doble has a 4-cylinder compound engine. The cylinders are cast in pairs, each with a high-pressure piston and a low-pressure piston. First, steam goes into the high-pressure section. Then, what's left over goes into the low-pressure cylinder. This makes it extremely smooth. At 60 or 70 mph in a Doble, the engine's turning no more than 900 rpm. There's no sense of vibration or anything. And it's direct drive to the rear wheels. There's no transmission.
The Doble company made only 43 Dobles before the company failed in April 1931. The thing that killed the car was that Abner Doble was a perfectionist, not a businessman. He kept making improvements along the way that just drove everybody batty. The cars were extremely well-made, but they were very expensive. There were no gaskets anywhere--everything was machined to fit perfectly.
My car is a Series E, No. 18, built in Emeryville, Calif. The body was made in Pasadena by Walter L. Murphy, the same Murphy who built custom bodies for Duesenbergs. Its first owner was Dr. Lewis D. Green of San Francisco, the founder of the Green Eye Hospital, which still exists. Doble expert Jim Crank, of Redwood City, Calif., told me there were two other very similar Murphy-bodied Dobles built for the owners of Hills Bros. Coffee. I had been asking about Dobles, and one day I got a call from a 94-year-old woman living in Burbank--Abner Doble's sister-in-law. A great thing about Los Angeles, I always say, is no matter what you're into, if you can't find it within 50 miles of L.A., it probably doesn't exist. Whether it's Brough motorcycles or steam engines, people who like that sort of thing seem to gravitate toward Los Angeles. I spoke to Mrs. Doble a couple of times, although I never met her. She was the wife of Doble's younger brother, Warren, who also was involved with the Doble steam cars.
I took the Doble to the smog station to have its exhaust certified and its emissions are 13 parts per million, which means my 1925 Doble with its 80-year-old technology passes all current smog laws. Nothing like 2 million BTU to burn up all the fuel. There's nothing left over, literally. It's just pffft. Gone.
But best of all, it's wonderful to drive. It's like a fast train. You go down the road and it makes no noise at all. This car is quieter and smoother than conventional classics. Don't forget, there's no shifting--no grinding gears. And there's no gas pedal. To change speed, you just turn the throttle wheel, which is made of ebony with a polished, cast German silver spider insert.
Still, it's easy to see why steam failed. When you bought a Doble, you got a list of things your chauffeur was supposed to do every week. Nobody would stand for weekly maintenance these days. Plus, you've got to carry steam oil, water and gasoline.
That's probably why only three or four Dobles are still running. I feel like an archeologist. When I show this car to engineers, they're dumbfounded. It's a part of auto history and technology that they've totally missed.
And here's the amazing part: When we tore the car down, we found that a small turbine wheel, called a draft-boost rotor, had worn out and needed replacement. It was originally made by a company called Coppus. They're still in business in Millbury, Mass. They're owned now by Tuthill Engineering Systems (TES), which makes steam turbines for the petrochemical industry. We found an old engineering drawing for this rotor, and Charles Monteforte from TES/Coppus is reverse-engineering it to make me a new one.
Wherever Abner Doble is, I bet he's smiling.
You see, Stanley Steamers, mine included, have some inherent problems. It takes at least 20 minutes from a cold start to get going, and you can only go about 30 miles before you have to fill up with water. Plus, you're carrying an open fire and the volatile fuel for it. A Stanley is one of the few cars where you can burn to death and get scalded at the same time. When you talk to good steam men, you see that they have no hair on their arms or eyebrows. Walk up to one of them and you'll catch a whiff of burned hair.
Doble addressed the Stanley's problems. With my 1925 Doble, I get in, turn the key, and in under a minute I can pull away. And it pulls away silently, whoosh, just like that. It's an amazing feeling. With 1000 ft.-lb. of torque, it's effortless.
Before you can start a Stanley, you've got to heat up 15 gal. of water. How long d'ya think that takes? But with a Doble, you're only heating up 2 quarts at a time. The Doble has about 525 ft. of coiled piping and one spark plug. There's a carburetor, like on a gas car, and an electric fan. You turn the key and the fan blows gasoline over the top of the carburetor. The gas goes through a venturi, into a burner, which Doble calls the generator, to the spark plug and pow!--a 2 million-BTU flame. It's like a blast furnace and it heats up 2 quarts of water in seconds. You could warm a building with this thing. The water goes through the long coil. And as the heated water goes out, more water is coming in, so there's no chance of a boiler blowing up.
I've blown the boiler on my Stanley. What that really means is a tube cracked and water leaked out. There's not enough water to literally blow up, and there are safety valves. Although boilers have blown up for other reasons, a steam boiler itself is safe. Things would break or crack internally before they'd explode.
Besides the cylinders that the steam goes into, Dobles have a draft booster, which is essentially a steam turbine, to blow gas into the generator. It's almost like a supercharger. Boom, boom, boom--you're heating the water just as fast as you can get it in there.
Now, a Stanley has a 2-cylinder engine, but the Doble has a 4-cylinder compound engine. The cylinders are cast in pairs, each with a high-pressure piston and a low-pressure piston. First, steam goes into the high-pressure section. Then, what's left over goes into the low-pressure cylinder. This makes it extremely smooth. At 60 or 70 mph in a Doble, the engine's turning no more than 900 rpm. There's no sense of vibration or anything. And it's direct drive to the rear wheels. There's no transmission.
The Doble company made only 43 Dobles before the company failed in April 1931. The thing that killed the car was that Abner Doble was a perfectionist, not a businessman. He kept making improvements along the way that just drove everybody batty. The cars were extremely well-made, but they were very expensive. There were no gaskets anywhere--everything was machined to fit perfectly.
My car is a Series E, No. 18, built in Emeryville, Calif. The body was made in Pasadena by Walter L. Murphy, the same Murphy who built custom bodies for Duesenbergs. Its first owner was Dr. Lewis D. Green of San Francisco, the founder of the Green Eye Hospital, which still exists. Doble expert Jim Crank, of Redwood City, Calif., told me there were two other very similar Murphy-bodied Dobles built for the owners of Hills Bros. Coffee. I had been asking about Dobles, and one day I got a call from a 94-year-old woman living in Burbank--Abner Doble's sister-in-law. A great thing about Los Angeles, I always say, is no matter what you're into, if you can't find it within 50 miles of L.A., it probably doesn't exist. Whether it's Brough motorcycles or steam engines, people who like that sort of thing seem to gravitate toward Los Angeles. I spoke to Mrs. Doble a couple of times, although I never met her. She was the wife of Doble's younger brother, Warren, who also was involved with the Doble steam cars.
I took the Doble to the smog station to have its exhaust certified and its emissions are 13 parts per million, which means my 1925 Doble with its 80-year-old technology passes all current smog laws. Nothing like 2 million BTU to burn up all the fuel. There's nothing left over, literally. It's just pffft. Gone.
But best of all, it's wonderful to drive. It's like a fast train. You go down the road and it makes no noise at all. This car is quieter and smoother than conventional classics. Don't forget, there's no shifting--no grinding gears. And there's no gas pedal. To change speed, you just turn the throttle wheel, which is made of ebony with a polished, cast German silver spider insert.
Still, it's easy to see why steam failed. When you bought a Doble, you got a list of things your chauffeur was supposed to do every week. Nobody would stand for weekly maintenance these days. Plus, you've got to carry steam oil, water and gasoline.
That's probably why only three or four Dobles are still running. I feel like an archeologist. When I show this car to engineers, they're dumbfounded. It's a part of auto history and technology that they've totally missed.
And here's the amazing part: When we tore the car down, we found that a small turbine wheel, called a draft-boost rotor, had worn out and needed replacement. It was originally made by a company called Coppus. They're still in business in Millbury, Mass. They're owned now by Tuthill Engineering Systems (TES), which makes steam turbines for the petrochemical industry. We found an old engineering drawing for this rotor, and Charles Monteforte from TES/Coppus is reverse-engineering it to make me a new one.
Wherever Abner Doble is, I bet he's smiling.
from Here.
Labels: Four Wheels, Tech
posted by Cyemm at 1:21 PM
1 Comments:
As a machinist and millwright this power plant must be reborn . The improvements would be a fully modulating burner to prevent short cycling . The condenser must be able to reclaim the latent heat. The engine needs to uncouple from drive train when car is coasting. The steam going into engine needs to be controlled by a computer and electronic injection valves . In a lighter car generator and all hard ware could be smaller, lighter , and more fuel efficient .
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