OCR Text |
Show LIB TELLS OF Mil VALUES Marmon First to Use Light Metal in Motor Construction. Con-struction. "The use of aluminum in the building build-ing of motor cars has grown to such proportions that it appears this metal will play a still larger part, in the cars of the future," said W. K. Lovering, Marmon dealer, yesterday. "In the first gasoline cars there was very little aluminum used; the crank cases were cast of bronze and the many small castings, cast-ings, which are now almost universally universal-ly of aluminum, were of bronze also. R. T. MITCHELL f . f X if s" i - - 'I i N : 'X - i ? K 1 Is - I Assistant general manager Studebaker Bros. Co. of Utah Studebaker. Stude-baker. I T GEO. BLOOMFIELD . . I tg l ( ' '; j - ,' - Manager Wellington Auto Top Co. I Bronze was very good for these purposes, pur-poses, but it was too heavy, many makers decided, and for a good many years it has been universal practice to cast not only the crank case of aluminum, alum-inum, but to make underpans, accessory brackets, pump housings and the like from this lighter metal." Continuing, Mr. Lovering said: In the past year we have seen aluminum proven as a most desirable desir-able metal, not only for smaller parts, but for larger parts of the gasoline engine. Experimenting engineers en-gineers have been at work for many years on what is generally 'known now as the ''aluminum engine" en-gine" that is, an engine in which the main structural part is cast of aluminum. The old and conventional convention-al method of building automobile engines has been to cast the cylinders cylin-ders separately from the crank case and then bolt them together. Sometimes the cylinders were cast singly, sometimes in pairs or with all cylinders in one block. Engineers En-gineers deemed it best, however, in making the cylinder and crank case both of aluminum to cast the whole in one piece make the cylinders cyl-inders in block and the upper half of the crank case cast as a part of the whole. ' For several years past a few aluminum motors of this kind have been made some concerns constructing con-structing several in their experimental experi-mental departments and putting them into cars that received all kinds of abuse; others went so far as to put these motors in regular production cars that went to users; the cars with such engines were watched, and every once in a while inquiry was made as to the operation oper-ation of the cars. The Marmon 34 was the first aluminum motored car of stock production. pro-duction. The Nordyke & Marmon company bad begun their experimentations experi-mentations in 1914. Their engines had worked for a year before the first car was ready for the road and more than a year elapsed in testing under the most adverse conditions con-ditions before production was started. start-ed. There is no question in the minds of the engineers as to the suitability of aluminum in engine construction after this two years of work; when the work of production produc-tion was started they were sure that aluminum was the material of which engines should be constructed. construct-ed. That the engineers were right is proven by the satisfactory service serv-ice given by these engines to twenty-five hundred motorists who have purchased these cars during 1916. |