The Legendary Napier Deltic - 88 Litre Opposed 2-Stroke Triangle Engine

as i did the video for the rolls-royce cressie engine a short while back it reminded me about an equally eccentric british engine but not only made the cressi look simple by comparison it was also the most powerful high-speed diesel engine for its weight and size at the time and unlike the cressie it was put into production powering fast attack motor torpedo boats mine sweepers locomotives power generators and even the world's most powerful fire engine pump tender so i thought that you might enjoy finding out about the engineering masterpiece but is the 18 cylinder two-stroke three bank triangle napier deltic [Music] [Applause] [Music] this video is sponsored by michelin tv magellan is a new documentary streaming service run by filmmakers that have a passion for their work magellan believe that spreading knowledge about human endeavors is key and their mission is to tell great stories to show how we got to where we are today magellan now has over 3 000 documentaries available with more being added all the time with a wide selection of those being in 4k for no extra costs and you can also stream them directly to your smartphone or tablet wherever you are as the subject of our video today is about engines then i think you may well enjoy magellan's moving big a film about the super-sized methods of moving anything from iron ore to consumer goods to even spacecraft with the biggest ships trains planes and automobiles you can watch this and many more by getting your one-month free trial using the link for the special offer right at the top of the description below and i'm sure that you'll enjoy watching magellan tv as much as i have much like the cressie the story of the napier deltic starts in the mid-1940s in the depths of world war ii the british admiralty were looking for a replacement engine for their motor torpedo boats which up until then had been powered usually by petrol aero engines adapted for naval use the problem was that the highly inflammable petrol that powered them made them vulnerable to fire compared to their german counterparts the e-boats which were diesel-powered however diesels of this era were large and heavy and couldn't compete for power with petrol engines of a similar size and weight now as we know from the crescent work had been done on high-speed diesels before of a war by several companies including rolls-royce but some of the most advanced were built by the german aero company junckers who had developed an h6 engine the umo 204 which dated back to 1929. this was originally intended for use in large aircraft like bombers and airliners and for a long time was the only diesel aero engine in use this two-stroke h6 design with two crankshafts one at either end had no heavy cylinder head instead it used sets of opposing pistons in an elongated cylinder block to compress the fuel between the pistons the inlet and exhaust ports were offset in the middle of the engine block and the upper piston ran 11 degrees behind the lower one although it made it not as smooth as a true opposed style engine it gave it better scavenging than a typical two-stroke design and could run as cleanly as a four-stroke but with much less mechanical complexity as the engine was relatively flat it was thought that it could be buried in the wing of a large aircraft but problems with the oil flow meant that it had to be mounted vertically in an engine nacelle in 1933 the british company d napier and sun an established engine builder licensed the umo 204 design to expand their engine range and made their version of it called the culverin napier thought that the horizontally opposed two-stroke design would make a safe fuel efficient engine for the newly expanding air travel sector however it created very little interest amongst the plane builders and just seven were built with zero sales so napier halted work on the engine this is where in 1942 the british admiralty came onto the scene looking for a high-speed high-powered diesel it knew that junckers had developed a multi-crankshaft engine in the umo223 a 24-cylinder with four banks of six pistons and four crankshafts in a rhombus shape a square balanced on a corner this was designed to produce 2500 horsepower and the thinking was the covering could be used as the basis for a similar large powerful diesel engine just six umo-223s were ever produced which eventually fell into the hands of the soviets after the war meanwhile back in england starting in 1947 napier took the culverin and created an unusual engine which was three culverins joined together in a triangle this created the e-130 three-cylinder test engine to validate the concept applying this to a full size engine looked like three v engines merged together but with no cylinder heads if you looked at them from an end on view the engine was called the napier deltic after its triangular shape which was similar to the greek letter delta but stood on one corner and the tick from the english electric who had taken over napier in 1942 now while the umo223 was the inspiration for the deltic none of its design was carried over to the deltic in fact yonkers had tried to make a triangle engine but had problems getting the pistons to phase correctly with each other so they dropped it and carried on with a square four bank engine which became the two two three at napier they also had the same problems but a suggestion from a senior draftsman to make one of the three crankshafts rotate in the opposite direction fixed of a piston phasing problem the power from the three crankshafts was fed via phasing gears into a single output shaft and two engine sizes were available a nine cylinder and an 18 cylinder the normal 18 cylinder version was rated at 1 650 horsepower and the turbocharged one at 3700 horsepower because the engine ran much faster than a typical big diesel which idled at 700 rpm for typical speed at which a normal diesel might be flat out at but deltic could reach 1500 rpm at max power the phasing gears also gave it a unique buzzing or droning sound that increased with the engine speed but once up to false power it really became very loud and needed large silences to keep it quiet ish the 18 cylinder non-turbo units also used a mechanically driven blower to ensure the gases were drawn out of the cylinders making it much more efficient now this was designed for use in mtbs or motor torpedo boats so by 1952 six of them were available for endurance trials one of the first things they did was to use a captured german e-boat this was because the mercedes-benz engines which were used in them were about the same power output they replaced two out of the three original engines with deltix and the difference was startling the celtics were half a size and weighed one-fifth of the weight of the mercedes engines they soon became a common power plant for small fast naval craft like the dark class attack vessels and due to their aluminium construction as such low magnetic signature and low engine vibration they were also used in the royal navy's ton and hunt class minesweepers the deltix were also used in the norwegian nasty class mtbs which were sold to germany greece and the us navy who used them in the vietnam war for covert actions utilizing the low humming sound that tick over they made so as not to sound like typical engines now whilst they may have been smaller than the similar powered conventional four-stroke diesel engines it was hardly a small engine which can be seen here with a technician working on the phasing gear case for a comparative size and it also shows the phasing gears combining the outputs of the three crankshafts into the single output shaft in the center in 1956 a turbo compound deltic was planned for naval use and a prototype was built this used the deltic engine as a gas generator inside a gas turbine for a hope 6 000 horsepower but as the engineers who knew the project had predicted it had a conrod failure at 5600 horsepower as gas turbine technology improved the compound deltic idea was dropped in favor of pure gas turbine engines even though it would have been more efficient in the late 1950s and early 1960s the uk was transitioning from steam to diesel to power its railways and the deltic was seen as a potential power unit for high-speed locomotives a prototype loco called the deltic after its engine ran from 1955 to 1960 covering 450 000 miles on the east and west coast mainlines from this prototype in 1959 british rail created the class 23 and then in 1961 62 the class 55 locomotives although they became more commonly known by the name of the baby deltic and the deltic respectively in 1961 62 22 deltix entered service and replaced 55 steam locos including pacific and a4 class locos like the mallard the fastest steam engine in the world this was possible because they were not only more powerful but they also didn't need the preparation fueling firing and cleaning between runs that steam engines did for class 23 baby deltix used a single turbocharged nine cylinder engine rated at 1100 horsepower and the class 55s used two mechanically blown 18 cylinder engines rated at 1 680 horsepower each giving a total output of over 3 300 horsepower and making the class 55s one of the most powerful and fastest diesel locomotives in the world at the time using two lower tuned engines instead of one high performance one was done to extend the working life of the engine between major rebuilds the class 55s could pull 13 coaches from london to edinburgh on the east coast main line at an average speed of around 100 miles an hour with up to 114 miles an hour flat sections and 125 on the downhill ones although a super deltic class 51 was proposed with two turbocharged 18-cylinder engines it was never made but if it had been it would have had up to 4 600 horsepower making it the most powerful locomotive in the world in total 44 deltic engines were ordered plus 13 spares the deltic locos were the first in british rails history to be designed for high availability so if there was a fault with an engine they could swap the whole engine out in a day for a spare one and then return the loco to service rather than fix the engine in situ which could take days or even weeks depending on the spares availability the deltic locos were phased out of high-speed mainline duties when the intercity 125 trains were introduced in the late 1970s though they continued in service until 1982 when they were finally withdrawn and most were scrapped but not all of them were cut up you can still experience the deltic locomotives as there are still six in various stages of operation and you can even hire some of them if you want to use more private and even some mainline routes now probably the most unusual use for the deltic engine was the new york fire department's super pumper this was the central pump which was part of a five truck system which included the super pumper itself the tender and three satellite tenders the idea of a land-based fire boat or a super pumper was first proposed by william gibbs a naval architect in 1910 but there were no engines powerful enough and small enough at the time to be mounted on a truck it wasn't until 1962 that his idea could be put into practice with the use of a napier deltic t18 37c which outputted 2220 horsepower to drive the de laval six stage centrifugal pump but it would take a massive fire on staten island in 1963 before the fire department commissioned mack trucks to build gibbsy's super pumper for the price of 875 000 the super pump was designed to supply enough water to deal with massive fires like that on staten island and pump water up to skyscraper heights it could take water from eight fire hydrants at once and even draw it from the sea or a river and pump up to ten thousand gallons per minute at low pressure and up to eight thousand eight hundred gallons per minute at 350 psi the eight-inch barreled monitor could propel a stream of water up to 600 feet in any direction including straight up vertically into the air at ten thousand gallons per minute at full power the deltic engine used over two gallons of fuel per minute in 1967 at a fire in a post linux it supplied the huge monitor as well as three other satellite tenders two ladder towers plus multiple other handheld lines the super pump was used from 1965 to 1982 and responded to over 2 200 calls including the biggest fires across the city's five boroughs and even stepping in to take over from a failed pumping station for the city's water supply the end for the super pumper came when the city's finances collapsed in the late 70s and early 80s and the cost of maintenance and running it became an issue that and the power of the water stream which was so strong but it was capable of collapsing walls and even taking the rules off of buildings meant that it was gradually used less and less the pumping unit was safe from the scrap heap by jimmy dobson who took it to his toy and fire truck museum in bay city michigan where it's on view to the public now so i hope you enjoyed the video and if you did then please subscribe hit that bell notification like and share and as we come to the end i'd also like to say a big thank you to all of our wonderful patrons out there for their ongoing support

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 1,380,982

Keywords: deltic, napier deltic engine, class 55, class 23, compound diesel, 18 cylinder engine, mtb, motor torpedo boat, nasty class patrol boats, paul shillito, curious droid, train, boat, minesweeper, nyc super pumper, mack trucks super pumper, super pumper fire truck, nyc, william gibbs, fire truck, super truck tender, diesel engine, jumo 204, jumo 223

Id: -vV-YaKsIGk

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021