Engine Punk

This is just like the model I had but with more paint remaining.  Many years ago, at a secondhand toy sale at school, I bought two Dinky Toy model vans. One was a rather sorry looking Morris Commercial J type van in the livery of the GPO and the other was a cheeky Trojan 15cwt Dunlop van. They got played to pieces. The Morris Commercial looked thin and underfed. The Trojan looked much more robust. In the undergrowth at Tinker's Park I was reminded of these two model vans when I stumbled across a scanned image the other day of the remains of a Trojan van. I had found this relic in the bushes at a show at Tinker's Park , near Hadlow Down in East Sussex, in or around 1990. There were many other interesting things in the undergrowth and the only means of identifying it was by the maker's plate on the bulkhead. Only once I'd found that, did I know what it was and that a model of it had brought me so much pleasure as a child. I photographed it as a mem...

I often visit the Launceston Steam Railway . It's a kind of drop in centre for the oily fingered and connoisseurs of Vintage Things. Since last year, they've made a few changes to the displays in the workshops. For the early part of the summer the place was closed but on a wet and dreary day last month I dropped in and - lo and behold! - found a cut away engine of the Trojan two stroke engine. The Trojan van at the Launceston Steam Railway Previous examinations of these Vintage Things offered some answers but raised more questions. A close look at the engine was what I really needed - don't bother looking under the bonnet, it's under the floor. There's always been at least one Trojan car in the little museum at the Launceston Steam Railway but now there's a van this splendid cut away examples of the extraordinary engines these things have. But don't worry - no working examples of Trojan engines were harmed or destroyed in making this display. I ...

Cheer up! While I was in the queue for a cup of tea at the Bridgewater control on the Land's End Trial, I fell into conversation with the crew of one of the 1488cc Trojan Utilities and took the opportunity to ask them how much preparation they had done to their cars for trialling. There were two Trojan Utilities entered in the trial together one crewed by John Wilson and Richard Potter from Portchester and the other one by Steve and Phil Potter from Fareham (where, as the song goes, "all the whores wear Calico draws and I knows how to tear 'em.") I haven't tried this myself you understand. I have simply been assured of this quaint custom by friends of mine who live in those parts. Despite their benign weirdness, Trojans are very well proportioned cars. I particularly like the way the skinny wheels look widened. I'd seen them working on their Trojans at the start at Popham airfield and feared the worst but they were simply trying different carbure...

Cut away engines seem wrong to me but are pretty well essential in understanding the workings of the normally aspirated Trojan split-single two-stroke. This the view from above. A mate of mine sent me this illustration of a cut away Trojan engine the other day. This was in response to my earlier post (VT 4) about a supercharged Trojan engine. Well, I still know nothing about the blown sort but here's a pic of the common or garden variety. Although it looks like a twin, the Trojan was a split-single. Yeah, I know, it's a contradiction in terms. Think of it as a saimese twin then. And they weren't split-singles, either. They were four cylinder split twins! Still with me? Some people call split-singles twingles so what would the quad-twin Trojan be - a quin? But why bother with split singles, or twingles, in the first place? The big problem with two strokes is spent exhaust gases mingling with a fresh incoming charge of fuel into the cylinder. Two strokes don...