The Rolls -Royce C Series engines were wet liner.

At the lower end, they were sealed with two O rings, often with Wellseal applied. Ar the top, the seal was metal to metal, again with Wellseal applied.

Cylinder liner protrusion was carefully controlled  so that the liner provided a flame ring, to protect bthe head gasket.

The Bristol BVW engine sealed the liner at the lower end with two O rings. The block was drilled between the rings so that a leak would indicate, by oil or coolant, which ring was leaking.

Gardners used small O rings to seal coolant passages between block and head.

Other manufacturers , as a result of development, went into production with gaskets that were locally thickened with integral rings, or silicone rubber rings, to seal oil or coolant passages.

Quite a few engines, particularly air cooled ones, used a Wills ring to seal between barrel and head.

Push rod, or camshaft drive, bores/tubes, being in a low pressure region, were often sealed with O rings.

Depending upon which stage, prototype engines could differ quite markedly from what eventually went into production, as problems arose and were, hopefully, solved.

(Compression ratios, gaskets, gears, drive arrangements, fuel feeds, could all change between prototype and production engines.)

So a prototype could be quite different from what eventually went into volume production.

Howard

Waterside attack was always a problem with wet liner engines.

The problem was often made worse by the piston / con rod relative position.

Adjusting the gudgeon pin bore position by a few thou considably reduced the impact of the piston skirt on the liner, (At tdc and bdc ) making it less prone to shaking ferrite out of the liner.

Cummins used a chromate additive to lessen the problem.

Obviously adding an inhibitor to the coolant reduced the risk of corrosive attack.

The combustion system could also affect matters.  A high rate of pressure rise would make matters worse, so highly rated engines were more at risk, or those with a louder diesel knock.

Because of higher charge temperatures, supercharged or turbocharged engines has less ignition delay, and were slightly “quieter”, which could help.

But care had to be taken to avoid making conditions which accentuated the problem.

When Perkins changed the 4.107 from wet liner to the dry liner 4.108, they also changed the con rod length and the piston dimensions!

Howard

Well when this was 1st introduced me & some mates saw it at the motorcycle show. Needless to say you could not get anywhere near it. It was on a elevated stand & roped off. We, because of the fairings could not even see if it had an engine in it. I have been watching this build & most of the engine is Suzuki GSXR750 internals, inc gearbox ,clutch & pistons. What I will say is that if Mr Millyard is doing it then do not question too much as the guy is a genious on bike engines. Plus eating cup cakes & feeding the Hedgehogs.

Motorcycle news i think tested it. It overheated badly & produced around 90 BHP from memory. Looking at the build it was discusting to see it being stripped. There was one drive sprocket that was helical cut mated to a straight cut gear. A total joke on Nortons part.

P.S. They are in big trouble again apparently financialy.

Steve.

I am a regular at the Squires cafe near Sherbun in elmete. We are old codgers now & ride less each year. I sold my lovely Ducati Multistrada 1200s Skyhook with all the bells etc. Full race termi upmap chip etc, cos I found it getting heavier by the year & loosing money being stood. I now have a much cheaper BMW F800 st. Much lighter & slower.

What i do know is that the likes of Norton would never make it. Triumph however are doing fine. Why do i say this. Just look at the auction sites selling old British classics. Take Mathewsons. The last sale had over 100 British classic bikes for sale. Not many sold & those that did sold for a pittance. Why. Well me & mey old codger friends had a disscussion on this very topic.

In essence most of the guys that liked old classic bikes are now growing Flowers from there dery-air. The young guys that come to the cafe & there are quite a fair few of them now. Talk to them about bikes they like & bare in mind these are lads just like we once were , they will remember bikes from their own era. They talk about Sim 125cc or Honda cbr 125. Mostly chinese made stuff.

Even the Jap bikes like the RD350 LC etc are dropping in value.

So the sales of Norton would never have been big. Am i wrong. If so tell me.

Steve.

On 12 July 2024 at 10:28 Kiwi Bloke Said:

OK, so it was designed by possibly dubious people, financed by probably naive people and thrown together by the factory cleaner on a bad day, but I still would like to know, whether after all his work, Allen Millyard is going to find coolant piddling out around the liner tops, between block and heads. I just don’t see an adequate seal… What am I missing? Anyone?

If you watch episode 3 sfter he removes the heads he explains why no head gasket.

Steve.

These are the things prototypes are made to discover. Probably designed by an engineer with no hands-on experience of working on wet-liner engines. Looks good on CAD…

The new BSA company (Indian) was talking about opening a new factory in Birmingham when they launched the new 650 GoldStar last year. Promises promises. Yet to see it though.

Apparently the Indian-made Goldies are quite good though, after a few teething troubles with ECUs, so expect the Indian-made Norton components will be OK.

I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from a prototype produced whilst a company was going bankrupt!   Even a genius designer will be stuffed if there’s no money for materials, tooling and outsourcing.  Also, because people aren’t stupid, that some of the team will be jumping ship after spotting the danger signs.  Morale rock-bottom etc.

Norton is a good example of a company that zigzagged throughout it’s existence between success and failure.   Success when it came up with a competitively priced bike that trounced the opposition, which they did a few times, doom and gloom when they were leapfrogged.   By 1950 motorbikes had moved from simply being a means of transport to being objects of desire, where style and performance matter more than basic utility.  Unfortunately the market for objects of desire is even more brutally competitive than usual in manufacturing.  It requires firms not only to manufacture a product, but to have an even more wonderful offering under development ready for the next round.   Keeping on top requires good leadership, excellent management, talented designers, adequate investment, engineering capability and an agile workforce.  Getting the timing wrong or losing momentum due to any of these not being in good order is deadly.

British industry has always suffered from low productivity.   The cause is unclear, though small-c conservatism is certainly a factor.   Absentee owners who would rather spend profits on yachts or maintain income by investing in someone else.  A board with no sense of direction, or an ill-considered strategy.  Poor managers.   Burnt out designers.  Unconvinced lenders, or accountants who prefer not to risk money earning interest.   Obsolete buildings, machines and working practices.  A workforce extremely reluctant to change anything who can get better pay and conditions elsewhere.   Tooth and nail resistance to the metric system is an example of the sort of small-c conservatism caused enormous damage to British industry.   Too many enterprises full of people performing entirtely to their own satisfaction.

Modern manufacturing, whether British or foreign, is still highly vulnerable to these challenges.   For years Nokia dominated the mobile phone market with affordable stylish products: customers loved Nokia and bought them by the billion.   Then it all went horribly wrong.  Nokia are still a successful company, though not by selling mobile phones.  That side of the business was sold to Microsoft and it didn’t go well for them either.   Querying best Microsoft phone got me this comment from 2022:

Windows Phone is long dead, yet somehow you’ve ended up here. If you’re in the market for a new Windows Phone these days, we’ve got some bad news for you. There are no more Windows Phones being manufactured, by Microsoft or other smartphone makers. We would not recommend buying a Windows Phone in the current year, outside of nostalgia reasons.

There are thousands of other examples, historically mostly firms going bust in the west, but the same problem is emerging in the new manufacturing nations like China.   Chinese firms also find it difficult to cope with change forced by competition.

Dave

If the compression seal is a Wills ring, it is possible that the coolant passages are sealed with a silicone type rubber (Known as Sactrac when applied to a conventional gasket to provide locally enhanced sealing)

As a prototype, it is possible that coolant seals were hand applied silicone rubber circles, rather than preformed.

Tightening while uncured provided a better seal than a pre cured ring, because of less torque relaxation, on effectively a metal to metal joujint with the silicone blocking small leak paths..

Gardners use a simular technique MANY years ago. The coolant passages between head and block, were separate bobbins, with a rubber ring around it (Useful as replacement tyres for Dinky vehicles)

When the head was tightened down, the rubber was compressed to seal.

Worked well until the engine was run short of water; that cooked the rubber so it no longer sealed.

Howard