This era of the automobile is the most beautiful. You can see other inventions from steam engines, kersosine lamps and leaf spring suspension that all brought together gave us the first cars. These cars had such charm.
From my childhood I am associated with this type of ďfferent machines and even at this old age feel the passion, and never miss chances to peep in to the old beauties as we at our workshop in shilliong had and drove quite a few of them, seeing them feel my dream come true.
Quite Right StanleyRegister! The entertaining part of it was the Chap with the Fire extinguisher didn't get the owner of the Stanley out of the way as he got a fireball in his face!! To much panic not enough patience.... And knowing the engine!
Fire outside the burner never needs to be part of starting a Stanley. It is always due to operator error. This operator made numerous errors, including: 1. Pointing his torch so that the flame played on the wooden parts of the car. 2. Looking away from his torch flame for extended periods while it was burning. 3. Beginning the kerosene feed by supplying a continuous flow, rather than quickly turning it off and confirming the kerosene was burning correctly. 4. Failing to understand the behavior of the stream from the jets. The camera operator was much more knowledgeable than the vehicle operator in this case. The final narrow stream of liquid was full evidence that the burner had reached a condition of containing significant unburned fuel. 5. Once there was a question about the state of unburned fuel in the burner, failing to insert the torch at the top of the boiler, to encourage any unburned fuel to burn off in this direction. 6. Driving off while open flames were still active in front of the car. Fires in incorrect places, especially when the vaporizer is cool, are the biggest risk in operating a Stanley. They can damage the car and injure people. Please learn a careful, conservative approach to fuel management when firing up, and don't do it like this operator.
Exactly. Assuming correct fuel, it seems to me that the initial mistake was that the branch just wasn't hot enough to assure immediate vaporization of the large amt. of fuel being supplied. I don't know whether the pilot was burning correctly. I suspect not. All very odd.
@Drakilicious After initial firing up, the pilot can be left burning and car ready to go usually very quickly. The incomplete firing up shown here was really badly done for the reasons listed above. Stanleys never really improved their somewhat unbalanced engines as the years went by and they should have been applying condensers earlier. But one of the major factors inhibiting sales was that they were very expensive.
Amazing ingenuity with the available resources and technologies. I doubt many of the clowns commenting negatively here would come nearly as close if challenged to accomplish the same.
There's nothing like driving a mostly wooden car that must be on fire in order to drive it. However, it shouldn't have been driven away with visible fire on the front of the car. That's a good way to burn the rest of the car. Next time, there needs to be better care in the starting procedure.
Babe: what took you so long? Me: ill be there in a minute, i'm almost done starting my car! Just imagine starting that engine when you're late for work😫
Actually, despite their cost, they were popular for that reason: The pilot was kept burning all the time, then the burner would light immediately and operating pressure could be had "quickly".
True for some, the doble cars were electric start amd started at the push of a button in just 90 seconds, plus they were faster and handled better than gas cars but gas was cheaper so steam was really only for the rich
the guy is just spouting wikipedia.. all stanleys operate at 600 psi.. most new broilers in the usa are rated to 2000 psi so.. you can tell he doesnt know much. he has to reheat the pilot several times..
Steam engine always facinataing to me .....steam car wow 👍🏼 darling we gonna see some relatives ......ok love remind me a hour n half before as I will build up some steam 🚂 in car
it was normal enough back then, normal till the sixties actually, with steam lorries still crusing the streets by the early 60’s, flame blowing out the front, and smoke out the top.
Often owners kept the pilot burning when the car was garaged in cold weather but still in daily use. Obviously there were inherent dangers in that, too. A number of people were killed while trying to crank-start ICE cars. Even today, you can watch enthusiasts on line cranking old cars using very dangerous techniques. Ignorance and stupidity are non-generational I guess. The mass production of ICE cars resulted in prices that were small fractions of the cheapest steam cars.
At least a steam car would start in -10 degrees. Lots of luck hand starting a gas engine with the oil cold and thick. Remember this was well before multi grade oils.
