And we complain about the Austin 7 Crankshaft !

[Tony Press]

From Pre War Car:

"How can successful car designer's make such terrible mistakes? It reminds me of William Morris' 6 cylinder bullnose, a beautifully-proportioned car of which 50 were made. Unfortunately, Morris decided to economise on the engine and used standard bullnose parts (nothing wrong there), but with a 2-bearing, 6-journal crankshaft. These cars could barely be started without their crankshafts breaking. Morris realised his mistake and sadly decided not to stabilise the crankshaft with extra bearings. The remaining cars were buried under the Cowley factory."

Never heard this before ?

[Charles P]

Scripps Booth made a 2 main bearing V8

Charles

[Tony Press]

That would be similar to those very strange two block Austin Seven 'specials' ?

[Charles P]

Proper US V8 style

[Bob Culver]

Many early V8s used a flat crank as a 4 cyl car. Especially if the conrods shared a common big end as on radial aircraft,  the assembly would not be long so not far fetched. 
When the Queen visted NZ in 1953 a straight 8 Daimler was imported . I understand it devoured several cranks in its total life as an inter city newspaper carrier.
The single cyl cadillac was noted for broken cranks (these may have been overhung)

[squeak]

Tony we have a mutual friend who has or had a late thirty's Royal Daimler straight eight. It seized and twisted the crankshaft. They were able to recover the situation by regrinding the big ends off centre. I imagine starting from the middle and working progressively to each end.

[austin]

[Steve kay]

Some of David Green's comments on Pre War Car are pretty apocryphal. The early 6 cyl Morris engine was certainly not a sucess, but it is interesting that, having built just one or two between 1921 and 1922, and presumably managing a couple of years road testing and use, it then went into limited production. The challenge with crankshafts lacking central support is, as we all know, the ability to suffer from certain harmonics causing destructive vibrations. The 6 cyl Morris could have this problem, but certainly left the factory and some seemed to manage significant mileage. As far as I am aware, there has been no archeological evidence of cars, engines or other bits buried on site.

The Heriod ( see what your own spell check tries to replace this name with) rotary valve was an unmitigated disaster. One can only imagine that Alexandre  Darracq regarded the works as his fiefdom and refused to listen to any comments about his determination to discard that noisy poppet valve and adopt smooth and silent rotaries. It effectively ended his career.

[Mark McKibbin]

Many makers had trouble with in-line sixes, Henry Ford's 1906 Model K was a disaster, he stuck with four cylinders until the V8 in 1932 when everyone else was doing sixes. Ford didn't build a 6 until 1941. Mr Bugatti was the same just 4, 8 and 16 and the V6 was not successfully built until Lancia worked the angle and firing order out in 1950 with the Aurelia.

[Bob Culver]

Hi Austin

What a magnificent photo. Thanks. Consider how dificult it is to get low production forging work done today. Torsional oscillations must have been formidable. It is of curious form. Anyone venture a firng order? Wonder if it was a flat configuration.
Would be great to have an ancestor photo like that. Mine only managed to pose with a couple of water taps they patented. Beats any big game photo.