THE HISPANO-SUIZA V-8 718 & 1127c.i. CRANKSHAFT PROBLEMS

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Another point about the Oil Jet hole is just how did they deliver the oil for the gear and pinion wheels when the cannon barrel was going thru the same area where the Oil Jet Hole was located in the front of the engine crankcase in the original 200/220 h.p. engine?
M.L. Anderson

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Castor Oil Plant; A tropical Old World herb (Ricinus communis) widely grown as an ornamental or for its oil- rich castor beans.
Castor Oil; a pale viscous fatty oil from castor beans used especially as cathartic or lubricant.

Main properties:
Molecular formula: C57H104O9
Molecular weight: 932
Main component: CH3(CH2)5CH(OH)CH2CH=CH(CH2)7COOH. Nearly colorless or straw yellow transparent sticky liquid. It is not dry oil. Relative density: (d25)0.945-0.965; freezing point: -10C; flash point: 229.4C; self-ignition point: 448.9C; saponification value: 178KOH/g; viscosity: E(20) ＞ 14; total aliphatic acid content: about 96%; average molecular weight 290-300.
self-ignition point: 448.9C


This will be used in later Posts!

Yours, M.L. Anderson

[shackleton]

What a fascinating thread this is!

Now can I ask what may be a very silly question.

I can see that the higher temperatures of an air cooled rotary engine and the inevitable mixing of the oil with petrol that would occur by feeding the mixture through the crankcase would require castor oil.

Surely watercooled engines like the Hisso and the Wolseley would have used a straight (and much cheaper) mineral oil?

Apologies if this is a silly question it's just that I have always assumed that castor oil would never have been used in watercooled engines because of its gumming up effect and the extra cost.

Just as an aside Castrol still can supply Castor R but it costs £34 per imperial gallon say about $68.

[jumpinjan]

Castor oil has an interesting property where as the temp goes higher, it thickens and not thin out like petroleum oil.

[Lufbery]

This is a great discussion! I'd dearly love to see some photos of the various parts being mentioned.

Also, has any work been done to modify the existing Hissos that are still flying to mitigate the design flaw?

Regards,

[shackleton]

Originally Posted by jumpinjan

Castor oil has an interesting property where as the temp goes higher, it thickens and not thin out like petroleum oil.

This really is interesting. Now bear in mind that I actually thought that tribology was the study of different native american groups so I am no lubrication expert.

Castor oil is not soluble in petrol in the same way that a mineral oil is. This would have been very important in rotary engines where the air/petrol mixture was fed first of all into the crankcase.

When it is heated castor oil undergoes chemical changes. Polyesters are formed and various long chain chemicals which have effective lubricating qualities but also tend to form gums. This chemical change involves the castor oil losing a water molecule - a rather neat chemical trick because it doesn't actually contain water! It somehow joins an OH radicle on to oxygen and then gets rid of it. The end effect of this gum formation is to clog up the piston rings and anything else that is hot and clogabble. So frequent strip downs and clean ups would have been necessary. (Does anyone remember decokes? When was the last time anyone did one on a car or bike using modern oils!) I've never worked on an aero engine that ran on castor oil but I have stripped racing motorcycles which invariably used it in the 1960s. (Air cooled and hotrunning). Often apart from the delightful smell and gumminess you could identify that castor R had been used because the piston skirts seemed to have been varnished. I assume that this varnish is the final breakdown product of castor oil.

Cost and availability of castor oil must have been important in the First War particularly in Germany. I believe a rotary engine could consume a gallon of castor oil in 2 hours running. Was the cheaper and more widely avilble rapeseed oil used as a substitute?

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Quote from:

shackleton
Observer
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 37
What a fascinating thread this is!

Now can I ask what may be a very silly question.

I can see that the higher temperatures of an air cooled rotary engine and the inevitable mixing of the oil with petrol that would occur by feeding the mixture through the crankcase would require castor oil.

( I believe the above statement is true! I intend to ask this question of franzkait in the near future as I will bet he has given it a lot of thought and attention. M.L. Anderson)

Surely water-cooled engines like the Hisso and the Wolseley would have used a straight (and much cheaper) mineral oil?

( If you had of used the word could instead of would your statement would have been fully accurate! M.L. Anderson)

Apologies if this is a silly question it's just that I have always assumed that castor oil would never have been used in water-cooled engines because of its gumming up effect and the extra cost.

(This is one of the things I am trying to ascertain, but at this point your statement seems to have some validity. M.L. Anderson)

Just as an aside Castrol still can supply Castor R but it costs £34 per Imperial gallon say about $68.

(One of the test cells at Hispano-Suiza had a set up for regular mineral oil so as to test for both oils but these test results were not given in the Reports so we haven’t anything to base our judgments on as to whether it was better with one oil or the other. I believe that pure Castor Oil in pharmaceutical state is very cheap compared to Castrol R. However I don’t know if Castrol R is pure Castor Oil and they probably aren’t going to tell us either! M.L. Anderson)

Yours, M.L. Anderson

[m9a3r5i7o2n]

Quote:
Originally Posted by jumpinjan & shackleton
Castor oil has an interesting property where as the temp goes higher, it thickens and not thin out like petroleum oil.

According to the information listed in the, “Report upon Troubles with 200 H.P. French Hispano in Service” page # 3(?) paragraph 10 the above statement is not true and would it not be contrary to the general run of lubricants (and maybe to the laws of Nature?) I don’t know where he got this information where I could possibly look at the statement and where the reliability of it lays. (M.L.A.)

This really is interesting. Now bear in mind that I actually thought that tribology was the study of different native American groups so I am no lubrication expert.

(tribology - A science that deals with the design, friction, wear, and lubrication of interacting surfaces in relative motion (as in bearing and gears) Now we both know! M.L.A.)

Castor oil is not soluble in petrol in the same way that a mineral oil is. This would have been very important in rotary engines where the air/petrol mixture was fed first of all into the crankcase. (Seems to be true. M.L. Anderson)

When it is heated castor oil undergoes chemical changes. Polyesters are formed and various long chain chemicals which have effective lubricating qualities but also tend to form gums. This chemical change involves the Castor Oil losing a water molecule - a rather neat chemical trick because it doesn't actually contain water!

( Doesn’t the above statement about Castor Oils composition somewhat dispute the statement about water not being a part of the oil but it is a part of ordinary Pharmaceutical oil? But there is water in all of the air going into the engine whether it be a Rotary Radial or a Hispano-Suiza V-8. M.L.A.)

It somehow joins an OH radical on to oxygen and then gets rid of it. The end effect of this gum formation is to clog up the piston rings and anything else that is hot and clog able. So frequent strip downs and clean ups would have been necessary. (Does anyone remember de-cokes? When was the last time anyone did one on a car or bike using modern oils!) I've never worked on an aero engine that ran on castor oil but I have stripped racing motorcycles which invariably used it in the 1960s. (Air cooled and hot running). Often apart from the delightful smell and gumminess you could identify that Castrol R had been used because the piston skirts seemed to have been varnished. I assume that this varnish is the final breakdown product of castor oil.

Cost and availability of castor oil must have been important in the First War particularly in Germany. I believe a rotary engine could consume a gallon of castor oil in 2 hours running. Was the cheaper and more widely available rapeseed oil used as a substitute?

(The Germans did use something else but exactly what it contained I don’t know! M.L. A.)

(I also bought a small bottle of Castor Oil at Walgreen’s.
Dipping the end of an old worn out cotton pillow case into the Castor Oil and letting it drip off, but the Oil still saturated the cotton. Lighting the cotton above oil with a wooden match and letting the fire burn down to the oil soaked area the flame burned down the cloth into the oil soaked area. It then burned the cloth down to the last portion of the previously oil soaked area of the cotton. There was no sign of oil residue. Since Castor Oil is a natural product of nature and very burnable I believe that a lot of hokum has grown up around its usage and general nature.

Also we must remember that the Hispano-Suiza engine didn’t have to worry as much as a Rotary Radial as to the burning in the combustion chamber. In comparison to both of the engines very little was passing thru the combustion chamber of the Hispano-Suiza (They hoped). Most of the V-8s made by Hispano-Suiza did need to be de-coked but a lot of that may well have been due to lousy oil rings of those days!

07-22-2008
Today I burned some of the Castor Oil by dipping one end of a strip of an old used up Turkish towel into the bottle. Then letting it drip so as the give the flame a chance to light the Castor Oil into its own flame. An ordinary wooden match has difficulty lighting the Oil, if the Oil is on the bottom of the cotton towel strip. However if one does it the opposite way by putting the oil at the top of the strip the oil seems to be heated by the flame before it withers and almost dies out.

After doing this I found the oil burns up and the excess oil drips away.

There is smoke but absolutely No smell to speak of, or at least none that I could smell.

If one takes note of two of the items above one can readily see problem of the flash point and the self ignition point both of which may be reached by the burning of the fuel in the combustion chamber it may change the chemical composition of the oil greatly.

The problems of Castor Oil have already been mentioned by myself and by others in these columns but at the risk of repetition I will repeat the main one of the congealing of the oil at lower temperatures.
It may be that the high temperatures and the addition of the chemicals of combustion makes many new products that have not been analyzed in easily found sources.

Yours, M.L. Anderson

[shackleton]

ML

I hope this reply isn't too tedious since it does require some familiarity with biochemistry which isn't always the most interesting subject!

JumpinJan's posting suggesting that castor oils lubrication and it does not thin excessively at higher temperature is accurate. The reason is the one I gave in my posting that polymerisation (forming of longer more complicated organic molecules) takes place as the temperature of castor oil increases. These polymers are better lubricants than castor oil at normal temperatures. The water molecule that is lost is formed chemically during the polymerisation process and not from water contamination in the oil, the fuel or even in the air drawn into the engine.
Your experiment burning castor oil with a wick is interesting but irrelevent as as we are not discussing burning castor oil in air as a fuel but what happens to it when it is heated in an engine. Why not put a little of the oil in a can and heat the can? I'm sure you will see some formation of gum but what will be even better is the glorious smell of hot castor oil. This smell will never be forgotten by anyone that has ever worked with castor oil lubricated engines whether they were aero engines or racing motorcycles.

The following was rescued from George M. Aldrich's web site, now closed down, after his passing away.

>>
Castor oil is roughly 87% triglyceride of ricinoleic acid, [ (CH3(CH2)5CH(OH)CH2CH=CH(CH2)7COO)3(OC)3H5 ], which is unique because there is a double bond in the 9th position and a hydroxyl in the 11th position. As the temperature goes up, it loses one molecule of water and becomes a "drying" oil.

RICINOLEIC ACID TRIGLYCERIDE
(The major constituent of Castor Oil)

H H
| |
H H H H H H O H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H O H H H H H H
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=O H H H O=C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-H
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | \ | | | / | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H O-O-C-C-C-O-O H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
| | |
H O H
/
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H O
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | /
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=O
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
H H H H H H O H H H H H H H H
|
H

WHEN HEATED, ONE MOLECULE OF WATER BREAKS LOOSE: (one oleic acid chain shown)

/
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H O
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | /
H-C-C-C-C-C-C=C-C=C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=O
| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H

+

H-O-H

Castor oil has excellent storage stability at room temperatures, but it polymerizes rapidly as the temperature goes up. As it polymerizes, it forms ever-heavier "oils" that are rich in esters. These esters do not even begin to decompose until the temperature hits about 650 degrees F (343 deg C). Castor oil forms huge molecular structures at these elevated temperatures - in other words, as the temperature goes up, the castor oil exposed to these temperatures responds by becoming an even better lubricant!
Unfortunately, the end byproduct of this process is what we refer to as "varnish."
<<

I can really relate to the varnish statement - that is exactly what it looks like on pistons from castor oil lubricated racing motor cycles. I hope this helps.

[KACEY]

Shackleton, Thks so much for the excellent explaination of Castor Oil properties. Being a ChemEng I can appreciate the work.

Just to add more discussion to this thread, did you'all know that you can still purchase "Voltol" the substitute oil that Germany started using in place of Castor Oil. Well you still can!!!! Take a look at this:

Translator - Translate a web page

It is called a "sliding oil". However, it NOW contains a "polar additive' to prevent the "stick slip" effect form occurring during usage.

Most likely the ORIGINAL WWI oil did not have this ADDITIVE and this most likely is why it did not perform as well as Castor Oil in their rotary WWI aeroengines!

I just thought it was really exciting that you could still purchase the stuff!!!

Respectfully Submitted,

KC