Talk:Wolseley Viper

Cylinders and stuff

I see this is a "Piston inline aero-engine" and "a British-built, high-compression derivative of the Hispano Suiza HS-8 liquid-cooled V-8 engine" but how many cylinders does it have? Yes, I know about down below it says "Type: 8-cylinder, upright, 90 degree Vee engine". Is just one bank visible in the illustration? Am I confused when I think that inline and Vee contradict each other?

Where may I find a little more about the basic design of this engine? Thanks, Eddaido (talk) 23:33, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

It's a V8. That photo (I have one near identical, because in typical Science Museum style these days it's the only angle you can get) just shows one bank clearly. It's better if you zoom - you can see the cam drives on each bank.

As to sources, then Lumsden is the book to have, however it's expensive. Gunston's small cheap aero engine encyclopedia might have it - I'll take a look. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:39, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, that sure is Rapid Response. My real aim was to check the link to Wolseley car engines. After WWI until 1948 their cars all had single OHC engines right from 4-cylinders (the first Morris Minor) to the more usual sixes up to (briefly) straight-eights. It is said this design owes a lot to the Hispano engine design. It must be more than the SOHC and I wanted to try to work out what it might be. Thanks, Eddaido (talk) 03:01, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Gunston's Aero Engines covers it, but like WP, most of the coverage is under Hispano-Suiza.

The engines were very similar, the Wolseleys largely ignoring Wolseley's pre-war engines cast as paired cylinders and following very close on the Hispano-Suiza design. There are detail differences in engineering: for one thing the H-S cast blocks seem to have had a problem with coolant porosity and so they were stove enamelled black to seal them. The later models used a reduction gear that seems to have given development problems with metallurgy and they seems to have been developed independently by H-S and W at this time, with different problems as a result.

Overall, the first Python version of the 150hp H-S seems to have been a bit of a failure: 100 made and no combat service. The Viper though was successful and became a well-regarded engine in the late war period. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:20, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I am digesting this. Eddaido (talk) 07:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC)