Hall-Scott hemi-head gas engines were commonly used in fire truck pumpers because of their exceptional power output. But back when this fire truck was built, Hall-Scott was only building airplane engines and a few ultra-high output car/racing engines, which is where their pedigree originated. Truck, bus and marine engines came along in the 1920s, and their OHC hemi-head truck engines didn’t need to be this big to make big power. So who built this monster of an engine in this Robinson?
According to one commenter in the know at Shorpy, it’s “a Buffalo Marine (Buffalo Gasoline Engine Co.) 6 1/4″ x 6 3/4″ bore and stroke six cylinder (1242.5 cubic inch displacement) (20.36 Liters) developing 110 hp at 1000 rpm”. And I’m in no position to second guess him. That’s what it took to make over a hundred horsepower back then, from a slow-turning side valve (flathead). Its idle speed was probably 200 or so rpm, if not less.
Fun to Google Buffalo ads online—seems we find both the “Gasoline” and “Gasolene” spellings into the 1920s. Writeup below from 1912 seems to fit right in, with biggest 6cyl engine at 100hp:
I’ve seen “Diesoline” at some fuel stations in Australia.
Dual ignition already.
“No side cover and we still can’t access the valves for adjustment!” rant! lol
Notice the wheel’s speedometer drive gear?
Looks like quite the energy absorbing bumper system, mostly clipped from the photo.
Wow, that’s a lotta engine. I can only imagine the size of gas tank something like that would need.
Does this thing start with a reduction gear crank?
It has been in use for awhile – hard right turns at speed have taken a toll on the left front tire tread. I presume the right front looks the same way from hard left turns.
I’m not totally sure about that starter. It might be a spring thing that gets wound up first, like Briggs and Stratton used on their mower engines for a few years in the ’50s. But maybe it’s a reduction gear. Must take some doing to turn that monster over.
Most of those large displacement engines had a compression release mechanism which was used to allow the rotation into motion before it was closed to initiate the combustion. Compressed air starters were also standard equipment drawing from a pressure tank that had been charged by the on-board compressor. This 1913 Robinson fire truck was built only a year after Cadillac introduced the electric starter for 1912.
I saw this earlier today, I thought to myself, who’s the poor bastard that has to crank that thing over?
He must have had one arm muuuuch bigger than the other…
I think the starter is a wind-up spring arrangement. On the casing, it says “Robinson High Power Fire engine Starter”. The crank handle is offset from the crankshaft line, and there’s a hugely pushable spring button in the casing.
As for the tires, I reckon they are solid ones, and the same oddball ridge in their midline can just be made out on the other side. I speculate (on the basis of no knowledge at all) that the ridge may be there to perhaps use train tracks in emergencies.
(As a by-the-by, CC pics have recently developed a strange habit of jumping directly to really big magnification if you click on them, which works out fine for looking at details in this case, but in others is just distorting).
Re: Pics – Do you mean larger than normal, i.e. the intent is to get them to blow up to almost screen size if they were uploaded properly, some stay stuck at original size. Or are they really big as in only a portion of the picture is visible on your screen and you have to scroll around to see all the parts? I just clicked this one and it blew up to almost screen size (for me), which is normal. Then I can enlarge it about 10% more with the cursor zoom function.
I follow on a mobile device and the site’s images open up just right and are “pinchable” to size.
I mean so big as to have to scroll around to see it all, rather than just larger than in the text as it always used to be. It’s as if I clicked on “+” once or more each time. I can’t make them smaller.
For example,on this photo I get “under the hood of” and the top part of the radiator as my initial view (without scrolling about): and my only option on the cursor is to make it bigger still!
“He must have had one arm muuuuch bigger than the other…”
That reminds me of a conversation I had with a ex-car salesman who was very successful selling automatic transmissions to women back in the 1960s. His spiel went like this:
With a manual transmission, the woman’s left leg is going to be constantly pushing that clutch pedal. Over time, her exercised left leg is going to be bigger than her right leg. By then the woman is worrying about how her legs (especially the “larger” left leg) is going to look when wearing a mini-skirt.
Back to the article. That is a mighty impressive 6-cylinder engine, displacement wise. Horsepower may not impress by today’s standards, but what was the torque?
As for that hand cranked starter, could it be an inertia starter, similar to those used on early aircraft reciprocating engines?
The John Deere model 830 tractor had a two-cylinder Diesel engine of 470 cubic inches (7.7 liters) so its bore and stroke were even larger than the Robinson. Drawbar horsepower was about 67 with about 73 belt horsepower. Oddly enough the it was started with a small V-4 gas engine.
Wacky sidelight, also 1913: In Long Beach, CA, a test of the “Cage Submarine Boat,” powered by two 110hp Buffalo marine engines:
In Buffalo’s 1909 catalog, the biggest 6cyl is 100hp, with 8-1/2″ bore and 9″ stroke, which seems to come out at 3064 cubic inches if I’m doing the math right:
That appears to be an earlier version, as it’s both substantially bigger and has T-heads rather than an L-head as the one in the fire truck. Four years of progress!
Bingo! Cache of Buffalo catalogs, operation and installation manual (talks of compressed-air starting), etc. Wow!
http://vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/detail.aspx?id=4040&tab=3