By popular demand ....

[Peter.N.]

The owner of a local taxi firm came and tried out my Vauxhall, went back and ordered two conversion kits for his Consul taxis, he then had them in his Zephyr 4s

[steelcityuk]

That's great Peter. Real motoring!

Steve.

[colinxm]

A very interesting piece you've written Peter - thanks for taking the time. So when did you first strap a turbo to one of the old Perkins's then eh ? or are you saving that story for another day

Best wishes Colin.P

[Dieselman]

A very interesting read ,the earliest deisels I can remember where the hard to start and very noisy morris oxfords,probably 1970 ish,move on a few years to the arrival of the Peugot 309 and people never looked back.

Anyone know which car was the first to have the Peugeot XUD engine installed and what year?

[robert_e_smart]

Was it the Talbot Horizon?

Edit:

I decided to check, and according to Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talbot_Horizon

The PSA XUD9 diesel engine of 1905 cc diesel engine was fitted to certain models of the Horizon, which was the first example of this engine available in the UK.

Ok, maybe not then?

[Dieselman]

It wasn't unusual to see a lorry with a fire lit under the engine in order to get it to start.

The cold start provisions of the day were interesting, this was before the days of glow plugs, the Perkins used a 'thermostart' unit, it fitted in the inlet manifold and had a heating element which when hot opened a thermostatic valve which allowed diesel to flow into it from a reservoir, when the engine was cranked it would burst into flames like a blowlamp, the theory being that it would heat the incoming air to promote combustion - it sometimes worked!

I've seen lorries broken down at the traffic lights due to fuel waxing, to get hem going a large oil can with a diesel soaked rag was used as a fire bucket.

The intake manifold plug is what's called a Flame plug and do work. Some commercial engines used them until very recently.

[Peter.N.]

Hi Colin

Funny you should ask that , it was in the Granada estate, it was a PAO Allard turbo, huge in comparison with the modern ones, I got it from a firm in Wiltshire, Swindon I think, they also supplied the metal and silicon rubber pipe required, I fabricated the required fittings and off I went, nothing happened until I got to 3,500 rpm, then it ssuddenly took of only to run out of revs at 4000! It was just to large and smaller ones just were not available then, this would have been in the late '70s, early '80s.

So, the only thing I could do was fit a larger engine. I had a rummage round our local friendly scrapyard and found a York 2.4 engine from a Transit, I obviously wasn't the only one experimenting with diesels as fitted to it was an overdrive gearbox from a Reliant Schimitar, just the job, except that it wouldn't fit into the granada, so I set about the tunnel with a hammer and it did fit. This was my first introduction to cast iron welding as I had to adapt the exhaust manifold, it didn't go well, so I brazed it.

The performance of that was altogether better and we did many thousands of miles in it. I think that was possibly my last conversion before the CX, apart from a 2.3 Peugeot engine into a friends Cortina - no I'm wrong, I did a couple of my own Cortinas, they were the last.

Peter

[messerschmitt owner]

Allard conversions are very good - but I'm biased as there is an Allard at my mum's house!

[steelcityuk]

Hi Peter,

Brilliant but can we have more details and/or tales of motoring with such hybrids?

Steve.

[Peter.N.]

Hi Steve

Well there was one mod I made that I should have patented Diesels having no natural vacuum supply caused a bit of a problem when servo assisted brakes arrived - no, they didn't always have them The diesel as you will know has no throttle, the power being controlled purely by the fuel delivery, hence no vacuum, the pumps that are used now were not of course available then, so I had to cobble something up.

What I did was to incorporate a butterfly valve in the air inlet to the manifold, this was linked to the throttle in such a way that immediatly you put your foot down the air supply was open wide, I now had a vacuum supply when the throttle was closed, which it usually is when you brake, it worked very well and had the bonus effect of slightly lowering the compression on tickover which reduced vibration and considerably ruducing the air intake roar, an annoying source of noise on early diesels.

The reason I say I should have patented it is that shortly after I did this British Leyland brought out the diesel Sherpa van which used exactly the same system It had a few embellishments but principle was the same.

Peter.