Wow, that is neat. I have heard of them, but have never seen one in person nor have I heard one start up and running. That is so cool. Thanks for sharing.
Alcoa in Point Comfort Texas. The Tennessee smelter was powered from hydroelectric developments owned by Alcoa on the Little Tennessee, Cheoah, and Nantahala Rivers, supplemented by hydroelectric power from TVA (that wasn't being used at Oak Ridge for uranium enrichment for the Manhattan Project). Immediately after World War II Alcoa built a smelting plant at Point Comfort to partially replace the plants that had been operated by Alcoa during the War for the Defense Plant Corporation, but had been sold to Reynolds Metals Company and Permanente Metals (soon to become Kaiser Aluminum). The idea was to use natural gas from offshore wells to power two-stroke engines developed by Nordberg, which drove direct-current generators mounted on a level below the vertical-shaft engines. At Point Comfort we had six smelting lines powered by about 240 of these engines. The smelter shut down for the last time in the 1980s when the cost of electricity generated by the Nordbergs became uneconomically high. In addition to the Point Comfort plant, Kaiser Aluminum had a smelter at Chalmette LA (right next to the 1815 Battlefield) that was equipped with 180 more Nordberg engines. As the price of natural gas increased over the years, Chalmette also became economically non-viable. About all that is left of the Chalmette smelter is a 400 foot tall smokestack that was supposedly referred to as "Henry J. Kaiser's Cigar". vintagedieseldesign.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/img2344.jpg LInk to a picture of one of the Point Comfort engine houses, from a Nordberg advertising brochure.
My Dad worked for GM after the war and mentioned these, or something similar. GM made the crankcase castings and they were cracking allowing the cylinders to fly across the hall. My Dad's job was to chart the cracks and decide which engine got a new crankcase as they became available. Glad to see one of them.
Cool stuff. I used to work at the courthouse and commuted from Des Moines and on hot days in the summer I'd head down through DeSoto on 169 and my first clue that it was going to be a hot one was how many cows were in the pond up to their bellies, because cattle know about such things. Then as I passed the airport and came up the hill if I saw a plume of black smoke coming up I knew the Nordberg was running and it was going to be a damned hot day. At that time I was told that when the heat was on the utility would call up all the city utility plants like Winterset and tell them they had a couple hours to get them running and on frequency.
So that was called weather forecasting in those parts? I love it! Say do you know some basic specification for these units, particularly power output and horsepower. Oh and how many cylinders?
My grandfather was a mining engineer and manager for several mines in Canada during the 40s and 50s. I was told that he worked on and installed these engines at remote mines and processing plants in the Canadian north.
Geez, never knew the connection. About 1984 I was a corporate pilot for Rexnord in Milwaukee, they had 2 beautiful Lear-jets. I knew the company was involved with manufacturing mining equipment, as a merger of Rex ChainBelt with Nordberg, but never knew the history went back as far a radial engines.
I could tell you stories, my great grandfather and Bruno Nordberg started Nordberg in Milwaukee in the early 1900's. They were the first American company licensed by Rudolph Diesel to manufacture diesel engines in the US.
Never thought I’d witness this on video or anything. I’ve known about Nordbergs for years, but thought they were all out of service. Outstanding! Thanks!
@@chuckgilly At the risk of being pedantic I think you’ll find these engines generated a maximum of 7,500 kw. Also EMF is a representation of voltage not wattage. If you could get a gigawatt from an engine this size our power problems would be over.
Nordberg pattened a truely novel system of keeping the rod carrier on the crank in proper phase. No master rod. Just link rods. On their 11 cylinder radial they used gears to achieve that. Old Press Machines has an excellent article on these.
I had no idea this wonderful engine was in existence. Thank you for sharing it with us. I used to stand by the giant Ajax gas compressor engines in the oil fields (with ear plugs) just to feel the thump and throb. Nothing else like standing in the presence of any giant engine.
I never thought that Radial engines would ever be built this large, I mean I know there was airplane and tank radials that where pretty big but this thing is massive! I imagine this one is setup as a power plant for the local area (or as a peaker plant to provide power during peak demands)
If you like big radial diesel engines, take a look at the GM 16-338, also referred to as the "pancake engine." It was used briefly to power diesel electric submarines during the early 1950's.
Can you imagine the dynamic forces and massive parts just whirling around in there in order to cause vibration like that to solid ground? Kinda astonishing when you think about it
You can feel the vibrations in the camera. This engine is a unique two-stroke diesel radial, but it had some undesirable characteristics that prevented it from becoming more popular. It had an even number of cylinders and two master rods, as opposed to 4-stroke radials which had an odd number of cylinders and only one master rod. The two master rods corresponded to two opposed pistons fitting in two opposed cylinders with a central hub in the middle that was connected to a crankshaft by way of a connecting rod, and all the other pistons were connected to that central hub by movable connecting rods, just as in a normal radial engine. The problem with this arrangement is that it generates massive vibrations because there is one huge mass moving back and forth, the two master pistons with the associated fixed connecting rods and central hub. This can be seen in this video as the starting of the engine resembles the onset of an earthquake. This forces the output power to be limited, so this massive installation generated only 1,500 hp and was only suitable for fixed on-land applications where a concrete base could be used to suppress the engine's enormous vibrations.
There can’t be many of these left operational, which is a shame because there incredibly clever and compact for the power. I’ve seen 1960s or 70s era photos of a power hall full of them at an old aluminum smelter on the Texas coast (near Rockport/Fulton), but it’s long gone.
There used to be at least several of these at the ring canal of lake Okeechobee, they drove pumps to pull water out of the canal and thus the lake to send on down the drainage canals to keep the lake level down.
I've been wondering if this Engine was still around and operational; IIRC it's the last Nordberg Radial. I'll have to give visiting it a Try if I ever happen to visit the USA.
@@jaygibson0121 Sounds amazing if that's so easy. Even Germany is a little protective about Power Stations sometimes, and as far as I know, America tends to be much more Security-conscious than Germany. Things can be worse though; I had to pay quite a bit off Bribes for getting away with having taken a Photo of a Powership (470 MW Powerplant built onto a Bulk Carrier Ship) in Ghana. Theoretically, I'd like to make a Video about that one too if I visit Ghana again, but it's been relocated to a Navy Base a few Years ago, which certainly doesn't reduce the Challenges of getting there or even filming it.
The power plant at the aluminum refinery in Chalmette Louisiana had 2 lines with 144 engine/generators per line. These were all Nordbergs with, IIRC, GE generators on the first floor. The generators looked like giant green pears.
Hard to imagine that many engines. I heard they had the same thing at alcoa over in Milam County, Texas. 288 of these huge engines is just hard for me to believe but they had them.
Thought I did know something about engines, but . . . . this piece is a new thing for me. A radial with 12 cylinders ? Should be a two stroker. The camera shows the vibrations - cool !
Cool video. Reminds me of the thousand cubic inch inline 6 on the back of my father's snowblower, just because that engine seemed massive to me but this one has more than twice the displacement per cylinder. Holy Toledo.
It's a 1943 FWD 4x4 truck with a Klauer Snogo blower unit up front. It's belt/shaft driven off of a 1000+ cubic inch gasoline inline 6 in the rear. It has another inline 6 in the front to drive the truck. I think both engines were Waukesha. When my old man rebuilt the rear engine he ran it without a muffler for a bit and it would shoot flames out the stacks like a dragster, and if you angled the chute right it would throw snow about 60ft high. It was so spectacular to watch and the sound was equally epic. In some original advertising brochures the manufacturer claimed it to be able to move and load the equivalent snow of 3.5 payloaders. I think it lived up to that claim. We could plow with a pickup truck all day and the blower would consume the entire pile we made in a few minutes. Last I checked a slightly modified version of that Klauer Snogo blower head was still being manufactured for fitment on more modern trucks. The newer ones we looked at had loading chutes that would allow you to dump the snow right into a dump truck as you went.
The Nordberg radial was a two-stroke engine with a 14 in (356 mm) bore and a 16 in (406 mm) stroke. Each cylinder displaced 2,463 cu in (40.4 L). There was an 11-cylinder (RTS 1411) and a 12-cylinder (RTS 1412) version of the radial engine, displacing a total of 27,093 cu in (444.0 L) and 29,556 cu in (484.3 L) respectively. The 11-cylinder engine was 12.125 ft (3.70 m) in diameter while the 12-cylinder was 13 ft (4.96 m). The engines had an operating speed of 400 rpm. Output varied depending on the engine’s configuration. A 11-cylinder spark-ignition engine was rated at 1,340 hp (1,100 kW), an 11-cylinder diesel was rated at 1,655 hp (1,235 kW), and a 12-cylinder diesel was rated at 2,125 hp (1,585 kW).
Thankyou so much for posting this, at last I have heard one running having only ever seen pictures of them in old diesel engine text books, and a dual fuel unit as well if your piping colour code is similar to Australia yellow being natural gas fuel. If you have the opportunity to video it again please do. Is it still able to go online and make power? What is it's rpm and power rating? Thanks so much, Ray
@@patrickshaw8595 nearly 25 thousand foot pounds sounds enormous to me…the crankshaft design to deliver that much power in a radial configuration must be amazing
I'm thinking, gee that is smooth, quiet and vibration free. Turns out I was listening to the air compressor for the starter. What did it power, generator, pump?
Had to look up specs: probably the 12 cylinder, diesel/natural gas two stroke running 95% natural gas. Displacement 444 liters and making 2,125 horsepower. Close to 1.5 megawatts of electric power.
I knew it was possible build a two-stroke, radial engine with a even number of cylinders on a crank throw, but I did not know that it had actually been done. Four-stroke radials, of course, must have an odd number of cylinders in each row. I have since learned that during WWII both the Americans and Japanese built prototype aircraft radial engines with two rows of 11 cylinders each, but apparently none saw service. Crazy stuff.
Ok very nice and well preserved engine, I do not know such an engine, please tell me where it was used and for what it was used, that would interest me very much. Thank you
And I thought I know quite a bit about engines. But a radial Diesel engine that big and vertical. That is absolutely new to me. Do you have some extra data? Number of cylinders, bore/stroke volume? Power output? Thanks a lot!
Dumb question but where's the exhaust? I'm guessing those nicely painted manifolds around the top would have all that paint burned off if they carried exhaust. I'm also guessing from other big diesel gen sets I've seen running that this engine can make the exhaust manifolds glow after a while.
The movement in the video picture looks like it's caused by a magnetic field. I have seen that before on monitors located in electrical control rooms. I assume there is a generator just below the engine.
I have been enamoured with these engines ever since I learned of their existence. I thought they had all been decommissioned long ago. If you don't mind me asking, where is this little lovely located?
So it's a 2 stroke diesel, the injector is in the center of the head, the offset cylinder is a pneumatic exhaust valve, the yellow tube is the exhaust & the green tube is the intake with no valve? Then that mass of plumbing on top is fuel injection pump & valve timing? Can somebody explain this interesting monster to me??
It is 2 stroke. The fuel injector is in the center of the head. The natural gas valve is on the upper side of the head. Green pipe is jacket water out and yellow pipe is natural gas. The fuel pumps and gas valve actuators are the pumps you see at the top of the engine.
I never heard of such an engine that was so cool to see thanks for putting a video of it on youtube 🤠
I worked in a municipal power plant that had a Nordberg in-line engine. That thing was a beast, and it never failed us.
Good Lord! How did I not know of the existence of such a awesome engine
Wow, that is neat. I have heard of them, but have never seen one in person nor have I heard one start up and running. That is so cool. Thanks for sharing.
I think that's the largest vertical shaft engine I've ever seen. It's incredible.
Think of the lawn mower/scrub cutter you could put this on......
@@JohnSmith-yv6eq That was my same thought too!
Make a hell of a floor burnisher.
@@patrickshaw8595 don’t give the army any ideas!
THATS WHAT SHE SAID
Oh man so cool to see one live and running! I remember reading that Alcoa used them for making aluminum but scrapped them. Glad to see one alive.
Alcoa in Tennessee?
Alcoa in Point Comfort Texas. The Tennessee smelter was powered from hydroelectric developments owned by Alcoa on the Little Tennessee, Cheoah, and Nantahala Rivers, supplemented by hydroelectric power from TVA (that wasn't being used at Oak Ridge for uranium enrichment for the Manhattan Project).
Immediately after World War II Alcoa built a smelting plant at Point Comfort to partially replace the plants that had been operated by Alcoa during the War for the Defense Plant Corporation, but had been sold to Reynolds Metals Company and Permanente Metals (soon to become Kaiser Aluminum).
The idea was to use natural gas from offshore wells to power two-stroke engines developed by Nordberg, which drove direct-current generators mounted on a level below the vertical-shaft engines.
At Point Comfort we had six smelting lines powered by about 240 of these engines. The smelter shut down for the last time in the 1980s when the cost of electricity generated by the Nordbergs became uneconomically high.
In addition to the Point Comfort plant, Kaiser Aluminum had a smelter at Chalmette LA (right next to the 1815 Battlefield) that was equipped with 180 more Nordberg engines. As the price of natural gas increased over the years, Chalmette also became economically non-viable. About all that is left of the Chalmette smelter is a 400 foot tall smokestack that was supposedly referred to as "Henry J. Kaiser's Cigar".
vintagedieseldesign.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/img2344.jpg
LInk to a picture of one of the Point Comfort engine houses, from a Nordberg advertising brochure.
@@Mikey300 I can’t imagine the sound inside that engine house, wish there were footage of it
@@Mikey300 Thanks for your wonderful contribution!
My Dad worked for GM after the war and mentioned these, or something similar. GM made the crankcase castings and they were cracking allowing the cylinders to fly across the hall. My Dad's job was to chart the cracks and decide which engine got a new crankcase as they became available. Glad to see one of them.
The camera shake really underscores how massive this thing is. Would love to see one in person.
I think the dude standing over the engine block like it was a front porch sold it for me lol
Cool stuff. I used to work at the courthouse and commuted from Des Moines and on hot days in the summer I'd head down through DeSoto on 169 and my first clue that it was going to be a hot one was how many cows were in the pond up to their bellies, because cattle know about such things. Then as I passed the airport and came up the hill if I saw a plume of black smoke coming up I knew the Nordberg was running and it was going to be a damned hot day. At that time I was told that when the heat was on the utility would call up all the city utility plants like Winterset and tell them they had a couple hours to get them running and on frequency.
So that was called weather forecasting in those parts? I love it!
Say do you know some basic specification for these units, particularly power output and horsepower. Oh and how many cylinders?
I grew up in Madison County...had no idea that one of these was chugging away in Winterset...the area is more well known for its covered bridges.
I'm assuming it's a 2 stroke or may be it has sleeve valves ?
I know I'm over a month late. But I'm absolutely happy to see this obscure marvel of engineering being started up.
I as well.
My grandfather was a mining engineer and manager for several mines in Canada during the 40s and 50s. I was told that he worked on and installed these engines at remote mines and processing plants in the Canadian north.
Ole Nordberg will still fire up. Outstanding!
I have never in my life seen a radial even half this big. What a monster!
Geez, never knew the connection. About 1984 I was a corporate pilot for Rexnord in Milwaukee, they had 2 beautiful Lear-jets. I knew the company was involved with manufacturing mining equipment, as a merger of Rex ChainBelt with Nordberg, but never knew the history went back as far a radial engines.
I could tell you stories, my great grandfather and Bruno Nordberg started Nordberg in Milwaukee in the early 1900's. They were the first American company licensed by Rudolph Diesel to manufacture diesel engines in the US.
That is an awesome engine. My gast is flabbered.
Never thought I’d witness this on video or anything. I’ve known about Nordbergs for years, but thought they were all out of service. Outstanding! Thanks!
Thing got so much power the camera flexed. Excellent video
That is from the EMF of 1.21 Gagawatts
@@chuckgilly Let us know when you shrink this thing to fit it into the Delorean.
@@chuckgilly At the risk of being pedantic I think you’ll find these engines generated a maximum of 7,500 kw. Also EMF is a representation of voltage not wattage. If you could get a gigawatt from an engine this size our power problems would be over.
@@gorillaau Honey, I shrunk the Nordberg.
@@chuckgilly Better than "Honey, I blew up the Nordberg"
Nordberg pattened a truely novel system of keeping the rod carrier on the crank in proper phase. No master rod. Just link rods. On their 11 cylinder radial they used gears to achieve that.
Old Press Machines has an excellent article on these.
This is so cool! What an outstandingly beautiful piece of human technology and history. Please never let this engine die and rot away.
I had no idea this wonderful engine was in existence. Thank you for sharing it with us. I used to stand by the giant Ajax gas compressor engines in the oil fields (with ear plugs) just to feel the thump and throb. Nothing else like standing in the presence of any giant engine.
Me too. The rythmatic vibration is compelling.
I was so happy to find this video. I was wondering if it was still around. I'm very happy that it is.
I never thought that Radial engines would ever be built this large, I mean I know there was airplane and tank radials that where pretty big but this thing is massive!
I imagine this one is setup as a power plant for the local area (or as a peaker plant to provide power during peak demands)
Pretty sure they tried these for PT boats and small warship engines...
@@Shinzon23 mmh yes.... praise me, my worship engines.
@@stephankleen556 Sorry, typo, but it would have been amusing to see people worshipping the machine spirit about 60 years before they should be
If you like big radial diesel engines, take a look at the GM 16-338, also referred to as the "pancake engine." It was used briefly to power diesel electric submarines during the early 1950's.
Can you imagine the dynamic forces and massive parts just whirling around in there in order to cause vibration like that to solid ground? Kinda astonishing when you think about it
Yes locomotives do it drag cars do it cars with sound systems do it it’s more to do with resonance than anything
good thing we have you to tell us how astonishing it is!
Astonishingly crappy engineering.
@@isacchris1No they don't.
I have not the slightest idea what this might be good for but I absolutely want one!
Power generation for large industrial installations and serious pumping.
That is a passionate man. Towards the end, he made that engine sing. Hats off!
I really like seeing classics like this kept running
You can feel the vibrations in the camera. This engine is a unique two-stroke diesel radial, but it had some undesirable characteristics that prevented it from becoming more popular. It had an even number of cylinders and two master rods, as opposed to 4-stroke radials which had an odd number of cylinders and only one master rod. The two master rods corresponded to two opposed pistons fitting in two opposed cylinders with a central hub in the middle that was connected to a crankshaft by way of a connecting rod, and all the other pistons were connected to that central hub by movable connecting rods, just as in a normal radial engine. The problem with this arrangement is that it generates massive vibrations because there is one huge mass moving back and forth, the two master pistons with the associated fixed connecting rods and central hub. This can be seen in this video as the starting of the engine resembles the onset of an earthquake. This forces the output power to be limited, so this massive installation generated only 1,500 hp and was only suitable for fixed on-land applications where a concrete base could be used to suppress the engine's enormous vibrations.
About 50 years ago I was working on a ship "Alaskan Spruce" It had an inline Norgerg main engine.
Now thats a startup! Each cylinder firing trying to get to speed was shaking the camera. That engine is awesome.
There can’t be many of these left operational, which is a shame because there incredibly clever and compact for the power. I’ve seen 1960s or 70s era photos of a power hall full of them at an old aluminum smelter on the Texas coast (near Rockport/Fulton), but it’s long gone.
Port lavaca?
There used to be at least several of these at the ring canal of lake Okeechobee, they drove pumps to pull water out of the canal and thus the lake to send on down the drainage canals to keep the lake level down.
love this engine's rumble
I've been wondering if this Engine was still around and operational; IIRC it's the last Nordberg Radial. I'll have to give visiting it a Try if I ever happen to visit the USA.
If you make it let me know. Would like to show it off.
@@jaygibson0121 Sounds amazing if that's so easy. Even Germany is a little protective about Power Stations sometimes, and as far as I know, America tends to be much more Security-conscious than Germany.
Things can be worse though; I had to pay quite a bit off Bribes for getting away with having taken a Photo of a Powership (470 MW Powerplant built onto a Bulk Carrier Ship) in Ghana. Theoretically, I'd like to make a Video about that one too if I visit Ghana again, but it's been relocated to a Navy Base a few Years ago, which certainly doesn't reduce the Challenges of getting there or even filming it.
@@Genius_at_Work The smaller the easier I guess
i is enlightened, never heard of one before. now seen and heard. that would be a beast to overhaul.
The power plant at the aluminum refinery in Chalmette Louisiana had 2 lines with 144 engine/generators per line. These were all Nordbergs with, IIRC, GE generators on the first floor. The generators looked like giant green pears.
Hard to imagine that many engines. I heard they had the same thing at alcoa over in Milam County, Texas. 288 of these huge engines is just hard for me to believe but they had them.
Thought I did know something about engines, but . . . . this piece is a new thing for me. A radial with 12 cylinders ? Should be a two stroker. The camera shows the vibrations - cool !
What a lovely Engine .
I had to Google this lump as I'd never heard of it... Impressive 👍
This might just qualify as the most badass engine startup on the tube lol
Cool video. Reminds me of the thousand cubic inch inline 6 on the back of my father's snowblower, just because that engine seemed massive to me but this one has more than twice the displacement per cylinder. Holy Toledo.
So...tell us more about this 1,000 CI snowblower you speak of???
It's a 1943 FWD 4x4 truck with a Klauer Snogo blower unit up front. It's belt/shaft driven off of a 1000+ cubic inch gasoline inline 6 in the rear. It has another inline 6 in the front to drive the truck. I think both engines were Waukesha. When my old man rebuilt the rear engine he ran it without a muffler for a bit and it would shoot flames out the stacks like a dragster, and if you angled the chute right it would throw snow about 60ft high. It was so spectacular to watch and the sound was equally epic. In some original advertising brochures the manufacturer claimed it to be able to move and load the equivalent snow of 3.5 payloaders. I think it lived up to that claim. We could plow with a pickup truck all day and the blower would consume the entire pile we made in a few minutes. Last I checked a slightly modified version of that Klauer Snogo blower head was still being manufactured for fitment on more modern trucks. The newer ones we looked at had loading chutes that would allow you to dump the snow right into a dump truck as you went.
What a great video! And thanks for the high def!!
Very nice engine and thanks for posting this video. How much power does it produce, both shaft and electrically?
The Nordberg radial was a two-stroke engine with a 14 in (356 mm) bore and a 16 in (406 mm) stroke. Each cylinder displaced 2,463 cu in (40.4 L). There was an 11-cylinder (RTS 1411) and a 12-cylinder (RTS 1412) version of the radial engine, displacing a total of 27,093 cu in (444.0 L) and 29,556 cu in (484.3 L) respectively. The 11-cylinder engine was 12.125 ft (3.70 m) in diameter while the 12-cylinder was 13 ft (4.96 m). The engines had an operating speed of 400 rpm. Output varied depending on the engine’s configuration. A 11-cylinder spark-ignition engine was rated at 1,340 hp (1,100 kW), an 11-cylinder diesel was rated at 1,655 hp (1,235 kW), and a 12-cylinder diesel was rated at 2,125 hp (1,585 kW).
~1.5 MW in that compact of a package is really quite impressive
Really fascinating. What are the specs of this engine?
And what is it driving?
"If it ain't round, it ain't sound"!!
Thankyou so much for posting this, at last I have heard one running having only ever seen pictures of them in old diesel engine text books, and a dual fuel unit as well if your piping colour code is similar to Australia yellow being natural gas fuel. If you have the opportunity to video it again please do. Is it still able to go online and make power? What is it's rpm and power rating?
Thanks so much,
Ray
You are correct on yellow being natural gas. It does produce power and is 1500KW at 425RPM.
2000 horse power at 425rpm….that is an enormous amount of torque
@@CATech1138 (2000 X 5252)/425 = 24715 foot pounds exactly.
@@patrickshaw8595 nearly 25 thousand foot pounds sounds enormous to me…the crankshaft design to deliver that much power in a radial configuration must be amazing
A little hearing protectio might be a good idea. Impressive unit
I'm thinking, gee that is smooth, quiet and vibration free. Turns out I was listening to the air compressor for the starter. What did it power, generator, pump?
Looks like something Howard Hughes would put on some crazy plane he built.
haha, that's what i thought of too. Big enough for the spruce goose
Lovely radial diesel engine! Thank you for sharing this. Would love to see the rest of the generator set as well. How many MW electrical output?
everyone was a gangsta....
until the floor start shaking.
Worked on in line ones in ships . We're good engines
What fuel does it use? A yellow pipe usually means natural gas overhere in the Netherlands.
You are correct there, at 3.42 there is a red light illuminated bottom right, and below the name plate says " engine operating on on gas "
Had to look up specs: probably the 12 cylinder, diesel/natural gas two stroke running 95% natural gas. Displacement 444 liters and making 2,125 horsepower. Close to 1.5 megawatts of electric power.
Correct.
Some more information would be appreciated. Where is this? What is it for? Why was it shut down?...etc
It is at a Municipal power plant in Iowa that uses it for emergency generation.
Yeah, it seems to run decent, but why didn't you take it out for a spin around the block?
When you start this engine, it stays still and the block spins around it
@@connerlabs isn’t that a Rotary engine? And not the wankle
I knew it was possible build a two-stroke, radial engine with a even number of cylinders on a crank throw, but I did not know that it had actually been done. Four-stroke radials, of course, must have an odd number of cylinders in each row. I have since learned that during WWII both the Americans and Japanese built prototype aircraft radial engines with two rows of 11 cylinders each, but apparently none saw service. Crazy stuff.
Ok very nice and well preserved engine, I do not know such an engine, please tell me where it was used and for what it was used, that would interest me very much. Thank you
What caused the camera distortion upon motor start? Physical vibration, air movement or an electromagnetic field?
Ground vibration messing up image stabilisation of the camera.
A bed on that thing, I could sleep my life away
This is beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing this! What does this engine power?
electrical generator power plant prob
is it safe to head down a level to see what this motor is driving when the unit is in shut down?...or can you sneak a look at it in motion...
And I thought I know quite a bit about engines. But a radial Diesel engine that big and vertical. That is absolutely new to me.
Do you have some extra data? Number of cylinders, bore/stroke volume? Power output?
Thanks a lot!
12 cylinder, 14"/16", 1.5 MW
That is cool what is it generator a pump? I understand it’s a motor 12 cylinder, but what’s it for?
maybe a closer shot of the guages as long as they dont have too much sensetive info on them
It's Alive!!! My Creation, IT'S ALIIIIIIVVVVVEEEEE!!!
When I hear "Nordberg" I think of that detective in the movie "The man with the naked gun"
Dumb question but where's the exhaust? I'm guessing those nicely painted manifolds around the top would have all that paint burned off if they carried exhaust. I'm also guessing from other big diesel gen sets I've seen running that this engine can make the exhaust manifolds glow after a while.
The exhaust is on the bottom side of the head at floor level and extends in to the basement. Then it is piped outside to a stack.
Generator than? How many Kw/Mw?
Incredible engineering
I need to retro-fit one of these into my Cessna
Is this a back up for a power plant? Engine looks really nice and clean. Would like to be there in person and see it run!
That thing looks like more of a scifi nuclear reactor than an actual nuclear reactor!
LOL
10,000 HP natural gas 7.5Kw stationary generator. Every home should have one for power backup!
The movement in the video picture looks like it's caused by a magnetic field. I have seen that before on monitors located in electrical control rooms. I assume there is a generator just below the engine.
Amazing engine.
So cool! Apart from this obviously being an engine, what is it used for, and why radial and not some other design?
That was neat. I love the history of engineering and where we came from. That thing could rip your arm off! Where was this machine?
It's at the Winterset Iowa Municipal Utilities plant.
Rip off your arm is an understatement, it cranks out 24,715 ft lbs of torque I've heard.
"Welcome to the Machine"
Amazing🙂👍🏽 seems to be rotating at around 720 to 750 rpm if i am not wrong? Is it a prime mover for a generator?
It is for standby generation only and operates at 425 RPM
@@jaygibson0121 is this a 60 hz 8 pole generator?
@@MrBigdragon2009 4 pole 1800rpm, 8 pole 900 rpm so probably 16 pole
A beautiful work of art! Is that mess on top the slave or starting motor?
Injection and gas’s valve pumps. It is air start.
What does it power? A generator or pump?
Was that made in Milwaukee?
Yes
Wow cool. Didn't think any of them still existed in running condition.
put one on the living room ceilling and use it as fan
Radials with even number of cylinders? What sorcery is this?
Two-stroke engine, that is :)
The other model had eleven cylinders.
Amazing engine; I'd never heard of one before. Can you tell me; is it spark actuated or compression (diesel)? Is it two or four-stroke?
Co to za silnik ? Wygląda jak z samolotu, (duży silnik gwiazdowy)
It looks to me when he was standing in front of that panel for a while, maybe he was phase matching before he put the generator on line.
I have been enamoured with these engines ever since I learned of their existence. I thought they had all been decommissioned long ago. If you don't mind me asking, where is this little lovely located?
Winterset,Iowa
Where is that?
Very Very Cool
What does an engine like this get used for?
So it's a 2 stroke diesel, the injector is in the center of the head, the offset cylinder is a pneumatic exhaust valve, the yellow tube is the exhaust & the green tube is the intake with no valve? Then that mass of plumbing on top is fuel injection pump & valve timing? Can somebody explain this interesting monster to me??
It is 2 stroke. The fuel injector is in the center of the head. The natural gas valve is on the upper side of the head. Green pipe is jacket water out and yellow pipe is natural gas. The fuel pumps and gas valve actuators are the pumps you see at the top of the engine.
@@jaygibson0121 Thanks. That explains the small size of the yellow pipe. Does it pre-mix the air & gas or is there another intake port?
Gas valve will open during scavenging then a small amount of diesel is injected on compression to ignite the mixture.
why the yellow pipe? Is it a mixed fuel engine?
It is dual fuel. Yellow is natural gas.
Load what is it? No Load?
This was no load start up. It is a 1500KW unit.
Is this a pump engine?
Diesel or natural gas?
What is it used for ?
What is that above the nameplate @ 3:26?
Also can we get an hour of this running? I love the sound and would listen to it.
Cylinder oiler.
@@albinklein7680 I’m surprised it was use a motor and not be linked to the engine somehow. Thank you for sharing with me though!
I worked in Air Force diesel power plants but never saw an engine like this.
No PPE , OSHA should have a field trip to this facility,really cool engine though