We have shown plenty of videos of hit and miss engines here on BangShift over the years but we have never, ever seen one like this. A truly giant example of a working stationary engine, this thing is basically an engine with wheels and it was used to power a mill back in the first half of the 20th century according to the video. Hit and miss engines are so named because of the method used to control their RPM. Designed to run at a steady state, there was no real way to throttle a working stationary engine like we do with stuff today. Having someone stand there and regulate the speed was not a good option so a pretty ingenious system was designed.
There were many variations of methods used to control the speeds of these engines but in basic terms there’s a governor employed that holds the exhaust valve open when the flywheel achieves an RPM higher than the desired number. When the flywheel slows down the exhaust valve closes and the intake valve is drawn open by the vacuum created in the cylinder because of the piston traveling to the bottom of the bore. The engine then fires and begins the whole cycle again.
We’re going to guess that this engine was designed to be used to power stuff like threshing equipment and other large implements. We don’t know how heavy it is or how many horses it would take to drag it to the locations where it could be used but it sure does not look light.
This engine, being a 1918 model is interesting because it is on the backside of the hit and miss engine era which was largely wrapped up by 1930. We have seen lots of these engines which are the size that two guys can pick them upland carry them around. We had no idea that they existed in this size. Watch it shudder, shake, smoke, and bang below!
Throttle governed Fairbanks Morse oil engine…