Arizona republican., 1918-07-21

tial vacuum was created equivalent to that which exists at the maximum height to which an airplane engine has been carried. In this room the engine was found to operate perfectly At one Of It's first altitude tests in plane the Amereah feeerd fef altitude was smashed. Not until Septeinbet was the order to proceed with the manufacture of the Liberty Motor definitely given, and immediately werh wes started In the Packard plant.
 It was not considered advisable to build new plant and purchase new machinery for the manufacture of the new motor because this would consume a great deal of time. Instead. It was decided to give up the manufacture of automobile motors for the time being. and rearrange the machine tools to take the new motor. While the plans were being prepared to carry this out the automobile motor plant was operated day and night at full capacity in order to produce as many automobile motors as possible before the manufacture of
 them stonped. Under this intensive program, by the end of the year, large stock of motors had been ma. chined and for the most part assembled to meet the commercial demands. In the meantime work on the new Lib erty Motor was going ahead as fast as
 possible. New igs had to be con- structed, machine tools had to be fitted with new appliances and the work had to be organized so that the motor could
 be produced on n large scale.
 It ls interesting to note that the first experimental motor was delivered to the government on the 4th day of July
 and the first production motor was
 sent to Washington on Thanksgiving
 day. This, however, did not mean that the production problems had all been
 solved No one except man who has actually had experience with such work
 can realize the infinite amount of de- tail required in organizing new in dustry. Usually, the organization work | does not make any showing at all to the general public, and consequently is
 not appreciated. One of the engineers
 of the Ford plant told the writer per sonally that he thought everyone would recognize the right of the Ford com pany to an opinion on quantity pro | duction manufacture. He said that | never in the worlds history had a
 greater piece of work been done on a
 similar scale. The development of the
 Liberty Motor was simply short of
 marvellous. and the public instead of
 criticizing the manufacturers for slow
 ness should be thankful thatsthey have
 had such competent men to carry on
 the work and develop motor of such
 efficiency in so incredibly short space
 of time
 The motor which was delivered to the | government on Thanksgiving day de- | veloped a number of small troubles | One of these was the difficulty of lu- | brication, and eventually it was found necessary to change the scupper system to the original forced fabrication sys- | tenn.
 One of the difficulties encountered ir
 the Liberty motor had to do with the
 form of ignition. In the original Pack
 ard motor, the "Delco' system of igni-
 ton was used This consists in gen
 erating current with a small electri, | generator geared to the engine shaf
 and then transmitting the current by
 means of a pair of distributors to the
 spark plugs. Magneto ignition was
 tried, but it proved impossible to de
 sign a single magneto which would
 operate with the irregular timing re quired in an engine in which the cylin
 ders were set at the unusual angle O A5 degrees. A single magneto coul' not be used and so a battery of fOu magnetos had to be employed. Thi , added somewhat to the weight of tn
 engine. Then further difficulties wer
 encountered. Owing possible to the vi bration of the engine at high speed, tn magnets of the magneto showed fatigu
 and gradually lost their ma gnetic prop
 erty. So that eventually it was decide, , to return again to the original systen of ignition. One of the marked differ ences in appearance of the Liberty an Packard "900' is due to the fact tha the latter is provided with reductio
 gearing. The advantage of this is tha it places the hub of the propeller nor nearly in line with the center of are , of the engine, so that far more efficien , driving results are produced in the ail For this reason the reduction gearin is being looked upon with favor now and it is highly probable that there wi
 be a return to this feature of tn original Packard 900" Furthermor the ideal speed for the engine is highe than ideal propeller speed. It is rath ' CT remarkable that in a number of yer important features it has been neces
 sary to revert to the original design. Production of the Liberty motor 0 now proceeding at very satisfactor s pace. More motors are being pro | duced than there are planes to carr r them. When the writer visited tn | Packard plant several weeks ago the s were being turned out at the rate of l 0 per day and it was hoped that insid e of two months a production of 50 DC = day would be attained No expens t was being spared to reach this rate ( k production, but again the matter of or r ganization was holding up the work, s d that it was considered impossible { = attain that rate before the end of Jun : In the Ford plant, manufacture of th
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