page_title: Daimler Company
section_title: Sleeve-valve engines
hierarchical_section_title: Daimler Company / Independent (1896–1910) / Sleeve-valve engines
caption_attribution_description: Fig. 104 Cross section of Knight-Daimler engine The Knight-Daimler sleeve valve engine, using Knight's double sleeve valves.
context_page_description: The Daimler Company Limited, prior to 1910 The Daimler Motor Company Limited, was an independent British motor vehicle manufacturer founded in London by H. J. Lawson in 1896, which set up its manufacturing base in Coventry. The company bought the right to the use of the Daimler name simultaneously from Gottlieb Daimler and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft of Cannstatt, Germany. After early financial difficulty and a reorganisation of the company in 1904, the Daimler Motor Company was purchased by Birmingham Small Arms Company in 1910, which also made cars under its own name before World War II. In 1933, BSA bought the Lanchester Motor Company and made it a subsidiary of Daimler.
  Daimler was awarded a Royal Warrant to provide cars to the British monarch in 1902; it lost this privilege in the 1950s after being supplanted by Rolls-Royce. Daimler occasionally used alternative technology: the Knight engine which it further developed in the early twentieth century and used from 1909 to 1935, the worm gear final drive fitted from 1909 until after the Second World War, and their patented fluid flywheel used in conjunction with a Wilson preselector gearbox from 1930 to the mid-1950s.
context_section_description: Attracted by the possibilities of the "Silent Knight" engine Daimler's chairman contacted Charles Yale Knight in Chicago and Knight settled in England near Coventry in 1907. Daimler bought rights from Knight "for England and the colonies" and shared ownership of the European rights, in which it took 60%, with Minerva of Belgium. Daimler contracted Dr Frederick Lanchester as their consultant for the purpose and a major re-design and refinement of Knight's design took place in great secrecy. Knight's design was made a practical proposition. When unveiled in September 1908 the new engine caused a sensation. "Suffice it to say that mushroom valves, springs and cams, and many small parts, are swept away bodily, that we have an almost perfectly spherical explosion chamber, and a cast-iron sleeve or tube as that portion of the combustion chamber in which the piston travels."
  The Royal Automobile Club held a special meeting to discuss the new engine, still silent but no longer "Wholly Knight". The Autocar reported on "its extraordinary combination of silence, flexibility and power." Daimler stopped making poppet-valve engines altogether. Under the observation of the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), two Daimler sleeve-valve engines were put through severe bench, road, and track tests and, upon being dismantled, showed no visible wear, earning Daimler the 1909 Dewar Trophy. Sales outran the works' ability to supply.
  Daimler's sleeve valve engines idle silently but they left a slight haze of oil smoke trailing behind them. These engines consumed oil at a rate of up to an Imperial gallon every 450  miles, oil being needed to lubricate the sleeves particularly when cold. However, by the standards of their day they required very little maintenance.
  Daimler kept their silent sleeve-valve engines until the mid-1930s. The change to poppet valves began with the Fifteen of 1933.
caption: Knight-Daimler engine, transverse section
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