A Place For Fun With Old Engines
This subject spans many decades...
PRESENTING THE
DETROIT DIESEL INLINE 71 SERIES
In the late 1930s the brilliant
design team at the GM Research Laboratories, led by Charles Kettering,
set out to develop a versatile high speed diesel engine that would
be suitable for a wide range of automotive, marine, and industrial
applications. The result was the GM Detroit Diesel 71 series,
one of the most successful and long lived diesel engine designs
ever produced. The 71 series engines are named for their swept
displacement per cylinder (in cubic inches), a naming practice
that Detroit Diesel shared with the Electro-Motive Division of
General Motors.
The main incentive for the development
of the 71 series was GM's truck production and their partial ownership
of Yellow Coach. This provided an immediate market for thousands
of the engines, but the designers also made advance provision
in the design to accomodate marine exhaust manifolds, a wide range
of engine mountings, and marine transmissions. Consequently the
engines could also be used for a wide variety of marine or stationary
power generating, power takeoff, and pumping applications.
The 71 series are two-stroke cycle
uniflow scavenged engines, with the air entering the cylinders
through a ring of ports in the cylinder liners, and the exhaust
exiting through valves in the cylinder head. In early production
all the engines were fitted with engine-driven Roots blowers,
but late production some models of the 71 series were available
in versions having a turbocharger in series with the Roots blower
for higher power output.
Eventually the series would be
built in one, two, three, four, and six cylinder inline models.
The four larger engines were well equipped for use as ships service
engines on tugboats, and the 4-71 and 6-71 were often used for
propulsion in smaller tugs and workboats, singly or in twin or
quad sets. When the US entered World War Two, the 71 series were
adapted to many military applications, including propulsion packages
for tanks and use in landing craft, ships' boats, and shore based
power generating plants. Following the war the two cylinder model
was widely applied as a refrigeration engine in railroad cars.
The 71 series served as the design
model for a number of other engines, both larger and smaller.
In 1945 GM introduced the larger but very similar 110 series uniflow
scavenged engine, which proved successful in many marine and railcar
application. There were both Roots and centrifugal blower versions
of the 110 engines. Around the same time they introduced the smaller
51 series valveless cross flow scavenged engines. The 51 series
was built in small numbers, primarily as a marine and industrial
engine, and today they are very rare and eagerly sought by engine
collectors. The 51 series was replaced in the product line by
the more conventional 53 series uniflow scavenged engines in the
1950s, and was used in a wide range of marine, railroad and industrial
applications as well as in trucks. Vee versions of the 71 series
were also developed in this time period, and became a widely used
bus engine for several decades. The product line was further supplemented
by the very similar but more powerful 92 series engines, basically
a larger bore version of the 71s, which remained in production
until very recently.
Article and page design by Preston Cook, ©2009
by T.E.S.
**********
Above: A longitudinally sectioned view of the
Detroit Diesel 3-71 engine shows the view in the air box (left
to right) of the outside of the liner on cylinder #3, a section
through the piston and rod on cylinder #2, and an outside view
of the piston, rod, and rings on cylinder #3. Top three illustrations
by GM Diesel Power.
**********
Above: The Detroit Diesel 71 series was stunningly
successful right from its introduction, and engine #100,000 was
produced by the middle of World War Two. The production life of
the 71 series was from the 1930s into the 1990s, making it one
of the longest manufactured and successful diesel engines of all
time.
**********
Above: The engine room of a newly completed tugboat
photographed in the early 1950s shows the typical application
of Detroit Diesel 71s along the port side as ships service engines,
with a Cleveland 12-278A main engine. From the 1930s into the
1950s, GM Diesel Power served as the marine and industrial sales
agency for all the GM divisions building diesel engines, including
Detroit Diesel, Cleveland Diesel, and Electro-Motive Division.
Under this arrangement, vessel sets of engines were often sold
and installed as a single order. This photo is from a Cleveland
Diesel Engine Division publicity package issued at the vessel
launching.
**********
Above: A pair of Detroit Diesel 71s are shown
in the engine room of a Lehigh Valley Railroad tug at Jakobson
Shipyard in the late 1940s. The electrical switchboard is aft
of the two engines behind the access ladder to the main deck.
Photo from a Cleveland Diesel Engine Division press package.
**********
