Nova

I have found them. I have four (or rather 3 and a bit) ancient copies of Model Engineer.  1 is from 1947, 2 from 1947 and part of one from sometime in the war. The bit from the war time shows how to build a chassis which links a S.T. Sirius/Sun to one of several motor bicycle dynamos. These were used by the Resistance to charge their radio batteries. 

How ever I got the date of the Twin cylinder CI engine wrong. It is in ‘The Model Engineer’ Vol 100 No 2507 of Thursday 9 June 1947 (price 9 whole real pennies).  The column by Edgar T Westbury called ‘Petrol Engine Topics’. In it his opening gambit is a rebuttal of criticism for calling his column by this name. 2 out of his 4 ?quarto pages he rebukes his critics etc. He also talks about the original Swiss “Dyno” which was described in ‘The Model Engineer’ of the 15^th November 1945. It would be interesting to read this if a copy of it still exists.

The engine is his 2.5cc “Ladybird 2”. He also reports that CI engines with a cylinder size of much over 1.25cc are too large and says that “single cylinder engines of over 5cc to be somewhat rough running and inefficient”. 

This article which is mainly one of admonition contains the LGA drawing, a group of sectional drawings and a picture of the die castings for the main body of the engine. There is probably enough there to be able to reconstruct the original engine if it rest of the articles have been lost.

Edgar also says that “Ladybird 2” has been under development for nearly a year. That it would have been started in 1948. The name ‘Ladybird 2’ also suggests that there was another earlier Ladybird engine probably written up in late 1947 or 1948. 

The second copy from 1949 Vol 100 No 2506 (1 week before) Edgar T Westbury is describing a Utility Steam engine called Spartan. So at that time he was very prolific.

I did a quick Google on the Swiss Dyno engine and amongst the things I found was this site http://modelenginenews.org/ed.2005.02.html#1 which lead (amongst other things) to this site http://modelenginenews.org/mbi/dyno_1.jpg . All my poking about seems to show that the Swiss Klemenz-Schnek Dyno was first on sale in 1946. An earlier engine, again of Swiss origin, was the "Etha".

 I am not surprised that people had problems with Edgar T Westbury’s Ladybird 2. The centre bearing must have been a nightmare to make and get gas tight. The reason he made in the way he did was to allow himself to get the end bearings properly lined up.