Chrysler Turbine Car

Chrysler Turbine Car

From the early 1950's to approximately 1980, the Chrysler Corporation

built a series of dedicated automotive gas turbines. There were at least seven generations of Chrysler turbine engines designed, built, and run, at a cost the company to this day will not disclose, but certainly in the high tens of millions of non-adjusted dollars. None of the company's designs saw commercial sale, and as far is as known only one of the hundred or more engines ever left the ownership of the company for a outside buyer. However the company indisputedly built more turbine automobiles than any other company and in fact probably more than all others put together. In addition, although the company's stockholders never benefitted, aspects of Chrysler's technology did enter commercial service on a very profitable basis.

To this day, Chrysler is remembered as the turbine car pioneer despite being at best the third company to build one and despite the total failure of Chrysler to market its technology for any application. Primarily this is because unlike others who built only display prototypes, Chrysler built 50 identical, uniquely designed test cars and loaned them to various customers for a three-month trial period. At the end of the trial, most of the cars were destroyed for semi-cogent purposes, and only one was ever put on the market for open sale, when the Bill Harrah car collection was largely liquidated.

The 50 test cars were coachbuilt to a very high standard by Ghia in Italy and were styled by Elwood Engel, who was hired to replace the fired Virgil "Excess" Exner. They were beautifully designed in the 'tapered' style found on the Engel-designed Ford Thunderbird and contemporary Chryslers afterward. The front end had headlight bezels styled to resemble turbojet engine inlet stators and the rear was a copy of the fuselage aft center of the then obsolete, and unsuccessful,Chance-Vought F7U Cutlass fighter. This design has been a perennial favorite of plastic and diecast car modellers ever since.

The engine used in all the test cars was the fourth generation Chrysler automotive gas turbine. It was a simple, productionable design using a single stage centrifugal compressor (which looks for all the world to be a scaled down Rolls-Royce Goblin section, and I suspect it is), a single compressor (gasifier) turbine and single power turbine with simple two-gear reduction, a single-can burner with a Champion igniter fired by an automotive ignition coil, and a pair of Cercor regenerators to provide thermal feedback to linearize the part-power fuel efficiency in housings on the side of the engine. A single, substantially oversized aircraft starter-generator was fitted, making hot starts or hung starts most unlikely and depriving onlookers of the traditional sturm und drang of turboshaft engine start sequences.

The engine could operate successfully on a variety of common fuels, except leaded gasoline. Unfortunately, in 1963, leaded gasoline was typically the only available common fuel at filling stations. Fuel economy was not outstanding, but surprisingly not substantially worse than many production cars of the day, and exhaust temperatures were never a serious issue in terms of fire or damaging other vehicles or pavement. In fact, at idle, it could be quite pleasant to stand behind in cold weather as it would gently warm one's feet.

After the test period was concluded, most of the 50 production and 5 program prototype cars were dismantled and their bodies and frames crushed. Several reasons were given, but ultimately it came down to the basic kid's refusal to let anyone else play with one's own toys. Afterward, the company built at least three more generations of turbine engine, which were placed in modified production vehicles (as had the first three generations of engine prototypes) often at the financing of the EPA. It was certainly at least partially a corporate sop as the Clean Air Act was a major contributor to the company's disinclination to produce a turbine engine for sale: it had a great deal of trouble meeting NOx limits and the R&D money was desperately needed to get the conventional engines to comply. Ironically one of the stated purposes of the Clean Air Act's draconian standards was to "force technology"; as is so often the case when technically ignorant legislators and unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats wield power their efforts backfired and made the conventional piston engine the only possible alternative for the auto makers.

Sadly for automotive enthusiasts and Chrysler stockholders, Chrysler never made a dime off their ill-fated Turbine Car effort. This is not to say Chrysler's simple and small turbine engine concepts did not prove successful and in fact immensely profitable. Sam Williams, the number-two engineer under program czar George Huebner, left Chrysler to found Williams Research, a Michigan company making very successful small turbine engines for primarily military uses. Williams Research is a privately held company which operates in unusually tight secrecy and does not divulge any information regarding its products to those it doesn't consider serious customers, and then usually under nondisclosure: even the prices of its engines are unknown generally. However, a copy of Jane's All The World's Aircraft will reveal a large array of engines used in several military applications, most famously the Tomahawk missile. It is generally conceded by everyone in the aircraft engine industry that Williams Research is one of the most profitable companies of its size in the industry. And there is little question that a great deal of the core Williams technologies, such as centrifugal injection investment casting of one piece turbine wheels, were pioneered by Chrysler.

Reply to
RapidRonnie
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automotive gas turbine

Automotive gas turbines are a type of turboshaft engine specifically designed for the purpose of roadgoing automobile or truck propulsion. Although they have generally been considered an evolutionary dead end and there is no major automotive company actively pursuing their development, they are a fascinating area of technology for students of both automobiles and of gas turbines in general.

Generally, automotive gas turbines differ from aircraft or aeroderivative industrial engines in several ways which are common to the needs both of the roadgoing automobile and to the varying market conditions automobiles and turbine aircraft occupy in our world today.

Because aircraft gas turbines are sold in small quantities to price-insensitive markets, they are generally built largely or wholly of light, high energy metals fabricated pieces and often employ intricate complex axial flow or compound compressor sections. Automotive gas turbines almost invariably use single stage centrifugal compressors and are built with structural components of aluminum or iron castings. Therefore, they could be produced at drastically lower costs at a small to moderate increase in weight for a given power. They are also almost all of the free turbine or two-shaft type, where the compressor and accessories are powered by a compressor turbine (or gasifier in GM parlance) whereas the output-transmission, generator, or propeller-is turned by a free spinning power turbine. (This is, for aircraft mechanics, similar to the Pratt & Whitney PT-6 series as oppoosed to the Rolls Royce Dart or Garrett AiResearch TPE-331.)

Straight gas turbine engines-those of simple or open cycle-are generally efficient over a narrow envelope of engine speed, gas flow and power output. This works well in helicopters (and race cars) because they are always at high output, and in fixed wing aircraft which can climb to altitude where the thin air results in lowered gas flow and fuel burn for lower shaft output but higher true airspeed. In a roadgoing auto or truck it would lead to extremely poor part-throttle fuel consumption, as well as high exhaust gas temperatures which would be a serious issue in city traffic.

Automotive gas turbines get around this by using thermal recuperation or regeneration to transfer excess heat from the exhaust immediately aft of the turbine wheels and put it back into the engine's air flow between the diffuser and burner sections. Usually recuperation refers to using a passive heat transfer system, such as an intercooler on a turbocharged piston engine, whereas regeneration uses an active method such as a Cercor porous wheel slowly rotated which is heated by the exhaust and cools off in the diffuser airstream. This makes the engine efficient over a wider power band and reduces total peak gas flow:many engineers compare this to the use of negative feedback in electronic amplifiers. Exhaust gas temperatures are also greatly reduced, as to some extent noise is as well.

Another requirement of automotive engines not found in aircraft service is engine braking. Automotive gas turbines provide engine braking in one of two ways. General Motors designed its engines with a remotely actuable overrunning clutch to link the separate gasifier and power turbine sections of the engine. This allows the compressor to act as a load when the vehicle is at high speed and no power is applied, and also allows the engine to be "locked up" at cruising speed where the engine acts as a single-shaft engine (like a 331 Garrett) for greater cruise efficiency.

Chrysler and most other automotive developers eschewed the clutch system in favor of a variable area turbine nozzle, analogious to the two-pitch stators found in some automotive automatic transmisssion torque converters, or to the petal engine nozzles of afterburning turbojets-or a common garden nozzle. By varying the angle of a number of airfoil-shaped blades around the turbine inlet, as a camera iris diaphragm closes and opens, the pressure and flow to the power turbine could be varied allowing for high torque at low rotor speed or actually a negative torque when the rotor was at high speed. It was considered much cheaper to implement and offered even more torque at high power and low PT (power turbine) speeds, requiring fewer gears in the transmission, although the engine braking was not comparable to the GM technique.

Engine and accessory practice was generally similar to that on small aircraft turboshaft engines, with starter-generators permanently coupled to the power section, and like the earliest aircraft turbines most used standard automotive oil products-ATF or SAE 30 motor oil-for lubrication with wet sump systems. (This in fact led to substantial coking issues in the first two generations of Chrysler engines.) Fuel controllers were standard aircraft pieces (which even then cost more than a new car engine: today, with the pretext of product liability, these same controllers cost more than whole new cars-and, aviation moving at a slothlike pace, are indeed still in production for the most part!) and ignition was usually by AC or Champion igniters fired by automotive or neon sign transformers. (Chrysler designed many of its engines integrally with a modified TorqueFlite transmission,and the engine and power steering gearbox were all lubricated from the transmission gerotor pumps!)

For further information on this obscure but fascinating area of technology, the best reference work is "The Gas Turbine Engine" by Jan Norbye. It was published in 1973-by which time the turbine car engine was almost an extinct notion to American automakers-and is probably the most comprehensive source on the subject. There are also substantial web resources which anyone may locate with any search engine with the obvious criteria.

Is the turbine automotive powerplant concept totally extinct? Commercially, yes. But with the availability of powerful CAD and desktop manufacturing software, the increasing availability of CNC multiaxis machining centers, and a powerful desire on the part of enthusiasts to re-create a unique part of automotive history strongly rooted in a very compelling point in time-the heyday of the turbine car, as an idea, was the era of Kennedy, Monroe, and the Rat Pack with their Dual-Ghias, after all-it's entirely possible someone will deign to turn the pictures and drawings in these old books into sand-casting patterns and centerless-ground shafts and Inconel blades. If a bunch of determined Argintineans can build Grand Prix Bugattis from scratch, it's certainly possible a Chrysler Turbine Car or a BRM-Rover engine might once again breathe air-like the fictional dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park".

Unfortunately, I wouldn't hold my breath, though....

Reply to
RapidRonnie

This is *NOT* correct. Several of the gen4 turbine engines intended for use in the 1963 Ghia-body Turbine Cars are in private or museum ownership.

False. The halo effect is quite real.

Not to mention the ripple effects from the techniques and technologies developed as part of the Turbine Car program.

The purposes were cogent enough: Chrysler didn't want to pay importation duties and taxes for fifty essentially unsaleable foreign-built cars. They

*tried* to find homes for more than just the ten that were saved. There just weren't many takers.

Anyone got a figure on how much that car brought?

"Productionable" is not a word.

Horseshit. One and only one reason was ever given. It is above.

Incorrect; the gen7 engine in 1981 handily complied with *1989* emission standards, including NOx. It was ||

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

Not to mention that the practice of putting old helecopter turbines into ski boats is alive and well. I work with a guy that built one and runs it semiregularly on the river - needless to say when he fires it up, it sounds like a 747 taking off. It's not like building a turbine car would be that big of a challenge.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

Reply to
jdoe

Aside from Frank Kleptz can you name one running engine in _private_ hands?

Yeah, Williams Research.

It was advertised in the "Robb Report" in the mid-late 80s for $100K. The ad did not mention the engine was gutted. Idiotpenis Domino's owner Tom Monaghan bought it for $60K I seem to remember.

Like f*ck it isn't.

Nancy Sinatra would disagree-her daddy tried getting her one. In fact Chrysler had hundreds of letters from people wanting one. Presumably most weren't Siantras though.

Reply to
Bret Ludwig

Putting a runout junk aircraft turboshaft engine in a car is not too challenging. Many have been done. The colossal fuel burn, noise, exhaust heat, etc. means the fun usually wears off shortly and the car gets parted out or sold to an even more gullible clown. Andy Granatelli did this famously-he sold a Corvette to a dumb bunny for a six-figure sum with one of his leftover unairworthy junk training engines he'd wheedled out of P&WC in the sixties.

Turboprop and turboshaft engines have a core value as runouts that is still higher than a new car, until that series of engine is no longer wanted-usually because all the airframes that take it have been upgraded to a higher dash number engine or junked, and the parts in the engine are then of no value. PT6's are usually worth thirty or forty grand now no matter what because the ST6 oil well and genset market supports them, but Allison 250s are on the market cheap in the older dash numbers. So are TPE-331 Garretts, but they are unusable for cars, being single shaft engines.

Sooner or later one of these things will have a hot section failure in public and the motor vehicle departments will ban gas turbines in cars outright, as unelected bureaucrats do, and that will be the end of that. The answer of course is blade containment, but the junk barons can hardly be bothered.

Reply to
Bret Ludwig

How about all 9 survivors and their locations:

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Whether it isn't "like f*ck" or not, productionable is not a word.

From entering "productionable" in the search field of the Merriam-Webster online dictionary,

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:

The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search box to the right.

Suggestions for productionable:

  1. productional 2. productions 3. preoccupations 4. predications 5. predictable 6. predoctoral 7. protectionist 8. protectionists 9. predaceousness 10. protectionisms

A real word that has the correct meaning is "producible."

Reply to
Steve

As I recall Granatelli's cars never won at Indy. The popular wisdom at the time was that they were banned because they were quiet and the Indy promoters figured that without the roar of the engines nobody would want to watch the race.

Reply to
General Schvantzkoph

Hmm - well there's lots of turbocharged cars out there, I would think it would have to be a very specifically-written law with some wildly interesting justifications to ban turbines in the engine yet permit them in the exhaust stream.

Keep in mind also that turbines don't pass the emissions of todays engines so your modded cars aren't street legal already, anyhow.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

Try doing 0-60 in 5 seconds with a turbine... :)

Seriously, great info, everyone! From the Airflow to the turbine, we can see how Chrysler can have some great ideas even if they don't have the intended results.

Reply to
Marc

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