Survival of the Steamer Car

Eckener · Jul 28, 2010

Okay, so I'm in Colorado on vacation with my family. During a stop in Estes Park, my uncle, who loves all things automobile, found the Stanley Steamer Museum there.

After talking a bit about the car (and seeing a restored Steamer in the museum) he and I got to wondering just what the world would be like if the Steamer had survived and the Internal Combustion Engine went out of use. And since I told him about this forum, he suggested that I post the idea on here and see what people come up with.

So, any ideas?

Atomo · Jul 29, 2010

Under pressure...

The demise of the steam powered car has a few causes...

Speed/Acceleration...
To obtain the speeds and reaction requested (but not really required) by drivers now you would need to have the steam on board at a much higher pressure than they did back then... and high pressure steam is dangerous. When an IC engine dies it doesn't explode or cause scalding/burning (unless it catches on fire and the person is a big enough twit not to run). If a person didn't maintain the boiler/piping/engine in a steam system the consequences are much more severe. As the son of a mechanic (40+ years experience) I can say the one thing you can count on the average driver for is to not maintain their car!

Cold Starts...
IC has steam all beat here, instant on is better than wait a while for steam to build up.

Now, how do you fix these two issues?
For the Speed/Acceleration you need pressure... and pressure can kill. The only way to achieve safe operation is to overbuild. Put in a large safety margin in all piping. That gives longevity benefits too, the average steam engine might have the durability of a Cummins diesel in a Dodge truck... usually the truck goes first!
Computer control could also help here, shutting down the system or venting steam if a dangerous situation occurs.
The computer controls could also have a great effect on cold starts... maybe a pre start button on the fob? It starts the boiler, similar to an autostart.
The computer controls could also make the boiler multi fuel capable. You could burn moonshine to regular gas and everything in between.

I think if someone made a go of it back in the day and kept at it steam powered vehicles could have evolved.
But in such an environment maybe Chrysler's turbine cars would have made a better go too.

NothingNow · Jul 29, 2010

Atomo said:
The demise of the steam powered car has a few causes...

Speed/Acceleration...
To obtain the speeds and reaction requested (but not really required) by drivers now you would need to have the steam on board at a much higher pressure than they did back then... and high pressure steam is dangerous. When an IC engine dies it doesn't explode or cause scalding/burning (unless it catches on fire and the person is a big enough twit not to run). If a person didn't maintain the boiler/piping/engine in a steam system the consequences are much more severe. As the son of a mechanic (40+ years experience) I can say the one thing you can count on the average driver for is to not maintain their car!

Cold Starts...
IC has steam all beat here, instant on is better than wait a while for steam to build up.

Now, how do you fix these two issues?
For the Speed/Acceleration you need pressure... and pressure can kill. The only way to achieve safe operation is to overbuild. Put in a large safety margin in all piping. That gives longevity benefits too, the average steam engine might have the durability of a Cummins diesel in a Dodge truck... usually the truck goes first!
Computer control could also help here, shutting down the system or venting steam if a dangerous situation occurs.
The computer controls could also have a great effect on cold starts... maybe a pre start button on the fob? It starts the boiler, similar to an autostart.
The computer controls could also make the boiler multi fuel capable. You could burn moonshine to regular gas and everything in between.

I think if someone made a go of it back in the day and kept at it steam powered vehicles could have evolved.
But in such an environment maybe Chrysler's turbine cars would have made a better go too.

Cold Starts and all that could be fixed by the introduction of the Flash-boiler to Steam-cars.
Seriously, butterfly away either Standard Oil or any ICE automaker buying the Flash Boiler patent and you've saved steam cars, possibly electric cars as well.

TIMER · Jul 29, 2010

As for the speed issue the land speed record was held by a stanley steam car from 1906 to 1924 (127.66 mph). And as NothingNow said the cold start problem is solved by the use of a flash boiler as in the Doble steam car in the 1920's.

Jay Leno has a video on the web of him driving his, check it out.

cclittle · Jul 29, 2010

The Exploding Problem

One reason steamers became unpopular was the drivers forgot to open the valve and let mounting steam pressure out. Supposing there was a way to open the valve even if the driver didn't remember? Our time line computer technology would do it.

NothingNow · Jul 30, 2010

cclittle said:
One reason steamers became unpopular was the drivers forgot to open the valve and let mounting steam pressure out. Supposing there was a way to open the valve even if the driver didn't remember? Our time line computer technology would do it.

It could be solved a simple spring loaded pressure valve, letting of the pressure after it reaches Xpsi and bleeding off steam until it goes below that pressure, there's no need to overcomplicated the system.

Grey Wolf · Jul 30, 2010

Durant bought Locomobile but lost interest in building cars and decided to run a bank instead. If he'd remained focused, maybe a united Durant Motors to rival GM would have had a surviving steamer arm?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf · Jul 30, 2010

Sorry I got that wrong - by the time Durant bought it, the company was building internal combustion engines not steam cars#

Many apologies!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

DuQuense · Jul 30, 2010

The Doble Brothers Steam Car is about the last chance for Steam Cars,
Flash Steam, Re-condenser, Simple Drive Train/Transmission [ IIRC only 26 moving parts]
However they couldn't stop tinkering, sometimes redesigning the cars on the assemble line several times.
They went Bankrupt with a Backlog of some 5000 cars pre ordered.

1940LaSalle · Jul 31, 2010

A flash boiler would solve most, but not all, of the cold start problems; I haven't done any calculations, but likely there would still be a minimum startup time on the order of a few (single digits) minutes, as opposed to the half hour or so the more conventional Stanleys required. Perhaps an on-board high pressure tank that could receive steam from a stationary boiler via a temporary hose connection could provide steam for startup operation, with a shift to on-board generated steam shortly thereafter. Piping for high pressure steam is not a problem; that's what schedule 160 pipe (at least in the US) is for, among other things.

Maintenance would be outside the scope of the average owner, but then again, there were far fewer moving parts, so maintenance would likely be a lot less.

The only other thing I could think of that hasn't been mentioned is a preheater/economizer that would remove as much heat as possible from the exhaust stream and/or cylinder exhaust steam. Well, that and high thermal conductivity alloys for the air-cooled condenser...

Don Lardo · Jul 31, 2010

cclittle said:
Supposing there was a way to open the valve even if the driver didn't remember? Our time line computer technology would do it.

There was a way. It's called a safety valve and it's been an integral part of any well designed boiler since the 1690s.

Anyone here work with steam? Or have any appreciation of how dangerous it is, even at low pressures and temperatures? Hell, even hot water can quickly kill as numbers of children scalded by idiots during baths prove every year.

Anyone want to hazard a guess about the amount of maintenance required to keep a steam-powered car operating safely as opposed to an IC car of the same period?

And for start-up times, even if flash boilers reduce cold starts to single minutes, how does that compare to the few seconds it takes an IC engine to start.

There are very many good reasons why steamers failed and you'll have to craft a POD to cover every one of them.

freodhoric · Aug 4, 2010

1940LaSalle said:
A flash boiler would solve most, but not all, of the cold start problems; I haven't done any calculations, but likely there would still be a minimum startup time on the order of a few (single digits) minutes, as opposed to the half hour or so the more conventional Stanleys required.

According to this blog, the Doble's steam up time was 40 seconds and 0-40 time was 12.5 seconds.

Anyway, i've attached an NY Times article from 1908, in which the fellow makes at least one good point. Steam cars had an advantage in that the torque characteristics meant they didn't have to have any gears to shift. That was a big deal before synchromesh came into wide use. He also points out that they're much quieter.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is that steamers frequently had to take on water in addition to fuel. I've heard why condensors wouldn't have worked, but i forget. Too heavy for a car, maybe?

Last thing, some second-hand speculation. I've heard that steam cars had two big problems. One was that the companies weren't trying to advance technologically. Thought they already had the perfect product or somesuch. I'm pretty sure that was true of the Stanleys, but i'm not so sure about White &c. Two is that at some point, steam cars weren't competing in races anymore. I do seem to recall that they didn't do very well in the ones they did enter, but above-mentioned second-hand speculation says that they were banned because high low-speed torque gave them an advantage that was perceived as unfair. Anybody know anything about that?

Survival of the Steamer Car

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