Another air-cooled boxer twin

[Luca]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kbdkuSy-QU

this was in the back corner of my landlord/roommate's garage.  Hasn't been run in 20 years or more.  My twin brother and I (I can't tell which one of us is talking when!) got it going in about a half hour, but we wasted 15 minutes opening up the front cover when we didn'd need to.    Quite an impressive machine... and what a nice engine configuration.

Don't mind the sinks, wood scraps, and empty beer cans...  I was ripping the whole garage apart

[Bob_Roller]

Looks like the same generator one of my uncles had, he was an independent plumber and routinely worked on sites that didn't have AC power available .

He bought the generator in 1955 and I know he was still using it in 1985, the last time I saw him .

[Luca]

Apparently Onans were the cat's pajamas, and Mr. Onan was so particular that he designed his own engine when he couldn't find one he liked.  Poking around the internet I've learned a little bit about them.  Sounds like they will routinely go 1500 hours and are overbuilt in the good old early American style... and made to be rebuilt again and again.

The fins on the head are curved so that air gets scooped up as it is blown between the head and head covers (not on in the video).  The mechanical fuel pump can lift a pretty good column of gasoline (it's written on the machine, with all the other instructions.  I think about 4ft).  You can start it by hand or with the electric start (battery in the video was pulled out of my Mercedes 240 Diesel).  It's and exciter starter (powers the generator to spin the engine) and smooth as silk.  There is also a set of screws that you can wire up to remote start and stop buttons.

Exhaust manifold looks to be 1" Female NPT at the end.  We have part of my landlord's Ford Raptor Magnaflow exhaust pushed over the end of it.  With 2 1/2' piece of 3" pvc held over the end it sounded like a boat.

[montmil]

There's an Experimental Category, composite construction (foam and fiberglas) aircraft called the Quickie. First few built flew with twin-cylinder Onan generator engines.

[Luca]

If I can get the man to give us the engine, I was thinking my brother an I would put it in a small aluminium boat

[wa1udg]

There is a Left Coast company which builds compressors out of Vee Dub flat fours, two cylinders power the thing and the other two are converted to compressor service.  

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

There is a Left Coast company which builds compressors out of Vee Dub flat fours, two cylinders power the thing and the other two are converted to compressor service.  

You mean like this one? (in SC?)

http://www.dunnrightinc.com/

[Tony Smith]

There is a Left Coast company which builds compressors out of Vee Dub flat fours, two cylinders power the thing and the other two are converted to compressor service.  

An interesting variation on a theme. What is interesting about the one in the photo is that each bank has one "driving" cylinder and one "compressor" cylinder. Whilst this probably leads to smoother running, it requires new manifolds three airfilters and a special camshaft to work. The compressor in the photo also requires a battery to run as it retains the stock coil and distributor.
 
There was a company in Australia that made VW compressors, they used two cylinders on one side as the "driving" cylinders and the two on the other side as the "compressor" cylinders. The compressor requirements being met by the use of a special cylinder head on the compressor side that had inbuilt reed valves.
 
A vast number were made and sold to construction companies and the like. My interest was attracted when I saw a bunch of 30 of them for sale at a disposal of excess equipment by the Government railway
 
I will not put here the ridiculously low bid that bought them all, suffice it to say that it cost me more to hire a light truck and employ a laborer for an hour to help me load them than it did to buy them all.
 
The laborer guy was highly amused and wanted to know what I was going to do with them all particularly as they were all marked as being non-functional, some had ventilated cases and on the whole they all looked quite sad.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I did in fact keep the best looking pair of them (in fact after a very minor repair one of them ran perfectly and I used it as my "shop" compressor for a number of years. As to the other 28, I took them straight to the town dump and paid $35 to dump them in the pit.

At least they went into the pit after I had removed the Scintilla magneto from each one.

Once I pulled the first magneto down I ascertained that they had been advance locked by the simple expedient of inserting the self tapping screw in an already existing hole to lock up the advance retard unit and wooden blanking plugs had been inserted into the two unused ignition lead outlets. Now if anyone in this group is a VW enthusiast they will have a rough idea of how much can be obtained for a working Scintilla magneto that is already completely set up for a VW engine. I had 19 working examples, 6 repairable ones and 4 damaged beyond repair.

That was, on the balance, a very profitable serendipitous find.
 

[Luca]

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I did in fact keep the best looking pair of them (in fact after a very minor repair one of them ran perfectly and I used it as my "shop" compressor for a number of years. As to the other 28, I took them straight to the town dump and paid $35 to dump them in the pit.  

Are there no scrap yards in Australia?  Somebody shoulda paid you for the metal!

[Tony Smith]

Are there no scrap yards in Australia?  Somebody shoulda paid you for the metal!

VW engine cases of that era are made of a magnesium alloy. due to the fire risk no metal recyclers want them. To my mind it was way too much trouble to remove the engines to sell off the rest

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Are there no scrap yards in Australia?  Somebody shoulda paid you for the metal!

VW engine cases of that era are made of a magnesium alloy. due to the fire risk no metal recyclers want them. To my mind it was way too much trouble to remove the engines to sell off the rest

Around here you could have sold them to bike clubs to burn in a bonfire at a rally.
I've never seen it done, but I hear it is quite spectacular.

[Tony Smith]

Around here you could have sold them to bike clubs to burn in a bonfire at a rally.
I've never seen it done, but I hear it is quite spectacular.

I've burned three over the years. The first (and I point out that I was still in my teens at the time and didn't know enough to know what I was doing was a bad idea) was the result of trying to do a spot of in-situ extractor pipe welding near an old engined that was leaking both petrol and oil. The petrol drips lit up on the concrete floor of my parents garage. fortunately I was smart enough to crawl out from underneath, knock it into neutral and push it out into the street before looking for the extinguisher. By the time I found the extinguisher, the caked on oil and road grime was well alight and receiving more fuel as the plastic top of the Brazilian fuel pump had melted.
 
Just as I thought it was under control the cases lit off and I wasted the contents of another extinguisher trying to put it out (you cannot, they will burn under water).

I had to pay the local council $400 to repair the bitumen on the road, and pay $100 for a truck with a big crane arm to come and pick up the charred remains of what had previously been a pretty nice Type III wagon.

The other two were deliberate, including one I stuffed full of aluminium lathe swarf and ignited with a strip of magnesium ribbon on Guy Fawkes night - that was VERY spectacular.

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

I had to pay the local council $400 to repair the bitumen on the road, and pay $100 for a truck with a big crane arm to come and pick up the charred remains

That was probably big money at the time!
Now it would be a bargain.

[Motu]

There was a company in Australia that made VW compressors, they used two cylinders on one side as the "driving" cylinders and the two on the other side as the "compressor" cylinders. The compressor requirements being met by the use of a special cylinder head on the compressor side that had inbuilt reed valves.

I remember them - in the late '70's I was for working NZ's largest hire outfit, and they had some.  As I had been into VW's I found then an interesting contraption.  The compressor heads were circular with concentric valves...can't remember  which was in or out.  There were better compressors....but they didn't need a separate drive engine.  They probably ended with the same fate as yours.

[decorn33]

I had almost forgotten about this thread until I was in my garage at the vacation house and realized I had the same unit as Luca. I got this generator set from my brother-in-law's father who bought the house where it was installed and didn't want it.  It is set up to run on propane at the moment. It came with an automatic transfer switch and a muffler.