Langhuisterweg45, 9076 PL Sint Anna Parochie, the Netherlands,
E-mail: h.terpstra@wxs.nl
This Lorenz engine is probably late teen/early twenties. It was
made in Czechoslovakia and is of a very high quality. It’s 4HP
but weighs about 1600 lbs.! The canopy is original.
The hit and miss governor works on the intake valve. Note the
pedestal mounted fuel tank. The engine has a belt driven water pump
to aid cooling.
I haven’t very much information about the history of this
engine. Lorenz was probably a large factory. Rumors go that they
sold their engines with a small thresher as a complete set. Looking
at our Lorenz, it’s quite obvious that it was an
‘expensive’ engine. I’m sure the canopy was an option,
as there are very few Lorenz engines with a canopy.
The engine is built to a high standard. It has bronze bearings
and bronze bearing blocks on the connecting rod for big end and
wrist pin box. All bearings and major parts have the engine serial
number stamped in.
The hit and miss governor works on the intake valve; the
governor just ‘pulls’ the cam out of the way of the cam
follower, preventing the intake valve from opening.
The engine is idling under compression. This gives a completely
different sound when idling than American-made engines. There is a
third fuel valve in the carburetor that opens when the engine sucks
in fuel.
The engine has a very large muffler mounted underneath. The
engine runs real smooth!
Almost all Lorenz engines are mounted on these heavy trucks. All
Czech engine trucks have these nice wheels.
It has a belt driven centrifugal water pump, so it’s not
necessary to completely fill the water tank. The small
‘tower’ on top of the water tank is typical of Lorenz
engines.
This Nonpareil engine is also part of Harry Terpstra’s
collection. Made in about 1908, it was sold new in Czechoslovakia.
The wheels of the trucks are typically Czech. The engine has a
Bosch low-tension trip magneto.
The engine stands on three points; two on the back of the
engine, and one under the cylinder on the rear axle. It’s much
like a Stickney.
The engine wasn’t running when we bought it, but we had it
running quite easily. The magneto bearing was worn out, causing the
magneto to stick. I set it up in the lathe and turned the bearing
out and put a new bushing in the front plate. I reamed the new
bushing in the lathe, too, to fit the shaft.
The engine was VERY dirty when we got it, and it was very time
consuming to clean the dirt from 80 years. We had to take it apart
anyway, because the wrist pin was worn out. We took the cylinder
off, but that wasn’t very easy. The wrist pin is unusually
heavy for a 4HP engine, and has a tapered end to give a snug fit in
the piston. This made it quite tricky to machine a new wrist
pin.
After cleaning the valves we put it back together. It took quite
some fiddling with the governor to get it running fine, but
that’s solved too, now. It has lots of compression. It has a
special starting cam to lower compression when starting. That is
absolutely necessary, because it has no retard on the magneto.
After cleaning, we found quite a bit of original striping. We
intend to leave it in its original condition.
The flywheels are 32′ diameter, and the pulley 20′. It
has 4HP at 280 rpm (at least that’s what I can make of the
Czech literature).
