Manufacturer: National Transit Co., Oil City, Pa.
Year: 1902
Serial No.: 317
HP: 20
Bore: 10-inch
Stroke: 18-inch
Ignition: Spark plug
Governing: Throttle
The 20 HP Klein Model 3 is extremely heavy duty, with heavy crankshafts, bases and connecting rods. Even though this is a 4-cycle engine, the piston, which is very short, is cross-head guided so that none of the connecting rod side thrust bears against the piston itself. The belt drive oiler is also British or European in design. In the oiler, the reservoir is filled, and as the shaft turns on a belt connected to the engine crankshaft there are small wires that dip into the oil, pick it up and wipe it off on posts. The oil drips from each post into a hole and into pipes that go to each of the bearings. On this engine, those pipes are not present.
The engine has a long frame and a large cylinder head, and in this design the cylinder head was cast integrally with the cylinder sleeve. “When you remove the four nuts at the top of the cylinder head and pull the piece off, you find that the gasket is only the water jacket and that the cylinder, which extends back, comes out with the head,” Clark Colby says.
The exhaust valve is mounted in its own chest in the cylinder head. Klein didn’t like having the valve spring near the hot exhaust valve, so the exhaust valve spring is at the other end of the rocker arm, and it’s a tension spring rather than a compression spring. Klein’s designs often used a face cam to operate the valve.
The pump that is belted to the Model 3 Klein was also built by National Transit Co. and is noted as a 3-1/2 by 8 VTPP. The “3-1/2” refers to the diameter of the plungers in inches, the “8” refers to the length of the stroke in inches, the “V” refers to the vertical pump, the “T” refers to the pump being a triplex, meaning that it has three inverted cylinders, and the “PP” means it’s a high-pressure pump used to discharge the oil from a pipeline station and transport it over some distance of miles to the next receiving station.
Learn more about this engine and 38 others in Coolspring: Discovering America’s Finest Antique Engine Museum and see them run on the Coolspring Museum DVD.
Contact the Coolspring Power Museum at PO Box 19, Coolspring, PA 15730, (814) 649-6883
