1927 Cummins Model P

This image got me started.

Cummins and his first diesel

Google found this on the Cummins website:

THE LEGACY OF THE CUMMINS NO. 8 RACE CAR by Michael Nagel

May 15, 2015

Of all the Cummins race cars, none is as well-traveled as the 1931 No. 8 Cummins Diesel. From the famous Indianapolis speedway to a tour round the world, the No. 8 car was the model for efficiency and reliability.

Cummins founder Clessie Cummins originally installed his 4-cylinder model U engine in a Duesenberg chassis and in February 1931, drove it to Daytona Beach and set a new diesel speed record averaging 100.755 miles per hour (mph).

In May of 1931 Clessie took the Cummins-Powered Duesenberg as the No. 8 Cummins Diesel to the Indy 500 and finished 13th with an average speed of just over 86 mph. It was the first car in racing history to complete all 500 miles without any pit stops.

The No. 8 car wasn’t retired after the race. Cummins founders W.G. Irwin and Clessie Cummins drove it on a European tour through France, Monaco, Italy, Germany and England to promote the efficiency and reliability of the diesels.

So now I'm looking for some information about this Model U engine. Wikipedia coughs up:

The Cummins Engine Company was founded in Columbus, Indiana, on February 3, 1919, by mechanic Clessie Cummins and banker William Glanton Irwin. The company focused on developing the diesel engine invented 20 years earlier. Despite several well-publicized endurance trials, it was not until 1933 that their Model H engine, used in small railroad switchers, proved successful.

So two years after the founders made their world tour, business came their way. So now I'm looking for this Model H engine, but I'm not getting anywhere. Probably because there's only three guys who have the info and they're so old they don't even know about the internet. So instead of anything useful, we get to watch this even older engine get run through it's paces.

Can you imagine trying to set up a factory to build an engine? Now-a-days to be competitive, you would probably need a billion dollars. There are a few specialty shops building engines, big and small. I wonder if any of those small shops are casting their own iron blocks? Casting iron is a big deal, not like casting aluminum. That crazy old coot who rode the The World's Fastest Indian was casting pistons in his backyard. Casting iron takes a lot of heat. How much, you ask? Let's see what we can find.

From THUNDER SAID ENERGY:

A good rule of thumb is 25 kWh of useful energy to heat each ton of material by each 100ºC. (1) Thermodynamics 101. Heating and melting materials requires energy, inducing particles to vibrate more (specific heat) and ultimately to break the bonds that hold them together as a solid or liquid (latent heat).

Density of iron is 7.874 grams / cc. Density of aluminum is like 2.7 grams / cc, so iron is three times as dense as aluminum so the same size object would weigh three times as much and require three times as much energy. Except iron has a much higher melting point than aluminum. Aluminum melts at 1200 degrees C, iron melts at 2800 degrees C, so, assuming we are heating the metal on a cold winter's day, iron is going to take:

(7.874/2.7) * (2800/1200) = 6.8 times as much energy to heat to the melting point as aluminum.