One of the most spectacular sights at AirVenture 2008 is the daily demonstration run of an aero engine that’s nearly 100 years old – an air-cooled Anzani 25hp 3-cyl ‘fan’ unit similar to the one that powered Louis Bleriot’s historic flight across the English Channel from France in 1909.
It runs on standard unleaded auto gasoline and is lubricated by a total loss oil system that uses castor oil to smooth metal-on-metal contact.
Probably dating from around the same period, the EAA’s engine was acquired from a French museum, where it had lain relatively undisturbed for nearly 80 years. It arrived in the USA a couple of years ago as a collection of bits contained in a pair of suitcases.
Nobody’s entirely sure of its provenance, other than the fact that many of the parts bear the serial number 12, and that it’s clearly one of the engines built by the Italian design genius Alessandro Anzani who made Paris his adopted home but later moved pre-First World War production to the outskirts of London.
It has taken a great deal of care and attention to make this wonderful engine capable of running, including fabricating a new exhaust system, welding the crankcase, finding and fitting replacement piston rings and making new pushrods for the exposed valves. In time it’s intended to install the engine in a re-creation of one of Louis Bleriot’s airframes and then fly it ‘in ground effect’ at events like AirVenture.
Those enthusiasts who gather each day in AirVenture’s workshop forum arena to witness the smoke-belching, vibrating, clamorous and intermittently mis-firing run of the historic Anzani will never forget what they have seen. The stench of half-burnt castor oil is intoxicating, while the sound conjures up another era when pilots were pioneers and men were oily! Don’t miss it!
Source: Flight International
