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A Pinnacle of Sleeve-Valve Power.(Escape Roads)
Byline: JOHN F. KATZ
One hundred was a lot of horsepower in 1914, even for an 8.0-liter engine in a low-production luxury car. Yet 100 was the figure claimed for the remarkable Stearns-Knight Six, of which at least 350 were assembled from mid-1912 through 1915. Escape Roads has told Frank Ballou Stearns' story before (Feb. 27, 1995), but this is our first opportunity to drive a Stearns-Knight touring car built before the Great War.
Born into wealth, Stearns left school to build cars at the precocious age of 17, converting the family basement in Cleveland into a machine shop. Stearns advanced from one cylinder in 1896 to two cylinders in 1902 and to four by 1905. By 1909 his model lineup consisted of the four-cylinder Stearns 15-30 and 30-60 (the latter a hillclimb favorite), and the limited-production 45-90 six.
The first car to be called a Stearns-Knight-instead of simply Stearns-replaced the 15-30 in July 1911, its new four-cylinder, 4.25x5.50-inch hemi-head developing 64 hp, and its torque-tube drive replacing the double chains of earlier models. The "Knight'' portion of the car's now-hyphenated badge referred to the sleeve-valve system developed by Charles Yale Knight. In those days of Edwardian metallurgy, engine heat wilted valve springs while warping poppet valves and coating them with carbon. Knight's solution was two ported-iron sleeves surrounding each piston, gently slid up and down by their own miniature crankshaft. While clearly a step back in terms of reciprocating mass, sleeve valves required no springs and actually sealed better with carbon buildup, while greatly reducing noise and vibration.
The Stearns-Knight Six was announced just 13 months after the Four, sharing the same basic engine design but with two more cylinders and another 0.25 inch stroke; it had a torque arm instead of a tube. Officially replacing the rest of Stearns' poppet-valve models, the Six was offered as a roadster on a 134-inch chassis, or as a touring car, limousine or landaulet on a ...
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Source: HighBeam Research, A Pinnacle of Sleeve-Valve Power.(Escape Roads)