This nice-looking sideport diesel was submitted as a Wotizit by my good friend Lars Gustafsson of Sweden. Lars received the attached images from one of his contacts with a request for help in identifying it. Unfortunately, no displacement was provided. Given the extensive use of what appear to be quite high-quality die-castings, this certainly looks like a production model as opposed to a home construction effort.  However, its identity has me stumped!  Can anyone out there help?

IDENTIFICATION MADE! - this one didn't take long! I received immediate responses from both Ken Croft and Eric Offen. It’s a home-built 1.5 cc engine designed by an individual calling himself “Battiwallah” – real name unknown. The plans and a full description were published in the August 1948 issue of “Model Engineer”.  There was a full description of how to make the dies as well. Vincent Chai of the Motor Boys made the dies and cast the cases  A few of the other Motor Boys then made examples using those castings. Ken Croft made one himself – see attached.

It appears that others besides the Motor Boys may have made castings for this engine. There were apparently a number of versions made. Note that the originally illustrated example has a much enlarged bump at the front to accommodate the transfer passage – not one of Vincent’s castings.  Ken’s example was made from Vincent’s castings more or less as per the drawings. The most outrageous example, which had an almost unbelievable performance, was the Schnuerle-ported twin ball race version designed by Stan Pilgrim and built by Vincent Chai. A mention appeared in MEN for April 2005.