This one was submitted by Rob Jenkins of Australia. Rob sent along some images of a opposed twin cylinder glow-plug motor that he has owned for many years and just recently unearthed in the ”maybe later” pile which most of us have.

The engine bears no marks of identification to help in identifying it. All that can be said is that someone went to a lot of trouble! When first acquired by Rob in the dim and distant past, the engine was in a bad state of repair, with numerous breaks in the castings. A friend built up some of the damaged sections with weld, since when it has languished in said “maybe later” pile, eventually being quite forgotten until Rob happened upon it just recently. Rob told me that he planned to get back onto it now and try to restore it to operating condition.  Meanwhile, does anyone out there know what it is or who might have made it?

PARTIAL IDENTIFICATION MADE!   My good mate Maris Dislers of Glandore, Australia came through on this one. He has no idea who made it – we’ll probably never know. All that can be said is that it’s the work of some unknown home constructor.

Maris advises that it appears to be based on cylinder castings and perhaps some internal components from the Vanguard Pup 5 cc engine offered in casting form by the Model Dockyard.  Compare the shape around the bypass and exhaust areas (rather than the machined fins) with the attached photo of a Vanguard Pup.

This would give the twin a nominal 10 cc swept volume. The use of Model Dockyard components  means that it was almost certainly made in Australia. It’s actually possible that it’s a Model Dockyard prototype, but there’s no way of confirming this. Judging by the crankcase nose and the prop driver, it was intended to have spark ignition. It was most likely constructed sometime in the latter part of the 1940’s.