Anyone seen something like this before?

[RICK EICHRODT]

I ran across this unusual power head and jet drive unit and am looking for any information concerning it, I believe it is a 5 cylinder two cycle radial engine. The flywheel has McCullough Corporation Scott Division stamped on the rim. Any help in discovering information on it would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Rick Eichrodt

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[RICK EICHRODT]

Here is another shot of everything

[garry-in-michigan]

It appears to be a two cycle Radial – I would LOVE to get into it to see how they charge the cylinders . . . 😀

[retiredoz]

Laing’s outboard (history) mentions a McC – built 4-cyl radial (R120), but this must be a smaller version. I have the impression none was produced for the market – didn’t get past the experimental stage..

[frankr]

quote Garry in Tampa:

It appears to be a two cycle Radial – I would LOVE to get into it to see how they charge the cylinders . . . 😀

Yeah, now that you mention it, me too. There must be some sort of a compression chamber or rotary valve arrangement in that big housing behind the flywheel. Very interesting. Also, wonder how they cooled it? I don’t see any kind of a blower. Was this designed for an aircraft?

[Anonymous]

No doubt that its a radial engine, and two-stroke, there’s no mechanical valves visible anywhere on the exterior, and the cylinder castings can’t possibly be hiding any. Could be rotary valve induction, but you’d have to get it apart to find out, but to me, the inner crankcase would have to be a very complex design in order to accommodate a rotary valve, would it not?

In my tiny little mind, it looks like an air-cooled engine with an added-on water cooling system. The barrels around the upper part of the cylinders are obviously meant to serve as water jackets, you can see evidence of weld beads around the circumference of the barrels. They have water being fed in via an external manifolding system. I would bet that the cooling water exits the water jacket and flows into the exhaust manifold to be dumped out with the exhaust gases.

Note the bolt pattern on the top of the jet pump unit. Look familiar? Probably mates up to a stock tower, manufacturer unknown. Might belong to this powerhead, might not. Need to find the guy that built it to find out for sure.

Interesting piece, at any rate.

Hope this helps.

Best,
T2

[frankr]

Wow, those cylinder jugs sure do look like the Squalitalia/Techumseh posted by Enrico. Right down to the screw holes for the shroud. How big is this thing anyway?

[RICK EICHRODT]

It was not very big. I didn’t measure it but it appeared to be maybe close to 24 inches in diameter. Here is another picture in relationship to the corner of a single axle trailer so you can get some kind of idea of the size. Someone put a Craftsman lawn mower carburetor on the unit. In addition to how the fuel delivery system worked, how did it fire 5 cylinders, one at a time? The flywheel looked like a regular Scott but I could not see 5 separate coils or anything from underneath the flywheel. Also, the jet unit is about double is size of the Schadke Mid Jet and others. It is my opinion that Scott tried to make a more powerful outboard jet unit and this was an experiment. Another question I had was how was the exhaust exited out of the unit. On the photo that the motor is on its side, you can see the water cooling distribution system and each exhaust manifold coming into a common housing, but then where did it go. If it went down the mid section, it would have had to exit above the jet unit and not into the chamber due to the ventilation of the prop inside the housing. This is very interesting and raises a lot of questions. I would love to take it apart to see how it ticks!

Regards,
Rick

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[david-bartlett]

Curiouser, and Curiouser!

[chinewalker]

The Jet unit looks to have a typical Johnrude 5-bolt pattern, used from 1955 up into the 1980s. Certainly not a Scott/McCulloch based item.

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