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Message |
    
andrew
Moderator
Username: andrew
Post Number: 1187
Registered: 11-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, August 14, 2005 - 09:47 am: | 
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I recieved the following by email. I have sent a reply to John to advising him to check here for responses and to post additional questions or comments. If he has trouble doing so I would be happy to take his response by email and I will post them here.
quote:To whom it may concern.
My name is John Mercer. I just joined the old marine engine forum. I would like to know a bit of history on the Palmer marine engines.
When Approx did they go in to production and when approx did they stop production. Were the P 60 and the m 60 close in size to the atomic 4? Did the 60 in the P and M 60 stand for 60 cu in?
I am 56 years old and live in British Columbia Canada. I have been totally blind since birth and have loved engines since i was a young child. Have there been some people that have repowered their sail boatsthat had P and M 60's with diesels? I don't know if there was a Palmer engine dealer in Vancouver. I don't believe there were as many P 60 and M 60 engines sold as atomic 4's.
Thank you very much for your time. Yours truly john Mercer.
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Robert
Senior Member
Username: robert
Post Number: 127
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 06, 2006 - 12:14 pm: |
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There was a Palmer dealer in Vancouver from before WWI until after WWII: V.M. Dafoe Ltd. who are still in business making propellers and shafting. |
Richard A. Day Jr.
Senior Member
Username: richardday
Post Number: 389
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 06, 2006 - 02:30 pm: |
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I wonder if they have any Palmer parts, documents etc. still in their warehouse??? |
Richard A. Day Jr.
Senior Member
Username: richardday
Post Number: 390
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 06, 2006 - 02:56 pm: |
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John, Palmer Bros. built 100 two stroke engines in 1895 and their business took off. By 1913 they claimed to have shipped over 30,000 engines and had nearly 500 employees. The 1947 sucessor company was called The Palmer Engine Company Inc. It went belly up in 1971. At that time they sold to Thermo Electron, "Crusader" the rights to produce five Ford automotive block conversions, the P-60 and the PW-27. I doubt they ever actually made any more PW-27s as it was way overpriced for the compettive market by 1971. The P-60 came on stream in 1955 and it was a very much desired engine for sailboat auxilleries. It was based on the IHC Cub Lo-Boy tractor engine. 60 stood for approximately 60 cubic inches. IHC made over 400,000 of that engine most were for industrial and tractor applications. It was a very well designed 4 cylinder engine that had a center bearing support on the middle of the crankshaft. This gave a great deal of support in an area it is my understanding that a lot of Atomic fours suffered badly having only end bearing support on their crankshaft. It also had the advantage over the Atomic four in that you could go to the nearest IHC tractor dealer and get most of the needed parts at very reasonalbe prices when compared to the marine dealers.
Judging from the number of requests for info on the P-60 AKA M-60 there are seemingly a large number still in service. |
Robert
Senior Member
Username: robert
Post Number: 128
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 06, 2006 - 08:37 pm: |
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Dick & and if you're still out there, John, I called and visited V.M. Dafoe more than once in the hopes that they might have some Palmer materials about, but apparently even the sales ledgers were dumped after the War when they stopped carrying Palmer engines. It seems there was very widespread feeling after the war of 'out with the old and in with the new' and a great deal of historical material was destroyed all over the world. |
Richard A. Day Jr.
Senior Member
Username: richardday
Post Number: 392
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 07, 2006 - 04:32 pm: |
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Thanks for the update Robert.
Same thing happened to Palmer Bros. in 1945. Columbia Air Products bought the manufacturing right to Palmer Bros. The first thing they did was gut the drawing office and the pattern storage building contents all went in the dumpster. Only a few orderbooks going back to the beginning of the company got overlooked in the bookkeep's safe. Some of the old time employees hid stuff and it is great they did.
Columbia Air Products had made a fortune during WWII making starters and Generators for the American Aircraft industry. These guys came in and were going to make marine engines on the same scale as their WWII production. They were going to make engines in lots of 1000 instead of 100.
To those of us that remember the shortages that developed in all sorts of basic item with the end of WWII production it was pure hell trying to build anything you could ship. YOu might get screws but not nuts, bolts but no lockwashers. Carburetors but no starters, pipe fitting for 1/8" pipe but not for 1/2,3/4 etc. It really didn't get straightened out until about 1950. Anyway within two years the Columbia Air Products guys were broke with an inventory of $2.5 million parts on hand and no engines shipped. The bank stepped in and asked Raynal Bolling then the factory manager to take over the company and straighten things out.
Ray and three other men took over the company and outbid the junk dealers getting the residue for $287,000.00. Ray told me they lived off that pile of parts for the next ten years. The company flourished until the early 1960s when they began to have trouble with engines they converted that developed serious flaws. I don't remember the exact model but he told me one of the most popular models they converted had developed a seriou flaw in the automotive production portion not the marine conversion portion. These engine started comming back from the dealers in such large numbers that it put the company on the verge of bankruptcy. Technically the problem was easy to fix but required major take down and reasembly which meant the support costs were enormous and their reputation was badly damaged. Ray left the company in 1968 and the company sold a few designs including the very successful P-60 to Thermo Electron in 1971.
One of the partners attempted to carry on the company as Greenwich Marine but that did not last very long. Don't know what happened to the residual stuff. Junk dealers I expect.
Years later I got a telephone call from a man renting the old offic building and he wanted me to come up to Cos Cob and identifye a bunch of patterns that were stored in the basement. I gathered he was told to get rid of them if he want to use the basement. So I made a quick trip up there and in the basement where Pioneer had rotted away to dust leaving the First Palme sitting in the middle was about 3 dozen large and small patterns from Palmer Bros. The earliest was a water pump EL for the model F I think. A match plate for casting the YT valve guides. About a dozen exhaust manifold patterns for the 1938 RND-4 diesel. A large number of patterns that I had no idea what they were for other than they had the Palmer Bros, embossed nameplate. I was given what I wanted and don't know what he did with the rest. all had serious checking and a few had worm holes. I looked very carefully but found nothing of any collecting interest. Buckets of old nails, scrap iron and I mean scrap!!!
Thus ended another great company. |
