The Stanley Steam Car

The Stanley Steam Car looked much the same as the convential car of the time. First introduced in the late 1800s, this car survived into the late 1940's but never in great numbers. When it first appeared it was quite low power and resembled a horse carriage more than a car (as did most of the predecessor cars at the time). The Stanley operates at 600 psi with a conventional fire tube boiler. The exhaust steam is condensed back into water in a radiator/condensor and is reused in the engine. Using this method, the car can travel around 300km before needing to refill its 80 litre tank. The car's fuel was kerosene used in a 'bunsen' style burner in the fire tube boiler. A secondary fuel, petrol was used to keep a pilot flame burning at all times the car was operating.

As mentioned above, the boiler was a fire tube boiler meaning that the water within the boiler space is kept to a minimum to heat it quickly and efficiently. The burner fire is drawn through the fire tubes to pass its heat to the water. The boiler is a vertical arrangement with many small fire tubes. The kerosene burner is under the boiler and burns across most of the boiler surface. The boiler contains a relatively small amount of water (compared to a locomotive or traction boiler) and the large heating surface provided by the many small fire tubes heats the water quickly. The boiler makes up for is low steam holding capacity by being able to produce large amounts of steam on demand. There are some excellent photos of the boiler and burner arrangements on the Stanley Steamers Tech Page

The driver's controls of the car are much the same as any car of the period, with the familiar throttle, brake, and fuel. The main difference with the steam car is that the driver has to be more aware of upcomming road conditions. For example, if a hill is coming up the driver will build up more steam to cope with the extra needs of the engine during the climb.

The Stanley engine is a double acting two cylinder reversible variable speed machine. Instead of the large flywheel usually found on steam engines is a counter balanced weighted crank shaft.
If you have photos of any Stanley Steam car and would like to have them published, I would like to hear from you.

Notes on the previous information on this page...

Orginally this page stated that the Stanley used a flash fire tube boiler. Several people over time including Ron Parola RonaldParola@aol.com; Sue Davis the director of the Stanley Museum Stanleym@somtel.com and Jeff Theobald wrote to me all stating that this was incorrect. Dykes states that Stanley used flash steam, but this source is likely to be wrong. Apparently only White used flash steam in their cars. Ron did say that although Stanley themselves did not use flash steam boilers but used conventional water boilers of about 10 gallons. He went on to say in a later message that there were many companies providing after market boilers for steam cars and there may have been flash units available. He thinks that the only cars which left the factory with flash boilers were White steam cars.

I've seen a Stanley with a flash steam arrangement owned by an Australian collector - although the owner (who I've not been able to contact to confirm) was sure it was all original and never been restored it is possible that at some time its boiler was swapped out for a flash unit.

I have also seen sales literature from Stanley describing flash steam - it is possible that this never came to pass in an actual car - stranger things have happened in engineering. It may simply have been a marketing exercise to guage the need for a flash boiler in their cars. I was shown the literature at a public rally and have lost the contact details of the gent who showed it to me. If it was you, could you please email me or contact the directors of the Stanley Museum.

Jeff Theobald wrote to me on 30 Sep 2001 and pointed out that the Stanley boiler is described as fire tube rather than flash fire tube. Below is a picture of Jeffs magnificent 1908 Stanley! Jeff is the guy wandering around behind the car looking at the ground. Take a look at the rest of Jeff's collection.

While I think the situation is settled now, If anyone does have information one way or the other, please contact me, Ron, or Sue Davis the director of the Stanley Museum Stanleym@somtel.com.

1908 Stanley Steam Car

Last modified Tuesday, 02-Nov-2004 00:43:05 GMT

This menu is included for the blind to use with speaking software that may not be able to cope with the java based popup menu at the top of the screen.

Home	Internal Combustion	Steam	Stirling Cycle	Railways	Miscellaneous
New Clubs Listing Museums Listing Site Reports Events New Year CrankUp Reports Announcements	Engines Restoration FAQ History Magneto Saw Mill Models Tractors On The Water SEL	Engines Restoration FAQ History Saw Mill Models Traction Road On The Water COALS	Engines History Operation Models	Mainline Narrow Gauge Tramways History Models	Site Map Search Models Identity Parade - Can you help? Registrars Listing by Type Manual Exchange Listing Guestbook Memories About Copyright Links

All documents and images on this site are
© Copyright 1995-2008 Paul Pavlinovich unless otherwise stated. You may not copy any documents or images from this site without explicit written permission except as allowed by Statutory License under The Copyright Act. More Information.

e-mail .
Please note that a clickable address is no longer provided due to spam harvesting. Just type the address from the image above into your favourite email client. Over time I will be replacing or removing all email addresses on this site with this sort of feature.
This site is best viewed with the free open source browser Firefox.