Working at Sierra Rotary Engine Corporation was like a dream come true. Pay was barely adequate, no benefits, no paid vacations, and no overtime pay, but everyday was a new challenge to make parts to fit the ones made yesterday, with the goal of someday seeing them all work together as a complete machine.
Bill Turner had over twenty patents on different engines, some steam powered and some internal combustion. He wanted to start with a rotary steam engine, which was basically a vane pump with an offset cup with slots that straddled the vanes and imparted a quick increase in velocity at the tips as they rotated across the open side of the housing.
It was not hard to make, but we had no way to test it, since we didn’t have a steam boiler or a dynamometer yet. But hey, it looked good, and several prospective investors were given a grand tour of the shop, and hopefully were at least impressed enough to put up some money.
Our second engine was much more difficult. Mazda had just come out with their Wankel rotary engine, and Bill thought his design was better, so we started work on a double scissor piston rotary engine. I saw immediately that it technically wasn’t a pure rotary engine, since the pistons did not move in a smooth circle, but alternately sped up and slowed down as they compressed air between the outer pistons on the periphery of the housing.
We worked long hours to complete this engine in about eight months through the winter of 1971-72. As we were getting close to completion, Bill got a dynamometer installed in one corner of the shop to test the engine. Since I had dyno experience, I was going to be the operator when we got the thing running.
However, we made time to explore and have fun, too. We found a little cave high above the Talapoosa mine behind the house, and we drove up there and cooked hot dogs and taters on a camp fire in the cave. We also made several excursions to Virginia City, which was not a tourist trap yet, and was a kick to walk through the town where Mark Twain got his name as a reporter on the local newspaper.
The complete freedom to do about anything you liked was also great. I taught Darlene, our daughter, how to drive on the gravel streets and driveway to the house. Once she got too far over and dropped the tires into a small ditch on one side of the driveway. I got to teach her that when you are not moving, you are stuck, and don’t spin the wheels anymore. It only took a few minutes to jack the wheels up and put some rocks under them and drive back on the road again.
There was no speed limit on the roads between towns then, and we enjoyed running out to the front when we heard a Corvette or Ferrari speeding down Hwy. 50. Rich people from California would bring their cars to the highway between Dayton and Silver Springs to see what they would do with the pedal all the way down. If the local sheriff was on duty, he would get out and stand by his car watching, just like the rest of us.
Over at Stead Field north of Reno, Bill Lear (the inventor of jet planes and 8-track tapes) was working on his own engine design, a single acting piston steam engine (a V8, I think) with a rotary valve unit where the camshaft would normally be. He was making noises about running at Indianapolis, but from what I could see of his design, it fell far short of being an efficient steam engine, if it worked at all. Which it didn’t—the rotary steam valve expanded and stuck, or leaked steam pressure.
Bill Lear switched to making a small steam turbine engine which worked well at 35,000 rpm, we heard. He actually put two of them in some municipal buses in Oakland, California, but they were soon taken out of service because of the rough shifts with a hydrostatic transmission it needed to maintain the high turbine speeds needed for power.
Our engine had problems, too. Bill Turner seemed surprised that we put all the pieces together and it turned smoothly and did all the things it was supposed to, like draw air in on intake, compress it under the spark plug, and push the air out over at the exhaust port. But when we put it on the dyno, it wouldn’t start. It didn’t have enough compression (only about 35 lbs) due to some seals that were not made for use in a combustion environment. The material was called Gattke, and it was meant to be a steam seal, not for hot gasses.
I hoped that we could tear it down and replace the seals with some simple iron seals, but the failure to start up and run had caused several investors to back out, and one Friday, Bill met me at the door and advised me that there was no money in the payroll account, and he couldn’t promise me there would be. I thanked him for telling me, and I went back to the house and told Carolyn we were looking for work again.
I hated to do it, but I knew my best chance of finding work soon was to head back to Southern California, with its many factories and machine shops. My friends Don & Laverna Satterfield lived there, and he offered to come up with his pickup and help us move, and we could stay with his family in Garden Grove until we could find work and a house.
He came down the next weekend towing a large trailer behind his Ford pickup, and we loaded the furniture and boxed clothing into his vehicle and we followed him back to California.
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