DIFFERENT STROKES
Two-strokes; most people hate them. Me? Love ’em. Okay, I’ve always been a fan of the underdog and I admire the alternative approach, but that wouldn’t count for squat if two-stroke engines were as crapola as most people would have you believe. But I reckon they get a bum rap.
The problem, as I see it, is that two-strokes have earned a reputation for being unreliable, purely because they’re so reliable. Pardon? Yeah, see the problem is that your old lawn mower should have quit years before it did, but thanks to its inherent simplicity and ruggedness, kept soldiering on years after it should, by rights, have carked it and been replaced with a shiny new mower. In the meantime, Old Faithful lost a bit of compression and became a bit harder to start and a mower that doesn’t want to start is all she wrote for most of us.
I know they’re not two-strokes, but the same thing happened with air-cooled Volkswagens before they became cool and trendy. As they wore, they got a bit slower and started using a bit of oil and became a bit rattly. And that’s how people started judging them. The point is, of course, that a Holden grey or a Standard Vanguard or Ford sidevalve donk with the same amount of wear would have blown up years earlier. But the VW, which continued to hang in there, became a victim of its own success.
My big passion at the moment is for two-stroke diesels which sound absolutely amazing. And you’ve gotta love an engine that won’t actually run without a supercharger (the whole crankcase needs to be pressurised for the two-stroke diesel to breathe). And hey, if the design was inherently flawed, the North American truck industry would never have dabbled with it. But it did, and some of the best diesel engines ever made were strokers. Fact is, if a two-stroke has fuel, spark and compression, the bugger is obliged to run. And what about the sensation that is the rotary engine? With an induction, compression, ignition and exhaust stroke with every revolution, the rotary is a two-stroke, too.
So, next time you hear somebody describe their kids as `playing up like a borrowed lawn-mower’ or their spouse giving them more trouble `than a second-hand outboard’ don’t believe it for a minute. And I’ll give you another reason for us tappet-heads loving two-strokes: Every stroke is a power stroke. ‘Nuff said.