E.N.V. Motor Syndicate
was an early manufacturer of aircraft engines, originally called the London and Parisian Motor Company, their first model appearing in 1908.
The castings and forgings for its engines were made in Sheffield where the company was originally based, then taken to France for assembly.
The reason for this was that there was much more aeronautical activity in France than in England in 1908, but the French were taxing imported machinery.
In France, pioneers such as Henri Rougier, Pierre de Caters, Arthur Duray and Rene Metrot won prizes flying E.N.V.
Motors was incorporated on 30 May 1919 which then acquired on 3 June 1919 the engineering business of Joseph Frederick Laycock who traded under the name of E.N.V.
[2] The property and assets were acquired for £45,000 and new company invested in new plant and machinery including building a new factory for manufacturing of gearboxes and camshafts for engines and in particular spiral bevel gears.
[2] The company continued successful production of bevel gears and camshafts for another 50 years; it produced individual components for several World War I aircraft and tank engines, and after the war built complete gearboxes for the automobile industry.
[3] Later, the insulating wax was replaced with electrically conducting, low melting point white metal, simplifying the process.
[1] The types A, C, D and F were all side-valve engines, with valves operated by push rods running exposed and parallel to the cylinder axes, driven within the V from a central, gear-driven camshaft above the crankshaft.
The earliest type A engines had a pair of inlet tubes, one for each bank and fed from a carburettor at the front.
Slightly later model As and types C and F placed the carburettor between the cylinder banks, halfway along the engine axis.
The type T had a similar extension, which in that case at least allowed a larger diameter thrust bearing to be used.
The type T introduced steel cylinders and was an overhead-valve engine with vertically mounted valves operated from a central camshaft by thin pull rods and rockers.
This arrangement required an unusual shape of combustion chamber but enabled the valves to be operated directly from a central crankshaft raised on pillars to cylinder head height.
Vibrations of this crankshaft and weakness of a new cylinder head restraint system dogged the engine, the last E.N.V.
[1][5] The three horizontally opposed, four-cylinder, overhead-valve engines that appeared at aircraft shows between October 1909-10 were E.N.V.
The 30 hp 1910 engine had separate steel cylinder heads and barrels, screwed and brazed together.
[1] Only one of these horizontal engines flew, powering the Neale Monoplane of 1909-10 at Brooklands[6] for a short time.
[1] (FA France only) Aircraft powered by E.N.V engines, principally the type F, won considerable cash prizes at air meetings during 1909-10.
After 69 hours of flight and having reached latitude 35°43′W and longitude 68°18′N and having covered a great circle distance of about 1,500 miles (2,400 km), they had to ditch, and the six crew were fortunate to be picked up unhurt by a passing steamer.
[1] In December 1910, eleven pilots were preparing attempts on the £4,000 Baron de Forest prize for the longest single stage flight, including a crossing of the English Channel, by an Englishman in an all-British aircraft before the end of 1910.
He flew from Eastbourne on the southern coast of England to Beaumont, south of Charleroi in Belgium, a distance of 169 miles (272 km) on 18 December.
[1] A type F is on display in the United States, mounted in a replica Short S.27 and part of the Old Rhinebeck museum.
