The 12.8 Litre Argyll sleeve-valve aero engine was first prototyped in 1914, this is the first image of the engine on the test-stand before it was sent to London for the Olympia Show held from mid-to-late March of the same year. Sleeve valves were being experimented with at the time and that man on the right, Peter Burt, held a number of patents for them.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
To say that the Greeves Challenger, and all Greeves motorcycles, were ahead of their time is to significantly understate the remarkable foresight of Bert Greeves and his lightweight two-stroke off-road racing motorcycles. Bert developed the first examples of his scrambles and trials machines in 1952, almost 20 years before lightweight two-stroke motorcycles would rise to…
At the end of the 1992 season, British Formula 1 driver Nigel Mansell shocked the racing world when he announced that he was leaving F1 to compete in the CART IndyCar Series. He had taken the F1 World Championship in 1992 with Williams, but contract negotiations for 1993 had soured, and he decided to leave Formula…
This short film shows what went into building a car engine back in the 1930s, including casting, forging, machining, assembly, and testing. It’s a remarkable look back at how it was done before the robots took over, the amount of hand work required is impressive – as is the somewhat casual nature of the safety…
The Dobbertin HydroCar is an amphibious vehicle that took 10 years to develop with over $1 million USD invested in research, development, and construction. The HydroCar can be driven on land for extended periods thanks to its articulated sponsons (side pontoons) that can be raised or lowered. In the raised position the four wheels are…
The Range Rover was first introduced in 1970 to a worldwide audience who weren’t sure what to make of it. Up until then, 4x4s had mostly been utilitarian affairs that were only slightly softened versions of the WWII Willys Jeep. The Land Rover The original Land Rover had been one of the first post-WWII civilian…
This MV Agusta 861 Magni is the work of Arturo Magni and his sons, Arturo was a legendary Italian engineer who joined MV Agusta in the early 1950s after a stint with Gilera. Any student of motorcycle racing history will immediately recognize the importance of seeing the Magni name on the side of an MV…
