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Early Dennis Oil Engines
and Triple-Servo brakes
by Bruce MacPhee

It has been recorded that, in the early 1930s, Dennis offered an Armstrong-Saurer 6-cylinder oil engine in the Lance double decker. This did not generate much demand and was followed by a 4-cylinder Dennis engine employing the Lanova combustion system, which did no better. However, the attached extract from a 1932 publication describes a Dennis engine which appears to pre-date both of these. It has the timing gear train at the flywheel end, as was to become standard on most Dennis engines, but some of the other features are more unusual. I have no more information than what is shown here, and wonder if it was just a prototype or if it actually went into production.

1932 publication

The second illustration is from a Clayton Dewandre booklet, again 1932. The axle is clearly a Dennis design and, I would think, from an early Lance II. Could this be the first chassis to be fitted with axle-mounted servos? Most early chassis with three servo system, e.g. Leyland TD2, had the auxiliary servos mounted on the chassis frame and worked the front brakes via rods, as was the case with single-servo brakes.

Clayton Dewandre illustration


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