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The Steam Car

Written by Kevin H. Evans

The day approaches, more quickly than we may think, that the demand for automobiles will far surpass the supply that arrived with the Ring of Fire. Also, many of the cars from the future will have un-repairable breakdowns. A solution to the transportation gap may be the steam powered car.

Steam powered cars have several advantages. Most notably is that they do not need a separate transmission. There is enough torque in the steam engine that it is not necessary. A steam car needs only a steam generator, a reversing engine, a chassis and body, wheels and suspension, a brake system, and a steering mechanism.

The core of the vehicle is the generation of steam. The earliest steam cars had miniature boilers, wound in wire for strength, and fired with oil or solid fuel (coal or wood). Later, more advanced models had steam generators, also known as mono-tube or flash boilers.

A standard boiler small enough for a steam car has the need for all of the controls and safety measures of a large-scale steam operation, and is subject to the same dangers. That is: if mistreated they explode and do large scale damage to the area around them. A steam generator, on the other hand, is simply a tube wound in a coil with the heat applied to the coil. Water is introduced into the coil by a one-way valve. The water vaporizes upon hitting the hot coil and exhausts out the other end of the coil to the control valve and then on to the engine.

Unlike a standard boiler, the steam generator never has enough water in the coil to create a steam explosion if the coil melts down. Also, a steam generator makes steam instantly and does not need twenty or more minutes to "raise steam." The biggest disadvantage of the steam generator is that it needs ...