Piston Work Engines

Piston Works

Piston Works was established in the city of Borlänge in 1936 by two men going by the name of Ludvig Eriksson and Olle Kasten with a small team of 4 people, both of them previously worked for the car company Volvo since its founding in 1927 but has for yet unknown reason quit their jobs in 1932 some claiming it has been a dispute between Olle and the Founders. In the next three years they worked on engines in a small garage most of the time and the rest of the time they spent meeting various investors from all around the globe trying to secure additional funds to start their company, even though with the funds they receive from the government it wouldn’t have been enough to get the company going. It wasn’t exactly easy as most of them laughed at their idea or finding it to be a waste of money or valuable resources.

By the end of 1934, Ludvig was about to give up on the dream of their company and return to Volvo, Only to be stopped by a Norwegian investor going by the name Randulf Aagard seemingly interested in their company after many hours of negotiating both sides finally agreed. Ludvig and Olle would receive the additional and Randulf would own a fifteen percent share of the company with the money eventually secured everything was set in motion, First of all, they had to find workers which was easy for Ludvig as he still had a good connections with workers at Volvo and also bought a few pieces of equipment’s of them as they already had most of the machinery needed. Luckily they already had found a smaller abandoned factory for sale in Borlänge only some minor construction had to be done which finished in 1936.

With the Piston Works finally starting its operation in 1936 the founders knew it wouldn’t be a smooth start for their company as there was a storm gathering up over Europe, Countries were preparing for another war which meant that resources might get difficult to get at times so it limits the number of projects they could do. In the next nine years as the war rages, Piston Work only builds a handful of their engines as most of the time the company manufactured engine parts for cars, truck, and even aircraft engines until the end of the second world war.

*Disclaimer: All the characters written here are fictitious, and any similarity to actual person or events are unintentional.
*Second Disclaimer: Most of the engines uploaded here will be available to download if they include a zip data, I have the knowledge that we have a specific topic for it, but I’m not sure if I will only link them here or to the particular topic but I will most likely post them there as well.

List of engines produced between [1936-1945]:
1936: 6.0 Liter Inline Six
1937: 2.2 Liter Inline Four
1937: 6.2 Liter V8
1939: 1.6 Liter Inline Four
1940: 3.2 Liter Inline Six
1944: 1.3 Liter Inline Four
1944: 772CC Inline Four

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So you made a thread for a company. Good. But you created it, posting no engines, no description, you couldn’t even spell to check it over enough to make sure “the” was spelled right. Can I ask why you felt the need to create it at this moment? Could it not have waited until you had a description? Or an actual engine to share? Right now this is a waste of space and you just look like a bit of a fool.

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I honestly can say that i have rushed it a bit with creating the topic, that’s an big mistake on my part.
That’s something i sadly have a tendency to rush certain things and i fucked up on my part.

So i will be working on the topic at the moment and upload a few engines that i have finished lately.

Well, I will admit to not spell checking and making mistakes, but it never bothered anybody so much they had to bring it up. I do not think that it’s that big of a deal, unless you’re up against “ZE GERMANZ MEIK BESTIE AUTO BECAUSEUSUE MONEY RAISINS”, where you’d clearly draw the line and not look into that thread again, is what I’d do. But honestly, spell checking is not the issue.

Creating the topic without having anything to show in it is not the best start to the company, but hey, if he made a commitment to it, then all we have to do is wait, especially considering the fact that the time frame he chose to start is impossible in automation (Unless you go with negative quality slider abuse. ALSO, that just gave me an idea on how to create cars before 1945). On the off chance that Artyom did not make a commitment to that company and it’s lore, then we’ll see the last of this thread today and it won’t be brought up again, and be lost in the tons of other forgotten company topics with no content.

All in all, I think you’re overreacting.

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Ladies and Gentleman may i present to you the first engine our company produced.

This is engine is a 6.0 liter inline six produced in 1936 for a Norwegian Truck manufacturer which was part of the agreement between the two founders and investor. It produced 126hp @ 3200RPM and 300Nm @ 2100RPM most likely not one of the best engines as it had tendency to breakdown from time to time, Which caused a slight disagreement between the companies. In the end Piston Works agreed to cut the sales prices by 5%.

While the production only lasted to 1937 with only around 200-250 units have been made in the time, as the manufacturer discontinued the production of his truck due to poor sales.

(To create this engine i used the negative quality sliders, pretty much maxing each out to -11 only using max -6 on conrods,crank,piston or else the engine would have been unusable.)

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Ladies and Gentleman may i present to you one of the many prototypes produced in the following years.

The engine you see here is a 2.2 liter inline four with a 2 valve Ohv design. Producing 63hp @ 3400Rpm and 140Nm @ 2500Rpm with a redline of 3500Rpm.

Originally it has been planed to go into production in the beginning of 1938 for a french car manufacturer for one of their new commercial van that was to be introduced later in the year, but sadly the deal bursted in the end as the company rather rely on their own engines.

Only two prototypes have been built with the original remaining in the companies hand and with the second having been sent to the car manufacturer for testing purposes, after the deal bursted our company has asked the company to kindly return the engine to us as it was company property but hasn’t been returned to us until this day.

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Ladies and Gentlemen i think its time to continue to our next presentation, shall we?.

This was the biggest contract we were tasked with in our first years of existence, while we are not able to say alot for what use the engine was built for. We can only say one thing and it was created for military purposes this is everything we are allowed to tell due the agreement we are obliged to keep silent.

The engine is a 6.2 liter 2 valve Pushrod 90° V8 producing 145hp @ 3300Rpm and 383Nm @ 1600Rpm with a redline of 3400Rpm.

Production lasted from 1937 to 1940 with over one thousand units being produced in that time line, for our company to be able to build such an large amount we have hired multiple laborer to aid us in those 3 years. While the most of them left after their contracts ended in 1940, a handful remained in the end as they were skilled in their tasks which were valuable for our company as we always could use a good hand.

Even with engines production ceased in 1940, we kept producing spare parts for the engine until 1960 as we have agreed as per agreement.

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If that V8 were to be produced under license by another manufacturer some time in the 60s, and developed further with bigger carbs and headers, it could have become a viable muscle car engine.

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Ladies and Gentleman may i present to you our second prototype.

This 1.6L inline four prototype from 1939 is a improved replacement of the 2.2L Inline Four from 1937. Our engineers mostly concentrated on fixing various reliability issues that our previous lines of engines suffered from, Even though they only managed to improve it the reliability 4% don’t get me wrong which still is a huge improvement and with the knowledge we earned from it, our engineers can use that tho improve our next line of engines in terms of dependability.

It produces 37hp @ 3100Rpm and 97Nm @ 2200Rpm. While it is currently a prototype state we do have ideas on bringing it in production in the next 7-9 years, which gives us plenty of time revising it in the meantime.

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With the Swedish government continuing to increase their military spending in 1939 as the tension grew bigger with Denmark, Norway fearing a attack from Germany and tension between Finland and the Soviet union as they fought.

Piston Works was once again tasked with building a new inline six for military purposes and immediately got on their drawing boards as it was a rather urgent contract and in the end this what they come up with:

A 3.2 liter inline Six producing 106hp @ 3300RPM and 238Nm @ 2600RPM

With the okay given by the military administration the work quickly began in early January 1940 until April 9th as Germany began their attack on Norway and Denmark simultaneously with Denmark almost surrendered in an instant and Norway capitulating in June. Norway now occupied by Germany and establishing a blockade of the North Sea
we have lost important access to the rest of the western world as every single shipment had to be negotiated with the German and British as they also made a blockade which caused an enormous drop of trades and shipments of important resources.

The factory continued its normal operation for the next few months as we still had enough resources to continue our operation but eventually they would ran out at some point, around 1941 a large portion of our supplies are almost depleted and this meant we had to negotiate with the Germans and British for our shipments which wasn’t easy to deal with and often causes us to unwillingly cease our means of production because of the severe shortage at the time due to the blockade.

An on and off production of the engine continued until 1943 when the work on it finally ceased as there was no point on continuing it and also of the ordered 1500 units, only 750 units have been built by then.

But there was a second engine meant to been build in 1940 along with the other one, it was the 6.2L V8 introduced in 1937 which received a small revision giving it a extra four horsepower and a seven Newton meter more. But was dropped as there wouldn’t have been enough supplies to build both engines.

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(Shall we continue from where we left off?.)

We write the year 1944; the war was still raging in Europe, but there was a shimmer of hope in these dark times. That everything would be over soon as Germany had a tough time defending from the allies as they were pushing in from Italy after its surrender and the Soviet Union
pushing them back and reclaiming their cities that had been taken by the Germans.

Despite the last contract ended in 1943 and it wasn’t easy to find any new contractors as they were almost isolated from the rest of the world due the blockade of the British and the Germans off the sea wasn’t making things easier for them. The factory was busy as every day with trucks driving in and out, but they weren’t heading to the normal loading zone but rather to an older building that has been repurposed by the company for aircraft parts.
Let me explain in 1938 our founder Ludvig seemingly knew that the company would be in a difficult situation during the second world war, but luckily he had a plan for this, which was to shift their focus on manufacturing airplane parts while it was doable it wouldn’t be necessarily an easy task as the employees didn’t have any experience with aircraft.
While Olle was first against the plan but after a lot of debating and thought, he changed his mind since there weren’t many other options open to them, so they went with Ludvig’s plan and assigned a majority of the workers to their new tasks and in 1939 the production began while there were quite a few difficulties at the start. After a while, they started to get the hang of the new machinery and could steadily raise the number of units they produced in a month, which presumably helped both parties in the war which is debatable if it was real or false but none of the founders have
acknowledge or denied it so far.

Piston%20Works%20WW2%20logo
A rather rare logo that was used for documents, etc… during WW2 for their aircraft department.

But that is another story to be told, Of course, the company didn’t altogether abandon their engine department they only downsized the team to a handful of people and most of them occupied with producing spare parts for the engines and another finishing up the last prototypes that were in the works.

The first one was 1.3 Liter inline four producing around 40hp @3500RPM and 87NM @2500RPM.

The second and last one, for now, is a 772cc Inline four producing around 26hp @4200RPM and 51NM @2600RPM.

Surely those engines weren’t showing anything new then before, as they were only different from their capactiy and their power output. But thats what the prototypes where there for to be added in the range of engines to offer.So the company could get more new clients and investors to be able to grow.

It would be almost an over a year until the company were building new engines for the cars for the post world war 2 era.

(i would apoligize for the long wait, as i did plan to post this late january/ early feburary but due to work and problems with the pc and internet conncection seemingly dragged it out until now. I do plan on posting a least once a month or twice if doable.)

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Piston%20Works
Piston Works was founded in 1936 by two men that were going by the name of Ludvig Eriksson and Olle Kasten, they both previously worked for the car company Volvo since its founding in 1927, but to yet still unknown reason they were both quit their jobs in 1932. There were some speculations that there was a dispute between Olle and the founders, which lead them to leave. In the next two years, they worked on a few ideas that they had while trying to secure additional funding to start their company even though there were a few investors that pumped money into the company along with a fund they received from the State. They were still quite a bit away from their goal.

By 1934 Ludvig was about to give up on the idea of their own company and was ready to return to Volvo again, only to be stopped just in time by a Norwegian Investor going by the name Randulf Aagard who seemed fascinated by their idea. It took almost two months until their negotiations were finished and came to a deal, Randulf would get a thirty percent share of the company, and they would get the funding that they needed.

Now all they needed were Workers, which was easy for Ludvig as he still had a good connection with a few workers at Volvo and also bought a few pieces of equipment as they already had most of the machinery needed. Luckily they already had found a smaller abandoned factory for sale on the outskirts of the city Borlänge. Only some minor construction had to be done, which finished in 1935.

Though Piston Works officially started its production in 1936 with the first engine being a 900cc inline-four, which was a good start for the company.

The founders were aware that the next few years wouldn’t be easy as there was a storm gathering up over Europe. Countries were preparing for another war, which meant that resources might get challenging to get at times, so it limits the number of projects they could do. In the next nine years as the war rages, Piston Work only builds a handful of their engines as most of the time. The company manufactured engines for cars, trucks, and even aircraft engines until the end of the second world war.

*Disclaimer: All the characters written here are fictitious, and any similarity to actual person or events is unintentional.

List of engines built between (1936 and 1950):
900cc Inline 4 (Coming Soon)

Piston%20Engine%20Code
A work in progress engine code that I plan to use for upcoming engines, it wasn’t exactly easy to come up with one since you have a few options to add to the code. But I sort of wanted to keep it simple and was also inspired by a few companies in real life and here, while I do have an image of a complete engine code I won’t upload it since it might get a few major changes as the company progresses or i feel like I could make it better.

Utilization: This is to designate for which sector the engine was designed for either Automobile, Semi-trucks, Racing or Hypercars.
Engine: WIP (This should normally label at what time the engine was either designed or built, E would be used if Piston Works uses an engine from another company and makes changes on it its original design such as other valves or Turbocharged instead of naturally aspirated and such)
Engine Layout: Pretty simple to understand
Displacement: 10 = 1.0L engine, 20 = 2.0L engine and etc
Engine Variations: Displaying if the engine underwent changes from its original design, for example, if an engine was originally designed with pushrod and instead uses an Overhead cam system. It will mostly be used if an engine from the 1950s will be used in the 1970s since it has to undergo changes to fit new regulations.
Fuel Type: Labeling for what type of fuel it was built for and should use.
Aspiration: Either Naturally or turbocharged

(I apologize in advance if I have bad explained the designations, Not really good that good at explaining but if there is any question do not be afraid to ask and I will try to give a better explanation. I’m happy that I finally returned after two years, I do apologize for being inactive here for so long but life got in the way and my old computer gave up on me. But finally back to restart the company and will be posting the first engine, hopefully, tomorrow.)