The Strangest Diesel Engine Ever

In 1945, in a bombed-out Coventry, seven men built the Commer TS3 — the weirdest diesel engine Britain ever made. Two pistons per cylinder. No valves. No camshaft. One crankshaft that should never have worked. It made the torque of engines twice its size. It hauled timber across the Australian outback, carried Le Mans-winning Jaguars to the starting line, and sat under a million Christmas trees in Corgi diecast blue. Drivers on three continents called it "the knocker" and trusted it with their livelihoods. Then, in 1972, Chrysler killed it — and ordered every last prototype of its successor destroyed. This is the story of Eric Coy's opposed-piston two-stroke: how a starving post-war Britain built an engine nobody else on Earth could build, why the official reason for scrapping it doesn't hold up, and what happened to the four TS4s that slipped the net. In this episode: — Why the single crankshaft was the impossible part — The truth about "the knocker" (it wasn't the exhaust) — What "TS" really stands for — and why Tilling-Stevens gets the credit wrongly — Lynn Townsend, Cummins, and the contracts that ended it — The one TS4 still running today, in New Zealand Sources, corrections and further reading welcome in the comments. Every one gets read. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is a work of historical documentary. Figures, dates and technical specifications are drawn from surviving records, company accounts and operator testimony, which are occasionally incomplete or in conflict. Where the record is unclear, this is stated in the narration. Views expressed are interpretive and offered in good faith. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #CommerTS3 #BritishEngineering #DieselEngine #IndustrialHistory #ClassicTrucks #EcurieEcosse