5.4-inch Single Stage Steam Turbine
250bhp at 65,000rpm
Four-Wheel Independent Torsion Bar Suspension
Rear Wheel Hydraulic Disc Brakes, parachute

* Broke Stanley's 70-year-old absolute and steam-powered speed record
* Alternate energy source
* Innovative engineering
* Preserved as it was when it broke the record


THE STEAM-POWERED LAND SPEED RECORD

In the early 70's the world's Land Speed Record for steam -powered vehicles was 127.656mph. It was over 70 years old, having been set by "The Rocket", a product of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, the latest of several companies organized by the Stanley brothers, F.E. and F.O. "The Rocket" set its record on the tidal sands of Ormond Beach, Florida in 1906 and was, at the time, the absolute top speed record for self-propelled vehicles. "The Rocket" returned to Ormond Beach in 1907. With the same driver, Fred Marriott, behind the steering wheel it crashed at over 150mph destroying both "The Rocket" and Fred Marriott.

Interest in steam cars faded rapidly as the practicality of gasoline cars increased and the record set by "The Rocket" stood for over 70 years. It stood because it was ignored, at least until rising again in the 1960's with newfound interest in steam propulsion spurred by emissions reduction, then by a gasoline shortage. One of its earliest and most effective proponents was Bill Lear, serial inventor and entrepreneur. Lear's trail of inventions and innovations started with radios (Magnavox), expanded to aviation (practical jet aircraft autopilot and the famed Learjet) and branched off into stereo tape (the Lear Jet 8-track cassette player). Bill Lear, it seems, never met a problem he didn't think he could solve.

Although Lear proposed an exotic "deltic" layout multi-cylinder steam engined race car for Indianapolis it never appeared. More importantly, Lear proposed a steam-powered urban bus with ingenious steam generation and a tiny, 60,000rpm turbine that made over 200hp. Prototyped and demonstrated, the Lear Steam Bus project stalled over fuel economy and cost considerations and the company wound down. The concept and components, however, remained and the bus power system components were purchased by Jim Crank. It became the basis for the 1977 Steamin' Demon Streamliner.


THE CAR OFFERED

The heart of the Steamin' Demon is its powertrain which consisted in relevant part of the Lear Vapor Turbine, a single stage turbine with 5.4-inch diameter and operating speeds between 20,000 and 60,000 rpm. A 20:1 reduction gear drops the turbine shaft's speed to speeds that can be handled by commercial and automotive components. In this case a Cadillac Eldorado transmission and differential driving the 195/70 VR 15 rear wheels (fronts are the same size).

As with the Vapor Turbine, Lear applied new names to old things. The steam boiler became Lear's Vapor Generator, a pancake containing 600 feet of special finned tubing that at 600 pounds was by far the heaviest element in the steam system. Using heat from burning kerosene (or any other liquid combustible) it vaporized 5,500 pounds of water an hour using 56 gallons of kerosene producing steam at 1,200psi at a temperature of 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. The system would produce enough BTU (8.5 million per hour) to heat a medium sized office building in winter.

While Lear's commercial application systems used condensers to recycle the operating fluid from steam to water Jim Crank had no such constraint and Steamin' Demon was a full-loss steam system carrying only enough water and kerosene fuel for a 10-minute record run.

The fiberglass body and frame were donated by Fiberfab but Crank was not successful in achieving speeds sufficient to surpass the Stanley "Rocket" of 1906. In 1982 he sold it to Robert E. Barber of Arvada, Colorado, Vice President of Barber-Nichols Engineering. Barber-Nichols were specialists in exotic steam power, with contracts with the Department of Energy for steam applications.

It took three years for Bob Barber with support from his company to iron out Steamin' Demon's issues and get it back to Bonneville in 1985 where it recorded an average speed of 145.607mph in two directions, finally eclipsing Stanleys' Rocket speed of 127.660mph from 1906.

During the record run one of the gullwing doors came loose and departed the car. Vehicle speed dropped by 10mph with the added resistance. The Vapor Generator caught fire, scorching the body's back deck, both attributes plainly evident on the National Automobile Museum's Steamin' Demon. The Lear Bus Vapor Generator and Vapor Turbine are missing from the Steamin' Demon today but otherwise it is as it was at Bonneville after breaking the record with its original Fiberfab body, Volkswagen-based chassis and interior layout.

It is an historical artifact and a tribute to the ingenuity, imagination, creativity and determination of a series of gifted, insightful creators like Bill Lear, Jim Crank and Bob Barber