The Advance Motor Manufacturing Company was a British

motorcycle A motorcycle (motorbike, bike, or trike (if three-wheeled)) is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle Steering, steered by a Motorcycle handlebar, handlebar. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: Long-distance ...

and engine manufacturer established in 1905. As well as supplying

aircraft engine An aircraft engine, often referred to as an aero engine, is the power component of an aircraft propulsion system. Most aircraft engines are either piston engines or gas turbines, although a few have been rocket powered and in recent years ma ...

s to the pioneering

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...

developers, Advance engines were also used by Captain Robert Scott to power

Antarctic The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and othe ...

snow sleds. After the end of the Second World War the company was sold to Sheepbridge Engineering and became a motor supplies organisation.

History

The Advance Motor Manufacturing Company Ltd was incorporated on 31 May 1905 with registered offices at Louise Road,

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England ...

by Douglas Herbert Gainsford and Frederick Smart, with an original share capital of £10,000. Gainsford and Smart previously ran a bicycle shop in Northampton that also hired out motorcycles, and from 1903 when Joseph Power joined them they began designing and manufacturing engines and motorcycles. The reliability of Advance engines was such that it was not long before they were in demand from other motorcycle manufacturers and they came to be exported all over the world. Moving to a larger factory on the corner of Kingsthorpe Road and Balmoral Road in 1912, Advance ended vehicle production to concentrate on reconditioning engines and making components, including the 'Gradua' multi-speed mechanism for

Zenith Motorcycles Zenith Motorcycles was a British motorcycle and automobile manufacturer established in Finsbury Park, London in 1903, by W.G. Bowers. Automobile manufacture only lasted from 1905–1906. The first Zenith motorcycle was the 'BiCar' of 1903, based ...

and engines for

Duzmo Motorcycles Duzmo Motorcycles was a British motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in Enfield Highway, London in 1919 by John Wallace, engines for the early Duzmo machines were manufactured by the Advance Motor Manufacturing Company in Northampton. Wallace had no ...

, producing everything in-house except for cylinder castings. As well as producing their own products and supplying stationary engines for driving agricultural machinery, Advance were agents for Kerry Cars and dealers for Brown and Barlow carburettors. Advance were also pioneers and innovators, with a number of patents for components such as the 'Advance Adjustable Pulley' (the basis of the Gradua multi-speed mechanism) that aided the ascent of steep hills, and their adjustable belt fastener. They had a sister company that was incorporated in 1916, Standard Valves Ltd, which manufactured replacement valves for the motor trade. By 1936 Advance had become contractors to the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong *Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral *Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings * Admiralty, Traf ...

and the

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of Stat ...

, providing specialist engineering services including cylinder re-grinding and repairs, case hardening and grinding. Sometime between 1949 and 1953 Advance was sold to Sheepbridge Engineering of Chesterfield and renamed Advance Motor Supplies Ltd, and in 1979 they were taken over by

GKN Plc GKN Ltd is a British multinational automotive and aerospace components business headquartered in Redditch, England. It is a long-running business known for many decades as Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds. It can trace its origins back to 1759 an ...

who changed the name to GKN Replacement Services Ltd in 1982. The name was changed again by 1984 to GKN Autoparts Distribution Ltd, then in January 1990 it became Partco Ltd and finally Partco AutoParts Ltd in October 1995. As of October 2011, the company was still on the UK register of companies, but is shown as being dormant.

Motorcycles

The 1904 360 cc Advance 2¾ hp (2.05 kW) motorcycle on display at the

National Motorcycle Museum (UK) The National Motorcycle Museum occupies an site in Bickenhill, Solihull, England and holds the world's largest collection of British motorcycles. In addition to over 850 motorcycles, which cover a century of motorcycle manufacture, the museum h ...

is thought to be the only complete Advance motorcycle in existence. The engine has an automatic inlet valve above a mechanical exhaust valve and the rear wheel is driven by a belt from the crankshaft. Pedals and a free-wheel hub are provided for starting and helping the engine on steep hills. The handlebar grips, pedal blocks and the box for the ignition's accumulator are all made of wood. The 2¾ hp engine was replaced by a 3 hp (2.2 kW) version, a 3½ hp (2.6 kW) and a 6 hp (4.7 kW)

V-twin A V-twin engine, also called a V2 engine, is a two-cylinder piston engine where the cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration. Although widely associated with motorcycles (installed either transversely or longi ...

, all with the same basic design of automatic inlet valves and a one-piece cylinder head and barrel. The Advance engines quickly gained a reputation for reliability and were much in demand from other motorcycle manufacturers. At the Cordingley show in 1907 Advance exhibited 2 variants of their 3 hp single motorcycle and a 3 hp lady's motorcycle with 2-speed gear and spring forks as well as a 6 hp twin-cylinder air-cooled tricar. They also displayed their 3, 6 and 9 hp water and air-cooled engines. In 1908 Advance made a range of motorcycles and three-wheelers including a new 9 hp (6.9 kW) motorcycle with an air-cooled engine.

Tricars and Forecars

In addition Advance made a 6 hp Forecar, and 6 and 9 hp Tricars, all of which were available with air- or water-cooled engines. These Forecars were fitted out by

Chater-Lea Chater-Lea was a British bicycle, car and motorcycle maker with a purpose-built five-storey factory in Banner Street, EC1, in the City of London (now converted into flats) and, from 1928, premises at Letchworth, Hertfordshire. It was founded ...

, including the sprung chassis and two-speed gearbox which also had a neutral position. The brakes were foot operated and all controls were contained within the steering wheel. Announced in October 1907, the 9 hp Tricar had trembler coil ignition and was cooled by twin radiators with a belt-driven pump. The water-cooled engine was a V-twin with 90mm bore and 90mm stroke (1145cc). The Chater-Lea three-speed gearbox also had a reverse gear, and front and rear seats had springing for comfort. A visit to the factory reported in 1907 mentions a 5HP tricar with V-twin air-cooled engine used to collect the visitors, and production of both air and water-cooled tricars with or without 2-speed gear (as well as motorcycles).

Advance V4 aero engine

The

Advance V4 Advance commonly refers to: *Advance, an Offensive (military), offensive push in sports, games, thoughts, military combat, or sexual or romantic pursuits *Advance payment for goods or services *Advance against royalties, a payment to be offset agai ...

aero engine An aircraft engine, often referred to as an aero engine, is the power component of an aircraft propulsion system. Most aircraft engines are either piston engines or gas turbines, although a few have been rocket powered and in recent years many ...

was made from two

engines bolted together back-to-back. One of the engines would have been running backwards and it is not known how the

crankshaft A crankshaft is a mechanical component used in a piston engine to convert the reciprocating motion into rotational motion. The crankshaft is a rotating shaft containing one or more crankpins, that are driven by the pistons via the connecti ...

s were joined. The carburettor was a Brown & Barlow type 65DU or GU as used by cars of the time and fed a one-into-two-into-four manifold. With an output of and a capacity of 2290 cc, the flywheel was in diameter and weighed . The engine revved to 1,800 rpm.

Grose Monoplane

The Grose Monoplane was built in

Oakington Oakington is a small rural Anglo-Saxon village north-west of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire in England, and belongs to the administrative district of South Cambridgeshire. Since 1985 the village has formed part of the parish of Oakington and West ...

in 1909 by Alfred Grose and Neville Feary, to attempt to win the Daily Mail prize of £1,000 for the first British aircraft to fly a circular mile with a British pilot. The Advance V4 aero engine was chosen to provide the power and in its first trial the monoplane was tethered to a tree but it never flew. It was eventually dismantled and taken to de Havilland at Hatfield.

Dixon Nipper

Another aircraft to use the Advance V4 aero engine was the ' Dixon Nipper No.1', designed and built by H.S. Dixon in 1911 with a

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan o ...

of . A single-seat canard pusher monoplane, the Nipper flew but crashed and was completely wrecked in an accident at Acton. The contribution of the Nipper to the development of flight was recognised by Hollywood, however, as a non-flying replica was built for comedian

Tony Hancock Anthony John Hancock (12 May 1924 – 25 June 1968) was an English comedian and actor. High-profile during the 1950s and early 1960s, he had a major success with his BBC series ''Hancock's Half Hour'', first broadcast on radio from 1954, ...

's plane in the 1960s comedy film ''

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines ''Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines; Or, How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes'' is a 1965 British period comedy film that satirizes the early years of aviation. Directed and co-written by Ken Annakin, the film ...

'', called the Little Tiddler.

Hammond Monoplane

The Hammond Monoplane used a water-cooled Advance V4 engine and was built at

Brooklands Brooklands was a motor racing circuit and aerodrome built near Weybridge in Surrey, England, United Kingdom. It opened in 1907 and was the world's first purpose-built 'banked' motor racing circuit as well as one of Britain's first airfie ...

in the summer of 1913. A single-seat monoplane, it was designed and built by experienced pioneering aviator Edward Victor Hammond who had built and flown a biplane in 1910 and a

triplane A triplane is a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with three vertically stacked wing planes. Tailplanes and canard foreplanes are not normally included in this count, although they occasionally are. Design principles The triplane arrangement m ...

in 1911 at Brooklands. The Advance engine was modified by Hammond and the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraf ...

consisted of a pair of parallel steel tubes.

Handley Page Bluebird

The first powered Handley Page aircraft, the Type A ''

Bluebird The bluebirds are a North American group of medium-sized, mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the order of Passerines in the genus ''Sialia'' of the thrush family (Turdidae). Bluebirds are one of the few thrush genera in the Americas. ...

'' of 1910, used an Advance V-four engine. A single-seat monoplane, the Bluebird was made of wood covered with fabric, and crash landed on its maiden flight on 26 May 1910. Changes were made to improve control and a more powerful Alvaston flat-twin engine of replaced the Advance. When the Bluebird was exhibited at Olympia in April 1911 it had progressed to a

Green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combi ...

engine, which in turn was replaced by an Isaacson

radial engine The radial engine is a reciprocating type internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinders "radiate" outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. It resembles a stylized star when viewed from the front, and is ...

and first flew 15 July 1911, once again crash landing, so it may have been the airframe design rather than the Advance engine that was the cause of the problem.

Antarctic snow-sled

The engine developed for the Grose Monoplane was also tested in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

in 1909 as a snow-sled engine by Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Scott. The engine was changed to an in-line four-cylinder unit with mechanical inlet valves, rather than their usual automatic valves. It used a Brown & Barlow carburettor and had a Bosch

magneto ignition An ignition magneto, or high-tension magneto, is a magneto that provides current for the ignition system of a spark-ignition engine, such as a petrol engine. It produces pulses of high voltage for the spark plugs. The older term ''tension'' ...

. The motorised sledge engine was designed to run for carrying three-quarters of a ton at a top speed of just . In the coverage of Scott's departure on 1 June 1910 ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' quoted him as saying they would take the motorised sledges as far as they could and hoped they would "relieve the ponies and dogs of weight and increase the safety of the return journey".

Sources

External links

Picture of the Advance motorcycle

Picture of the Advance V4 engine

{{Use dmy dates, date=September 2019 Motorcycle manufacturers of the United Kingdom Defunct aircraft engine manufacturers of the United Kingdom Manufacturing companies based in Northampton 1905 establishments in the United Kingdom 1947 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1905 Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1947 1905 establishments in England Manufacturing companies established in 1905 British companies established in 1905