The Motor Boys International

MBI

Last updat: Feb 2013

What Are We?

The Motor Boys (International) are a group of model makers who love model internal combustion engines, in all their various forms. We are also active aeromodelers, in some form, or another. The group keeps in touch and exchanges ideas via the Internet. The name "Motor Boys" originates from a series of books written by Clarence Young in the early part of the twentieth century when the idea of engines and motor cars and aeroplanes was new and exciting. It was Roger Schroeder who proposed the name. You may have seen Roger's columns and articles in Engine Collectors Journal and Strictly IC magazine (visit their web site). The added International qualification reflects where we physically are: Australia, England and The United States of America. Bert Striegler researched the origin of the books which are immortalized with their own web site.

What Do We Do?

What do we do? Well, not a lot. As a group of like-minded guys, we entertain and amuse each other from the comfort of our terminals with information, gossip and pictures. Occasionally, we undertake a group project to make reproductions of engines that take our fancy for some reason or other. When we do this, each member will undertake to build some part for the others. When complete, the parts are snail-mailed out. Not all parts will be made this way. For "fit" reasons, some parts will be machined individually. Eventually, we have a completed, running example of a rare, or unusual engine to run and display.

We place no time pressures on our work because our prime directive is just to have fun. For this reason, we have very consciously decided that we will not enter into any commercial activity relating to the engines we make. We don't make spares for sale and we don't sell castings, or the plans. If we did, then we'd come under pressures from deadlines, product support, product liability, etc, etc, and some attorney would get rich. The fun would soon depart.

But at the same time, we want to share the designs and preserve them for future enthusiasts. How to do this while avoiding the problems mentioned above? Our solution was to make the plans available to the AMA in the form of a book. Our only stipulation to the was that any derived profits go to aid the junior encouragement programs. The price for the book in North America is US$29.95, which means each plan costs you about three dollars. If that's not the bargain of this (or the last) century, I don't know what is!

Who Are We?

Proudly, we are:

Designs Completed, or In Progress

All of our designs are produced using Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) for a couple of reasons. First, this lets us email work in progress all over the planet, quickly and cheaply. Second, it lets us check that the bits have a good chance of actually going together before we cut metal! Many of the designs we tackle are done from scraps of information or measurements of incomplete engines. In several cases, we make minor changes to simplify construction, or because better ways are now known. Our intent is to capture the indefinable essence of the motors, not create exact replicas to confuse future historians (hah!).

To date, our CAD plans comprise:

    († Included in the AMA Motor Boys Plans Book.)

Other Groups

Our group is small and membership is by invitation only (or perhaps that should read, "sentence"). However, the idea is open to anyone who wants to form a like group. As more and more people connect to the Internet, groups like ours which are not limited by locality will grow and grow. It's 'gotta be good!

 

  Home

This page designed to look best when using anything but IE!
Please submit all questions and comments to [email protected]