Buda Engine Co.

Buda Engine Co.

Founded	1881
Headquarters	Harvey, Illinois, USA
Products	engines
Parent	Allis-Chalmers

The Buda Engine Company was founded in 1881. Based in Harvey, Illinois, USA, Buda manufactured engines for industrial, truck, and marine applications.

Early engines

Early Buda engines were gasoline fueled. Later, diesel fueled engines were introduced, utilizing proprietary Lanova cylinder head designs, injection pumps and nozzles. These were known as Buda-Lanova diesel engines. Buda Engine Company was acquired by Allis-Chalmers in 1953. The Buda-Lanova models were re-christened "Allis Chalmers Diesel".

Buda's engines were water-cooled, in-line 4, 6, or 8 cylinder models. Buda advertisements in the early 1900's proclaimed Buda as "Pioneer of the cast-in-block" method. Their engines featured long stroke, enclosed valves, noisless timing gears, and self contained oiling system. Early 4-cylinder gasoline fueled models produced 30 to 60 bhp. Later 6-cylinder diesel fueled Buda-Lanova engines exceeded 200 bhp.

Their principal competitors were Hercules, Waukesha, Continental Motors, Wisconsin, Lycoming, Rutenber, Hall-Scott, LeRoi, Weidely, and Herschell-Spillman.

The 4-cylinder Buda gasoline engine was favoured by many early truck manufacturers, who were converting horse-drawn vehicles to self-propelled models. By the late '20's, trucks were getting larger and required larger engines, such as Buda's 6-cylinder models. As diesel engines grew in popularity in the 1930's, Buda responded with 4 and 6 cylinder diesel-fueled engines.

Applications

Kenworth's early models (1922-1925) featured Buda 4-cylinder gasoline engines as standard equipment. Buda 6-cylinder gasoline engines were offered by Kenworth until the late 1930's.

Other truck manufacturers that used Buda engines included;

• Acorn (made in Chicago 1923-1930)
• Air-O-Flex (Detroit 1919-1920)
• Armleder (Cincinnati 1909-1936)
• Atco (Kankakee IL 1920-1923)
• Barber (New York City 1917-1918)
• Bell (Ottumwa IA 1919-1923)
• Betz (Hammond IN 1919-1929)
• Brown (St Cloud & Duluth MN 1922-1924)
• Clydesdale (Clyde OH 1917-1938)
• Coleman (Littleton CO 1925-1943)
• Columbia (Pontiac MI 1916-1925)
• Commerce (Detroit 1917-1932)
• Concord (Concord NH 1917-1933)
• Condor (Chicago IL 1939-1940)
• Day-Elder (Irvington NJ 1919-1937)
• Dearborn (Chicago 1919-1924)
• Dependable (East St Louis IL 1918-1923)
• Double Drive (Benton Harbor MI 1922-1930)
• Douglas (Omaha 1917-1931)
• Eagle (St Louis 1920-1928)
• Fremont-Mais (Fremont OH 1914-1915)
• Fulton (Farmingdale NY 1916-1925)
• Gary Motor Truck (Gary IN 1916-1927)
• Gotfredson (Detroit Michigan & Walkerville Ontario 1923-1948)
• Hawkeye (Sioux City IA 1915-1933)
• Hug (Highland IL 1921-1942)
• Hurlburt (New York City 1912-1927)
• Jumbo (Saginaw MI 1918-1924)
• Kalamazoo (Kalamazoo MI 1913-1924)
• Kleiber (San Francisco 1914-1937)
• Lehigh (Allentown PA 1925-1927)
• Maccar (Allentown PA 1914-1935)
• MacDonald (San Francisco 1920-1942)
• Relay (Lima OH 1927-1933)
• Rogers Una-Drive (Sunnyvale CA 1919-1922)
• Rumley (LaPorte IN 1919-1928)
• Sandow (Chicago Heights IL 1915-1928)
• Service (Wabash IN 1911-1932)
• Stewart (Buffalo NY 1912-1941)
• Sullivan (Rochester NY 1916-1923)
• Thomas (New York City 1916-1917)
• Tiffin (Tiffin OH 1913-1923)
• Titan (Milwaukee 1917-1932)
• Trabold (Johnstown PA 1911-1932)
• Transport (Mt Pleasant MI 1919-1925)
• Traylor (Allentown PA 1920-1928)
• Walker-Johnson (East Woburn MA 1919-1923)
• Watson (Conastoga NY 1917-1925)

Other applications

• Agricultural tractor manufacturers, such as Massey-Harris (see also Massey Ferguson) & Cockshutt (see Cockshutt Plow Company) and Oliver used Buda engines.
• Bus, taxi, and motorcoach makers such as Bridgeport, Luxor, and Pennant (see Barley Motor Car Co.) all used Buda engines.
• From 1925-1930, California coach operator, El Dorado, re-fitted new 4-cylinder White buses with 6-cylinder Buda's.
• Firetruck builders Seagrave Fire Apparatus, Duplex, and American LaFrance used Buda engines.
• Buda engines were also used in electric generators, fire pumps, sawmills, cotton gins, and feed mills.
• Gardner-Denver used Buda engines in their air compressors.
• Buda-Lanova diesels were used by Australian Navy and U.S. Coast Guard in the 1940's.
• Gilford Motor Company (1925 - 1935) in the U.K used Buda 6 cylinder engines in some of their vehicles

Parts

Parts are still available from "Buda Engine Company" in Shreveport, LA.

Product range

(add details of model range here)

See also

• List of Engine Manufacturers
• Glossary Index

References / sources

Based on wikipedia article (linked from several manufacturers articles)

External links

Add any relevant (web) links here