[Mg-t] History of the XPAG engine

[Dave and Liz DuBois]

As Bob stated, not a tractor engine at all.  Below is an article written 
by Jerry Felper, tracing the origin of the engine right back to the good 
old USA!

THE ORIGIN OF THE XPAG ENGINE

Jerry Felper

Did you ever wonder why the threads on a XPAG and XPEG engines are 
French Metric or where this great engine came from.Well here is the 
whole story.

It all started in Connecticut in 1826 with the birth of Benjamin Berkely 
Hotchkiss.Benjamin served an apprenticeship as a machinist and worked in 
the Sharps Rifle Factory.He participated in the development of the early 
Colt Revolver.

In the mid 1850, he and his older brother returned to the family 
business, where the two spent their spare time experimenting with cannon 
shells.Hotchkiss projectiles were especially lethal and after proving 
themselves in the Mexican War, small orders came from the U.S. 
government and Japan.With the advent of the Civil War, their new 
enterprise grew into a giant.By 1865 they were filthy rich.

Their problem was that peace kept breaking out, so Benjamin traveled to 
Europe in search of additional markets. Here he met Napoleon III. 
Emperor of France, who sensing a threat from the East persuaded him to 
set up an armament factory in France, this was 1867.It was located in 
St. Denis, also home of the famous boiler and steam engine builder 
Delaunay-Belleville.

France was soundly trounced in the Franco Prussian War and it was not 
until 1872 that the new Hotchkiss gas-operated automatic "rapid- firing" 
gun, the first modern machine gun, was adopted by Chile, China, Britain, 
Russia and the USA.By this time there were five Hotchkiss factories 
operating in Europe.

When peace broke out again, Hotchkiss found themselves with too much 
production floor space and not enough production.By this time Benjamin 
died and there were a number of creative Presidents of Hotchkiss.In 
1898, President Mr. Parsons figured that any company that could turn out 
precision gun parts could just as well turn out parts for the new auto 
industry.By the turn of the century, the slack on armaments had been 
taken up by large component orders from Panhard and De Dietrich. Parson 
hired George Terrasse who was an experienced auto designer and Hotchkiss 
started to build autos.

One of their first cars had a 19L Engine.Their autos had many state of 
the art features and were very reliable. Now the connection with our 
engines starts.Hotchkiss built autos until the First World War broke out 
and were back making guns.The French decided it would be best to move 
the Hotchkiss armaments factory to England to keep it away from German 
hands.The plant was moved to Coventry.

After the war they needed some thing to build, since they saturated the 
machine gun market.They built 1,100cc engines for BSA and in 1921 they 
took a contract with Morris to build copies of the American Continental 
engines that were originally built for the Morris Cowley.

This proved to be a big operation and 1923 William Morris purchased 
Hotchkiss-Coventry.

*Editor's Insert:* Since the factory had been moved from France, all the 
tooling was French Metric.It was considered too expensive to convert all 
the tooling to British specifications.So Leonard Lord came up with the 
idea of using Whitworth heads on the metric bolts and nuts so British 
mechanics could use their regular tools on the engines.Thus was born the 
"Nuffield Mad Metric" nuts and bolts used on all engines and 
transmissions made from 1923 thru 1956 in the now Morris Coventry engine 
factory.

/The overhead cam engines used in the early MGs all were this strange 
combination of French Metric threads with Whitworth heads./

/In 1936 MG adapted a Wolseley overhead valve engine for the new series 
MG, the TA/

This is where the XPA- series engines came from and why they use French 
Metric Threads.Our engines were derived from copies of an engine of the 
1920s, built by Continental in the USA (The Continental engine was a 
version of the engine designed before WW I by William Morris).

If you would like to read more about Hotchkiss please get a copy of 
Skinned Knuckles Vol. 30 No.] A UG. 2005, Foreign Affairs by John 
Kuerzi. This is where most of my information came from and l thank 
Skinned Knuckles for allowing me to copy much of the article.