What Is a Wick Carburetor?
When Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler introduced their new car to the German public in 1896, it had onboard a device that remained an integral part of the engines for almost a century; the float-type spray carburetor. Their invention was preceded first by the rotary brush carburetor then the wick carburetor. The wick carburetor was an integral inspiration in Maybach and Benz' work; it was the first device ever to introduce fuel vapor to an internal combustion engine.
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The Rotary-Brush Atomizer
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The forerunner of the wick carburetor was the rotary-brush atomizer. It was the invention of Siegfried Marcus, who in 1875 built the first car with a gasoline engine. It featured a brush that rotated above a small reservoir of gasoline; at the bottom of its stroke, the brush plucked at the surface of the gas and flicked droplets into the air. The suction created by the downward motion of the pistons sucked the gas-air mixture into the combustion chamber. This atomized, but did not vaporize, the liquid fuel -- the wick carburetor was the first to do that.
A Nugget of Automotive History
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The wick carburetor improved on Marcus’ design and remained in use until Maybach and Daimler, the latter, soon to begin his world-changing relationship with Karl Benz, released the float-type spray carb. As an aside, their cars -- still in production today -- are known as Mercedes-Benz, not Daimler-Benz, because they named their 1903 machine after the daughter of their financier, Emil Jellenik. Her name: Mercedes.
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The Wick Carburetor
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The wick carburetor was invented in Birmingham, England, by Dr. F. W. Lanchester. A far more complex device than the rotary-brush, it consisted of two chambers and the eponymous wicks. The lower chamber held gasoline and the bottoms of the wicks. The gas-saturated wicks passed into the upper chamber, where the fuel evaporated. Air was drawn through the upper chamber, where it became mixed with the vapors the wicks gave off. The fuel-air mixture passed through a wire mesh intended to remove impurities -- effectively the world’s first fuel filter -- and into the combustion chamber. In 1896, this invention powered the first car driven in Great Britain.
The Way of the Future
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Maybach and Daimler’s carburetor was an extraordinary invention, vastly improving the wick carburetor's shortcomings by making possible the delivery of a constant flow of fuel to the engine. While the wick carburetor, in its time, had been the height of technical innovation, this new carburetor featured a bowl with a float that when it was filled with fuel to a predetermined height, closed a needle valve and shut off the fuel flow. The fuel mixed with air in a separate chamber and drawn into the combustion area by vacuum. Although electronic fuel injection took over the mass-production market in the late 1980s -- this carburetor, in all essential parts, it is still with us today.
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