THIS HERC AIN’T NO JERK

1955 Hercules DIX-4ES Supercharged Diesel

Hercules was one of the founding fathers of engine manufacturing in the U.S. and one of the earliest manufacturers of lightweight, high speed diesels. The company began in 1915, founded in Canton, Ohio, as Hercules Motor Manufacturing by Charles Balough (1883-1966). Born and educated in Hungary, Balough worked his way up the American engineering food chain after he emigrated. He played a big part in designing the Ford Model T in the early 1900s and is still well known for that. He later moved to Kelly-Springfield Motor Truck Company, redesigning most of their truck line before leaving early in 1915 after doctrinal disputes with new owners of that company.

Motivated to be his own boss and work with like-minded people, he set out to found an engine manufacturing company. Charles had a lot of help starting Hercules, including none other than H.H. Timken, one of the founders of the Timken Bearing Company, who ponied up a 1/4 interest for the startup and served as CEO for a time. Balough was president and remained such for many years. Hercules got enough of a business foothold to cash in on the military buildup for World War I, built a lot of engines and earned a solid reputation.

The Hercules’ focus was to build lines of engines that could be adapted to multiple purposes. Because Balough was an automotive engineer, many applications were automotive but Hercules worked to make those engines adaptable to marine, agriculture and industrial power, as well as building in a flexibility for the company to customize engines to meet specialized customer needs. As a result, Hercules engines were seen in tractors and farm equipment, trucks, stationary and marine applications by the thousands and the company earned a reputation for being adaptable.

On solid footing, they changed their name to Hercules Motor Manufacturing in 1923. Their main business was gasoline engines but they were paying close attention to developments in diesel technology. When the technological ducks lined up, mainly improved fuels, combustion technology and fuel injection, they started working on a diesel in 1930 .

The Sooty Hercules

Hercules engineers had one main design goal, downsized diesels suitable for automotive use. To that end, they developed a prechamber diesel that used architecture similar to their latest gasoline engine designs and could be built on existing tooling. Their design made for a very smooth firing diesel that adapted very well to lighter engine architecture. By 1933, Hercules began offering a line of compact, high speed diesels (2600-3000 rpm) that were sized just right to be installed in medium, light-heavy and heavy trucks. Their line of diesels expanded through the 1930s and even into repower kits to replace gas engines in trucks. They offered specialized kits to repower specific popular makes and model trucks, GM and Ford to name just two. Their diesels were packaged so they could interchange with existing Hercules gas engines designs with minimal alteration of the equipment. A truck manufacturer using Hercules engines could easily offer both gas and diesel options, plus the trucks could be easily converted later, one direction or the other.

The end of the 1930s brought the specter of war to the entire world. With the Nazi aggression in Europe and ruthless Japanese expansion in the Pacific, war seemed inevitable. Within the limits of government power, the United States military began a massive update and buildup. Hercules was ideally placed to jump right into building high speed diesels. One of the first contracts was the DNX6-270, a special 1,018 cubic inch, six-cylinder supercharged marine diesel for the U.S. Navy. With a 6-inch by 6-inch bore and stroke, it made 270 (later 300+) horsepower and was used all over the world in tugs and patrol craft during World War II. Hercules supplied many other engines, gas and diesel, for military use in World War II and the list of U.S. and allied military trucks with Hercules gas or diesel engines is a very long one. The list of vessels using marinized Hercules diesels is just as long.

Alphabet Soup ala Hercules

As you read this, you’ll see lots of model designations made up of two to five characters. Don’t ask us to explain it all. It was a system discarded in the late ‘50s when Hercules debuted a completely new line of engines. To start, using our feature DIX-4ES engine as an example, we can tell you the “D” was for diesel. The second character, “I” was the engine series, of which there were many. A gas engine designation would start with the engine series character, the famous JXD being one example (and it had a diesel counterpart, the DJXD). The “X” we cannot decode, but it was common to all Hercules engines from the early ‘30s and up.

The “E” in our example indicates a particular bore size and that could vary a lot within an engine series. In the four and six cylinder DIX line engines (there was a DIX two cylinder that had slightly different bore and stroke dimensions), “B” indicated a 3.25-inch bore while the “C” and “D” had 4.00 and 4.25-inch bores respectively. The “E” engines were 3.875 inches. If the designation was just “DIX,” as you might see early on with the original 2-cylinder, the bore would be the originally designed dimension for the first engine of the series. You do see “A” used in this context as well.

Generally, the stroke was one of the base parameters within a series but the addition of an “L” to the designation would indicate a long stroke variant. As far as we can see, the DIX lines did not have an “L” variant but the original two-cylinder engines used a 4.50 inch stroke versus the later standard 4.00-inch but didn’t have an “L.”  The “S” indicated supercharged an, later, “TS” was for turbo-supercharged. The “4” denoted the number of cylinders and there were DIX-4ES as well as DIX-6ES engines. Later the twos got the designation DIX-2 (with or without the bore letter).The cylinder designation appeared early in the 1940s and “V8” was also used when those engines appeared.

The DIX Series Evolution

The DIX Series debuted in 1939-1940. From the available material, it appears the DIX two-cylinder appeared first, followed by the four and six later in the ‘40s. We can’t see a direct ancestor to the DIX line but they were predated by the IX gas engines from the ‘30s that are similar in bore and stroke dimension and general layout but are considerably different in other ways. The two-cylinder DIX was common as a lifeboat engine during WWII, but the DIX line expanded for 1946.

In 1946, the DIX-4 and DIX-6 were introduced. We see them marketed extensively as marine units and as repowers for light and medium trucks. You see them with any of the B, C or D bore dimensions and it appears Hercules tailored those to the application. The DIX-4 were three main bearing engines and the DIX-6 were seven. Like the other Hercules diesels, they used a prechamber combustion chamber, which mounted in the block (see the illustrations). The cylinders used dry sleeves.

The DIX-4E and 6E appeared in 1953 as part of a suite of marine engine offerings. Of course Hercules had been building engines for marine use from day one, but mostly (excepting military contracts, especially in WWII) they were marinized outside the factory. From ‘53-58, we know they offered a line of ready-to-install marine engines complete with gearboxes, heat exchangers and other stuff needed for marine use.

At about the same time the DIX-4E and 6E appeared, the -4ES and -6ES came online. They used a chain-driven blower to boost the power from 75 horses at 3000 on the -4E NA to 95 horses blown. The -6E jumped similarly from 115 horsepower at 3000 to 150 with the -6E. Some version of the DIX line appeared in the Hercules engine catalog though 1958 but by then a whole new line of direct injected diesels were taking over the Hercules line.

The Last of Hercules

Hercules had run strongly through the ‘40s and ‘50s, being ready, willing and able to design, adapt and manufacture engines specifically for a variety of applications and customers. This stood them in particularly good stead with government and military  contracts. Their founding father, Charles Balough, retired as President in 1955. In 1961, the Hupp Corporation purchased Hercules but that relationship didn’t last long. In 1969, when White Motor Company was gobbling up everything in sight, they ate up Hercules as well, turning it into the White Engine Division and that’s when the Hercules bloodline got diluted.

With White’s declining fortunes of the mid 1980s, they sold the engine division and though the company name reverted back to Hercules, it went through a succession of owners, continued to decline, and closed up in 1999. The parts and rebuild business was still lucrative, especially on the later engines which were and are in common use, so when the company was broken up, the parts and reman business went to Hercules Manufacturing, who ended up with most of the blueprints and the rights to reman parts. Hercano Propulsion bought up a good deal of the remaining old stock and now deals mostly with the obsolete parts for the older engines and that’s the go-to for the older stuff and used parts.

Sources

Hercules Manufacturing
www.herculesmanufacturing.com

Hercano Propulsion
www.herculesparts.com