Buda Engine Co.

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Buda Engine Company

Industry	Engine manufacturing
Founded	1881 (1881) in Buda, Illinois
Founder	George Chalender
Fate	Acquired by Allis-Chalmers in 1953

Buda Engine was founded in 1881 by George Chalender in Buda, Illinois, to make equipment for railways. Later based in Harvey, Illinois, Buda from 1910 manufactured engines for industrial, truck, and marine applications. Early Buda engines were gasoline fueled.^[1] Later, diesel 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.^[2] The Buda-Lanova models were re-christened "Allis-Chalmers diesel".

Buda began by manufacturing railroad maintenance of way tools and equipment, switches, switch stands and signal devices. By the end of the century, Buda was producing a line of hand cars and velocipedes, and eventually moved into the motorcar business also. Velocipedes were equipped with single-cylinder, air-cooled engines and motorcars were equipped with 2-cylinder opposed "pancake" air-cooled engines. The motorcar production was later either sold or licensed to Fairbanks-Morse, which continued production. Truck, tractor, bus, and marine engines continued in production by Buda who eventually was taken over by Allis-Chalmers.^[3]

Buda's engines were water-cooled, in-line four, six, or eight-cylinder models. Buda advertisements in the early 1900s proclaimed Buda as "Pioneer of the cast-in-block" method. Their engines featured long stroke, enclosed valves, noiseless timing gears, and self-contained oiling system. Early four-cylinder gasoline-fueled models produced 30 to 60 bhp. Later six-cylinder diesel 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 four-cylinder Buda gasoline engine was favored by many early truck manufacturers, who were converting horse-drawn vehicles to self-propelled models. In 1918 a 42-hp version was fitted to the American-built M1917 light tank, a licensed copy of the Renault FT. By the late 1920s, trucks were getting larger and required larger engines, such as Buda's six-cylinder models. As diesel engines grew in popularity in the 1930s, Buda responded with four and six-cylinder diesel engines.

A Buda six-cylinder engine was one of the offerings in the Carroll Six (1920–1922). The 66 hp engine's top speed was 62 mph/100 km/h.