Philip Duclos "Victorian" IC engine project

[cedge]

This post is an update on the ongoing trouble shooting and adjustment phase. Getting everything in balance is proving to be a bit of work, but its been fun and frustration hasn't yet entered the picture. The good news is that the engine now runs!!   

For non-technicals, this is about as far as you'll want to read. For those who find birthing pains of interest, read on.

The past week has been a series of near misses. The engine really wanted to run when John and I tried to get it going. However, something was not as it should be and the attempt failed. After a bit of consultation with John and Bill Johnson, I had a better idea of what could be preventing success and went back into the internals of the engine to have a look.

Problem one.... low compression
When making the piston I was used dimensions that were established for use with cast iron rings. After breaking the second set of rings, even  before ever getting them near the cylinder, I opted for nitrile "O" rings instead. Rather than cut the piston grooves again, I decided to sand down the O rings to fit.  Bad choice. This resulted in very thin rings that eventually stretched under friction, broke and caused a total loss of compression.

Solution.... cut the piston grooves deeper giving me nice fat O rings which were then given a slight flat to seal against the cylinder wall. Add a bit of oil and a good seal was made, and the compression/vacuum improvement was very noticeable.

Problem two....

The valves had been lapped for the 3rd time and they "seemed" to be making a good seal. On a hit and Miss engine, the intake valve has to open under vacuum, which is indicated by a tiny, barely visible "fultter" of the valve spring keeper. This has to happen after each exhaust stroke, even when the flywheel is turned by hand. I knew it was working when the drill motor was applied to turn the engine, but I couldn't be sure about it at low rpm. Bill suggested bluing the seats and getting a better indication of how well the seats were actually lapped. It's an old trick and one I'd used in the past, but had slipped my mind during this build. Lets just say "seemed" was a bad assumption.

Solution....
Tear down the head and use the lathe to turn the valves with a fresh load of grinding compound... add a dash of patience and more mark up dye.  Results... nice clean even valve seats and after reassembly, another noticeable leap in compression. Scratch one more itch and add another mark in Steve's column

Problem 3.... not my fault....LOL

I'll be using an ignition module which functions exactly as the typical automobile from the days of breaker points, coils and condensers. These fire when the points open, causing the coil to unload and fire the spark plug.  Dead simple... extremely short duration and easily targeted to the timing point you want.  Many of these engines are made to use a buzz coil that functions like the old model T ford ignitions. These operate  somewhat backwards to what I'll be using. These fire the plug when the points close... not open. The high intensity spark, which you can probably weld exotic alloys with fires as long as the points are closed... ie.. across the whole flat of the ignition breaker cam.

John is a fan of the buzz coil and since he was a little dubious about my ignition system, opted to use the much stronger buzz coil. This proved to be both a good attempt and a bad solution.

Oddly.... the two systems use opposite sides of the breaker cam's flat to high point transition... one system fires as things close... the other system fires as the points open. Here is where duration of the breaker cam becomes a problem.  My engine was designed for the system I'm now using, rather than the buzz coil. The 3/8 face of the flat allowed the fire to overlap into the intake phase of the stroke as well as wanting to fire at an extremely high advance setting, holding well past top dead center. 

A change made to the breaker cam to cut its duration by half "helped" but was not a complete success. I finally went back to the original cam and abandoned the buzz coil. This let me dial in and hit the sweet spot in the timing, using the system I' was going to use in the end.... add another mark to my column.

Problem 4....
Fuel mixture.... I'd made the carb to spec but it is a touchy little beggar. I had doubts about it so I took it off and modified my fuel tank for use as a Vapor carb. After having a bit of near success, Zeusrekning and I were not feeling warm and fuzzy with it, so I replaced it, once again with the original aspiration set up. The problem there is that I'd modified the carb a wee bit to possibly become a means to add air to the vapor carb when needed. Bottom line, the needle was shorter and adjustment was a bit limited.

After a number of "almosts" we began to wonder if air flow was being restricted, so I turned the carb core a bit to give us more incoming air flow. More "almosts" later Tim and I called a day. Later in the evening I swapped the ignition systems and ran the needle valve all the way in, figuring to start from scratch when I next had time to play.

Today I knew I'd be tied up with family events from early morning until well into the afternoon. While waiting on my wife to finish getting the grandson ready to go, I put the battery powered drill motor to the engine and pulled the trigger.  To my amazement, the engine sprung to life and ran for the better part of 15 seconds.... Cedge is now totally chuffed and knows he won't get to play for hours to come....(sigh)

Fast forward to this evening and I've had the engine running as long as 5 minutes before friction. due to heat, stops it. I've got the cooling system off the machine. so it will be reinstalled tomorrow and we'll see if a bit of heat reduction will add to the running times. Then its time to add the governor back into the mix, which already appears will need a bit of tweaking, now that I have some idea of the speeds the engine at which it will be running.

It's ongoing, but I'm stomping on bugs, probably driving my advisers completely nuts and generally  having more fun than the law allows. Sorry there are no photos, but the recent action has been quite fluid and very fast, while the subject matter has not been very photogenic. I'll try to do better when video time rolls around.

Steve
(Cheshire possum grin firmly affixed)

[spuddevans]

Well done that man  and have a few nana's too 


I knew you'd get it going, now I cant wait to see a Video of it running ( where's the "this thread is worthless without Video" smiley? )


It's gonna take something to wipe the grin off your face I'm sure.


Tim

[sbwhart]

Well done Steve   

Can't waite to see the video, thats one special engine 

Have fun

Stew

[Stilldrillin]

VERY well done Steve!  

I can almost see that grin from here.....   

David D

[NickG]

Well done steve. Can't wait to see the video!

Nick

[arnoldb]

Steve -   

Can't wait to see a video of it running   

Arnold

[zeusrekning]

Well Steve, I noticed a few more gray hairs when I woke up yesterday. But it was a ton of fun.
Guys, we had that lil engine as close to running as you can get with out actually running. You could roll the flywheel around by hand it it would pull itself out of my hand. But just couldn't bring itself around for the next stroke. But that buzz coil would throw a beautiful blue spark even at a .020" gap.

Oh yeah, I did manage to get lit up myself the first time i touched the engine. 
Then Steve laughed and got bit himself.
Then of course I made a smart comment and got bit again.
This went back and forth for a while. But just added to the fun.

It is going to be a beautiful sounding engine and should throw awesome little puffs of smoke.
I had a great time and look foward to doing it again.
Tim

[rleete]

The good news is that the engine now runs!! 

After all the other work put into it, was there ever any doubt?  Just a matter of time.


Looking forward to the video.

[madjackghengis]

Awww shucks gang... I just like my metal to shine a little....LOL. It really doesn't add that much more time or effort to go the extra distance. Besides... with abrasives on the shelf ranging from coarse cut files to sandpaper with less than 1.0 micron grit on hand, I gotta use it somewhere.

lovely piece of art there

At the end of the day, isn't that really what these engine builds are about? A wee bit of unique art to be shared with others?

John...
The ashes might be mine..... if it doesn't run after all the work...(grin) You are right on one point. Anyone can do the hand contouring if they just get past the "can't be done" thought process. It's a lot restrictive than hitting a mark at .0005 and the results are a finished item that is "yours" from end to end. Making it uniquely "mine" is a whole lot of my motivation.

<OT comment....> The DRO's I recently bought out of Hong Kong are a godsend. They've made this project much easier and enjoyable than it might have been. When the drawing says put the hole "here" the 5 decimal places gives a lot of confidence that "here" is exactly where you are.... and no more doubts about center lines....(big grin).  I'm also hooked on the Bolt Circle function..... sssswwweeeeeeeett. No need to set up the RT.... in fact I was done with the first 4 holes before I could have even set up the RT. </OT comment....>

Steve

Cedge, thanks for the link to your build log, I'm enjoying it tremendously, and have to say the "shiney" is top notch work.  I too have recently taken on a DRO on my mill and use is extensively, but mine is limited to .0005 inches accuracy and increments, mind telling me what sort has the .00005 capacity?  I bought the cheapest one I could find, as it was all I could afford, but it is miles ahead of working without it, it is worth the whole price just for bolt circles, in my opinion. mad jack

[cedge]

Jack
Thanks for the kind comments. I'm pleased to hear you've enjoyed the journey. I know that I sure have.

Truthfully, if you're already working at the half a thou level, it's probably not worth the money to go for the extra decimals. I've got mine working to 5 decimal places, simply because I'm crazy enough to fiddle with it to hit Zero in the tenths slot. You can't believe how small a movement that is on the wheels. It's great for marking out and for hitting the mark for holes, whether liner or circular patterned, but most of these model engines never require that level of accuracy.

That being said, I bought mine from these guys. Excellent purchasing experience but you'll need a Chin-english dictionary when you install it.  Documentation suffers from translations....(grin) I've yet to hear regrets from those who've bought on my recommendation.  Lots of features and high quality components make it a pretty attractive deal.

Steve

[madjackghengis]

John
After crashing the first gear, the second also bit the dust in the same manner. Repeated cuts on the RT were pretty mind numbing. Since the second gear died while under the final dimensional cut, I took the advice of a user on HMEM and tried the cut in a single pass. The drill rod cutter was up for it and the mill didn't complain any more than when it was taking smaller cuts. 28 passes later I had a much cleaner looking gear than when I was making multiple passes and it meshed well enough to begin the lapping in process. The gears are now running together without any extreme drag and what there is should disappear once I can put the gears under power for a final run in.

Interesting project and I'll do it again when required, but I'd rather eat molten glass than do it for a living....(grin). There are kinder methods for driving men to madness. Hi Cedge, I just finished cutting a spur gear to mesh with a worm in a driving motor for a portable valve seat replacing machine, I almost just wrote off the driver, having finished the replacing of the seats, and doing the valve job in my mill, but the fact that the spur gear with the teeth set at the helix angle of the worm lasted twenty years of my own use, and perhaps a few hundred seats cut out, I decided to cut it as a spur gear and follow the less than best way that was originally used.  I ground a tool bit rather than buy a twenty five buck cutter, but was foolish enough to use one of my regular flycutters, so the angles for the grinding were rather a bit of interesting work, I'm making a straight out fly cutter for gears, when I get a moment, but I had real doubts about cutting the teeth with a single pass as so many people have written.  I found, like you, the quality of the gear was vastly improved by a full depth cut on all the teeth, and no problems at all shown by the flycutter, cutting in aluminum bronze, to a depth of .091 for fifty one teeth.  After it was cut, I found I liked the curve on one side of the upper end of the teeth better than the other side, flipped the gear around on the arbor, set the cutter into a tooth slot, increased the depth of cut by a thousandth, and cut all fifty one teeth again, and it works great in the driver motor, has full power I haven't felt in years, and completely changes my trepidation over cutting gears with a flycutter.  I've got three or four cutters which I have bought for the making of a single gear, and no longer feel that is necessary.  By the way, that is one shiny engine you've got going together there, about elegant enough for me to make one for my mom, for her table.  Absolutely a beaut!! mad jack

Steve

[cedge]

Jack...
Once you've taken on a gear or two, the fear factor goes way down. I'm going to build up a set of hobs when i get the time. after seeing how they work, I'd be nuts to stick with the single tooth cutter. That might be just the ticket for when I finish my current build. No less mind numbing, but the hob does come a little closer to a true involute end product.

Steve   

[madjackghengis]

Very nice build Steve. I don't think you can call it "Duclos's Victorian Engine". It should be called "Cedge's Victorian Engine". It's no were near what Philip's engine looks like with all the mods you made.

   BRAVO. 

The video will be the crown jewel in this build series. Can't wait to see that.

You need to take a well deserved vacation now so you can think up on what you're going to build next. 

Bernd

Hi Cedge, I have to agree with Bernd, this is definitively a "Cedge's Victorian Engine", with all your unique attributes you added.  I have to say, the brass screen in the aluminum water tank looks much better than the brass water tank.  Somehow the aluminum of the tank goes with the "white metal" of the basic engine, with the brass screen accentuating the vast amounts of brass and bronze that go so well with beautifully polished aluminum.  You expand the meaning of "form following function", and give it new luster as the "form" makes so much impact on the senses. mad jack

[madjackghengis]

Jack...
Once you've taken on a gear or two, the fear factor goes way down. I'm going to build up a set of hobs when i get the time. after seeing how they work, I'd be nuts to stick with the single tooth cutter. That might be just the ticket for when I finish my current build. No less mind numbing, but the hob does come a little closer to a true involute end product.

Steve   

Cedge, for decades, I've cut single and double, and an occasional three or more teeth, fixing a machine, matching the teeth cut by hand with saw and file, to the profile of the rest, and feeling when they are right.  I've even cut a 96 tooth gear by hand with a hacksaw and a japanese saw file, when in Japan, and couldn't access a mill, but all that was a matter of "feel", when I was done, and little or no repeatability.  Actually cutting gears where the teeth all look the same, and feel the same is a whole new ball game, and far different from matching a couple new teeth to the way all the others perform.  I have to say, I've had doubts about methods show for setting up flycutters for cutting teeth that have been put to rest completely now.  By the way, that was a rather remarkable save on the cam gear, I've used a similar set up to get things in alignment in the lathe, when I worked on electronics in the Corps, I tore apart all the small gear motors I removed from service, and kept things like bearings and such, and have a drawer full of small to very tiny bearings, and have one on the end of a bar just as a pusher, as you describe.  When's the video for the Victorian engine being released? mad jack

[cedge]

Here Ya go Jack.....

&hl=en&fs=1&

Steve

[shoey51]

Just beautiful to watch

cheers Graham

[madjackghengis]

Way to go Cedge   the videos are great, the engine sounds and looks fantastic running, the valve gear connecting the exhaust to the cam and valve, along with the action of the governor makes for a most interesting looking running, you can see it very clearly holding open the exhaust, during the "miss" portion of the cycle, a beautiful build, an amazing recovery with the crash of the cam, and such, and with all your own touches, definitively "Cedge's Victorian Engine", unique unto its self, makes me wish I'd built it myself.  A real demonstration of fine craftsmanship mad jack

[MikeA]

Hello,

I'm a relatively new member as well as new to machining, and have to say I spent a loooong time reading this post from start to finish.

The only possible comment one can make is amazing - what a beautiful piece of machinery you've built and from what little I know about the design, this is definitely your special version that would be hard to replicate.

In several posts I noted comments about your only starting recently - do you mind telling me how long you've been doing this? I doubt I would ever be able to do such fine work but at least it gives me something to aim for.

All the best,
Mike

[cedge]

Jack...
The kind of support you and the others on the boards have given me has been the stuff dreams are made of. The range of emotional response has run the gamut from surprise, to humility and even embarrassment, but I've loved every moment.
 
When the project began, I had doubts that it would ever be successful, mostly because IC engines were a whole new territory for me. As things progressed, the encouragement from everyone spurred me to keep going and trying to innovate. the little engine you see was the result.

I' got to show it at a few local shows last year and those who know engines were blown away, while those who didn't still admired it's unique look. That by any measure is a successful build. I can only hope the current build will be as well received. Thanks to you and to all who enjoyed the experience. It made it far more fun for me as well.


Mike...
This is my 4th season actively using my machines. I began with making tooling and then started my first engine project only after I began hanging out on the forums. I knew zero about machining metal and spent lots of late nights self teaching and even more late nights after I found this place and HMEM and found answers to questions and problems I'd been having. I owe a lot of what I've learned to the fact that I'm not afraid to ask newbie questions and then apply what the old timers were willing to share.  I'm pretty much limited to warm weather operations, so the actual time spent is hard to really estimate.

Steve

[MikeA]

Steve,

Well, after almost two years I don't expect to be doing anything like this in a few more years - more likely never!

Great work and even more so in the short time you've been machining, congratulations!

Mike

[cedge]

Mike...
I took on a project I called the Water Pressure Engine, back year before last. I, like you felt a bit less than in control of the machines. Add to that the fact that the project had no drawings and was to be built from inside my head, you can imagine I was feeling like I was in over my head.

Bogstandard reminded me that all I needed to do was make one part. When it was right, make another. Once I stopped trying to build the whole engine and began making that open part, things got much easier. It let me relax and something amazing began to happen. I passed some unmarked point in my journey where I began to feel like I was in control of the machines and could make them do what I wanted, with a little thought before taking action. As I worked, that feeling became stronger as my confidence grew.

The point of all that is to say, this. Somewhere along the line, you'll crest a point where it all begins to click and make sense. It's an almost Zen like feeling and you'll know it when you experience it. From there, not much will stop you from achieving whatever you want o do.  My own moment came when I managed to make a particularly difficult cut to the rocker saddle of the water engine. It had to be spot on or the engine would be a failure. I took time to "mentally machine" the piece several times (including while sound asleep) and then I carefully attacked the metal.  The piece turned out perfectly and my learning curve suddenly passed an important "peak".

It'll come. Just keep at it until it also clicks with you. I build to please my eye, not to set any standards for others. Find your own "eye pleasing" level and work to meet it. The additional bling I bring to my projects is there to satisfy an itch I got from seeing German craftsmen turning out incredible jewels..... after years of apprenticeships. I set that level of work as my own personal goal.... one that I might never achieve, but you can bet I'll be trying....(grin)

Steve

[John Hill]

Steve, I understand the water engines were suprisingly uncommon but I did recently see a building which contains the minimal remains of at least one and possibly three more.

They were used in a warehouse in Oamaru, New Zealand, for lifting grain sacks to upper floors.  Unfortunately the engines were discarded some decades ago and replaced with electric motors the only relics remaining are the curved base blocks and the bearings that support a lay shaft for the electric motors.

[MikeA]

Steve,

Thanks for the support and especially the concept of doing 'one piece' - I have a tendency to multi-task and end up bouncing all over the place. Indeed, I was looking at the plans for an engine as an entity, not a collection of individual parts to be made one piece at a time.

I'm slowly getting up to speed on what (and what not!) my machines can do - right now they're capabilities are way ahead of my abilities, but each time I do something I'm learning a bit more.

If I eventually build anything that remotely approaches what you've done, I'll be more than happy.

Best,
Mike

[Darren]

Hi Mike,

I got my first mill about 2yrs ago, in reality I've not made anything awesome on it, just bits and bobs really. Looking back I remember the awful finishes and ruined cutters. Some snapped, erm, quite a few snapped 

Now I can chuck a lump of steel in the mill and murder it without damaging a cutter .... next stop ... precision ... but I'd like a DRO first.

The last two years I have spent mainly collecting old affordable tools for the workshop and re-working them to fix what needs fixing. Made a bit of tooling on the way. But I can now at least make or mod something with relative success and that is very satisfying, to me at least.

I'm hankering after another big project, either another car build (I built a Lotus 7 from scratch) or another GSXR1100 strip tune and re-build. I've done it before with hardly any tooling compared to what I have now.

Now I have the tools and even better some good ones for what I'd like to do ...

Have a look here, it's doesn't really explain the extent I went to with these vehicles, or others missing from those pages, but I think that's where my passion lays as I'm hankering to have another go .... 

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/darren.dean/

What I'm trying to say is, go slowly and it will all fall into place in time ... 

[MikeA]

Hello Darren,

Thanks so much for your words of encouragement and sharing your experience.

To the newbies such as myself on this forum, the quality of work posted is at such a high level, it's intimidating! I'm in that mode you describe of murdering chunks of metal and damaging the equipment. Thankfully, it's becoming less and less, but I still have a problem making a piece that exactly meets the spec, or for that matter, comes close to the spec.

I've done much the same as you over the last two years, i.e. getting together affordable equipment and refurbishing to useful condition. Made a bit of tooling, (not much but it's still working ) and now looking for my first real project - a small engine of one kind or another. I'm getting a bit of static from SWMBO about 'what are you going to do with all this stuff!

One thing is massively evident - this forum is probably the most receptive, supportive and congenial one I've found and I expect if one asks for help it will be forthcoming - good to have such an effective parachute in the event of the inevitable mistakes.

Again, thanks for your words of encouragement.

All the best,
Mike