Author Topic: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock  (Read 112266 times)

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #50 on: August 12, 2014, 05:23:21 PM »
This afternoon I cut the 15 tooth crankshaft gear from 3/4" diameter cold rolled steel. The mill liked that!! No quivering and shuddering like when I cut the stress proof 1144. I found a left over piece of grey cast iron and bored it 3/8" through, then press fitted and Loctited  a cold rolled steel arbor tuned to 0.376" diameter into it. It can set in the lathe until tomorrow sometime when I find the time to turn it down to 0.708" diameter, and then I will cut teeth into it on the mill. The crankshaft gear is steel, and will be pinned to the crankshaft with a 0.093" diameter hardened steel pin. The cast iron jockey gear will ride on a 3/8" diameter shoulder bolt.


Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #51 on: August 17, 2014, 12:21:18 PM »
Here is a post from yesterday morning, when I was in Hamilton, Ontario. I couldn't get on the forum from there, as I couldn't remember my password---
So---No machining lately. I started a new contract for an old customer this week, and it's one of those deals where I have to be "On site" to do it. It's kind of fun to go back to work for a while, but it doesn't leave me much energy at the end of the day for machining in my own home shop. My life has been exciting lately, and not in a particularly good way. After setting in the old computer chair at my customers for two days, my back has "gone out" and so I'm living in 4 hour stretches, from pain pill to pain pill. I have had an allergic reaction to a steroid nasal spray, and have tonsilitis as a result. Life sucks when ya get old!!! I m setting on a computer in the Comfort Inn in Hamilton this morning, waiting to walk my daughter down the aisle at one o'clock today at her wedding. Then a reception tonight, where I will have to be cheerful and happy and dance with my dear wife, while secretly hurting like heck and grumpier than a bear with a sore a$$ !!! Ah well, enough whining for now. I am getting really excited about this new engine, and even though the project is slated as "A new engine for fall", fall is fast approaching. I ordered all of the bearings last week, and also purchased all of the aluminum bar stock I will use, along with the cold rolled steel flatbar for the crankshaft webs. I took my gigantic lump of bronze over to the place I buy my aluminum and they are going to saw of a couple of slices for me, one to make a flywheel from and a thinner one to cut "odds and sods" from for accent pieces on the rest of the engine. My 3D cad models are 99% finished, and also most of the mechanical detail drawings. I see someone else standing around the lobby watching me, so they probably want to use this computer. So---wish me luck guys. I will post more when this grand event is over and life returns to normal.----Brian

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #52 on: August 17, 2014, 12:27:28 PM »
Back home today. Wedding went off without a hitch. The bride was beautiful and I have gained a handsome young son in law. I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. The older I get, the less I sleep in Hotel rooms. I am going to get back to the engine this week and get the jockey gear cut. Once all of the gears are finished I will decide what to make next.---Brian

Offline awemawson

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #53 on: August 17, 2014, 02:04:30 PM »
Brian,

I empathise greatly with your back 'going out' when away. I well remember once incident when I was doing some consultancy work in Poland. I woke up in the morning with what turned out to be a slipped disk. I couldn't move - couldn't get my socks on - and I had to catch the only flight out of Wroclaw that day  :bugeye:

Ended up rolling all over the floor making all sorts of contortions rather than ask a maid to put my socks on in a language I only knew a couple of words of  :lol:
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #54 on: August 17, 2014, 02:20:01 PM »
Awemawson--When rolling around on the floor in a foreign country, you have to be VERY careful of what you ask the maid to do!!!---It might be something other than what you expected---Thankfully my back isn't feeling quite as "ouchy" today. I have taken my $500 ergonomic chair and my heating pad strapped to the back over to my customers office. This isn't quite as weird as it sounds, since it's a very small company and I am the only design engineer there. I may look a bit foolish, bet there aren't many people to see it, and I would gladly suffer looking foolish if it makes my back stop hurting.---Brian

Offline awemawson

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #55 on: August 17, 2014, 02:46:40 PM »
I suffered for a long time, and eventually was persuaded by the wife of a friend to have the operation. Made a huge difference and now just get the odd twinge. That was perhaps 10 years ago now. Poor old surgeon has popped his clogs so no going back!
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #56 on: August 18, 2014, 07:31:04 PM »
This new contract I'm working at has cut deeply into the time I have for working on this engine. However, I think about it as I lay waiting for sleep at night. On previous engines I have built, the spur gears which run the camshaft are quite noticeably noisy when running with the gear case removed. I'm not concerned with the danger of getting my fingers caught in the gear teeth (I've learned not to stick my fingers into gears---don't ask how). However, with only a minor change to the backplate, I can machine a filler piece to fit into the gap between the backplate and the crankcase which can be easily removed for adjusting the valve timing, but can be easily reinstalled to keep the noise of the gears down to acceptable levels and to retain a bit of grease. I have shown it in the assembly, and pulled out to one side by itself to show what it looks like.


Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #57 on: August 20, 2014, 06:30:54 PM »
Today was bearing day. All of the bearings I had ordered for my side valve engine came today---with a surprise!!! The bearings in the foreground are two 1/2" sealed ball bearings for the main crankshaft side, the needle bearings for both ends of the con rod, two oilite bronze bushings 3/8" i.d. x 1" long for the camshafts, and  one 3/8" i.d. oilite bushing x 1/2" long and one 3/8" i.d. x 5/8"  for the follower half of the crankshaft. So----what are all those bushings in the background?? Well, what I didn't know was that Canadian Bearings have changed their policy and many of these bushings are available in minimum lots of 5 or 10 pieces!!!  I didn't squeal too loudly, because everything only cost a total of $45.32, and there are probably enough left over bushings to last me for the rest of my life!!

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #58 on: August 21, 2014, 07:18:28 PM »
Tonight I finished the last gear for this engine. It is the jockey gear, the one which fits between the crankshaft gear and the two large camshaft gears. The two large camshaft gears do not mesh with each other, only with the jockey gear. The jockey gear is not driven by a shaft, but sets free to rotate on a 3/8" diameter shoulder bolt. I chose to make it from cast iron, as that will have self lubricating capabilities, and I have read that cast iron spur gears running on steel gears are quieter than steel gears running on each other. I'm not sure if that is true, but if it is, that will be a bonus. The gentleman who supplied the aluminum material for this job is supposed to be finished slicing off two lengths of bronze from my 50 pound bronze weight tomorrow---a thick one for the flywheel, and a thinner one to make various trim pieces from (I'm thinking the tappet guide bar, at least.) I have not torn down my rotary table set-up in the mill yet, as I want to put in a piece of plain mild steel and cut a gear tooth in it with my #4 cutter.---That's the one that gave me so much trouble cutting the 1144 stress proof material for the cam gears.  If the cutter is dull or damaged, I would rather know now so I can order a replacement, rather than find out the cutter is bad the next time I go to use it.

Offline tom osselton

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #59 on: August 21, 2014, 10:34:36 PM »
nice looking gears.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #60 on: August 22, 2014, 02:43:28 PM »
So here we have it, gentlemen- The material (or at least most of it) for my new engine. The thick slab of bronze is destined to become a flywheel. The thin piece will become trim pieces such as the tappet guide. The steel flatbar in two different thicknesses will become crankshaft webs. the large aluminum block will become the crankcase, the two smaller blocks will become combustion chamber immediately below the cylinder head and the backplate. I have enough round steel stock on hand to make the crankshaft from. I have yet to purchase the cast iron for the cylinder and the piece of aluminum which will become the baseplate. My supplier with the giant size self feeding bandsaw charges me $10 per slice through the bronze, so I think the total price came to around $35.00 for material.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #61 on: August 22, 2014, 03:42:37 PM »
Mystery Solved----Kind of---I chucked up a piece of cold rolled round stock in my rotary table/3 jaw chuck, put the #4 gearcutter back in the mill, and took a full depth 0.090" cut. The gearcutter was shrieking at a "normal" speed for this kind of work, and I was again getting sparks off the cutter. ---And that was WITH cutting oil.  A close examination of the cut cold rolled shows material being "extruded" around the sides and end of the cutter path. I have concluded that the gear cutter was duller than a hoe!!! It probably wasn't the fault of the 1144 stress proof material after all. Some ham-handed bugger who uses my mill MAY have run the cutter up against a hardened jaw on the 3 jaw chuck the last time the cutter was used and put away. I don't recall doing it, but I am the only person who ever works in my little home machine shop. Anyways, a quick phone call to Travers in South Carolina, and I am $60 poorer and a new cutter is coming UPS.---Brian

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #62 on: August 23, 2014, 09:26:11 AM »
One burning question remained--On the cast iron cylinder, due to very close clearances and constraints, I ended up with a #5-40 tapped hole 0.079" off the side of the cast iron part. I wasn't sure if I could do that or not without the thread breaking out thru the face. This set-up answers my question, and it's an answer I didn't want to hear. There is still enough thread in the cast iron to hold sufficiently, but it looks crappy. My next stunt will be to drill and tap the hole .188 back from the edge, and then machine material away until I have my .079" edge to center distance and see what that looks like.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #63 on: August 23, 2014, 09:42:18 AM »
And the short answer is---that doesn't work either!! The thread still breaks thru. This is going to call for a small design change on the affected drawings :doh: :doh:.--Brian

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #64 on: August 23, 2014, 09:57:45 AM »
Okay!!! At 0.095" edge distance, we are golden!!! No break out of the threads thru the side at that edge distance. I will write that on my wall of "things to remember" and make the slight design change to my drawings.---Brian

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #65 on: August 24, 2014, 05:32:16 PM »
And so it begins---Once I had the outsides of the block milled to size, I set it up in the 4 jaw chuck and drilled a hole all the way through, and reamed it to 7/16" diameter. I then proceeded to use a series of drills to go part way through the block, until I topped out a at my 1" Silver and Demmings drill. Then it was boring to the proper depth and diameter. That finished hole that goes all the way thru will eventually be reamed to 0.5" for a bushing, but since I want to "align-bore" all of the plates together to get the bores all in exact alignment, that 7/16" reamed hole will act as a set-up hole when I get to that point.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #66 on: August 25, 2014, 05:37:14 PM »
I just about got caught!!! I finished up the two main bores in the crankcase, and just as I was finishing the hole thru the top for the con rod and cylinder base, I began wondering if I had checked for side clearance on the rod where it comes thru the hole in the top of the crankcase. I opened up the 3D cad model to take a look, and it's a good thing I did. What I had forgotten was that the big end of the con rod actually extends beyond the crankshaft web/counterweight, and there would have been a big time interference. I had to set the crank case back up in the 4 jaw (I hate that) and relieve a center path all around to clear the con rod big end. I took a couple of pictures while things were still set up to try and show the additional path I had to create. The original bore I had put in would have cleared the crankshaft web/counterweights with .030" radial clearance, but not the con rod big end.



Offline Stilldrillin

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #67 on: August 25, 2014, 05:43:45 PM »
Brian.
It's good to have afterthoughts. Before it's too late......  :palm:

Well spotted!  :thumbup:

David D
David.

Still drilling holes... Sometimes, in the right place!

Still modifying bits of metal... Occasionally, making an improvement!

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #68 on: August 25, 2014, 07:12:02 PM »
David--I will post a download to all of the drawings for this engine as .pdf files for  those who would like to build it. I used to post the drawings as I was building the parts, but experience has shown me that I "tweak" the drawings so much as I go along to show what actually is made in metal, that I would have to repost the same drawing 3 or even 4 times. This drives everyone a bit mad, and there is too much chance of people not saving the newest "revision" and making bad parts. I am always thrilled when people build one of my engines, but it is a much safer thing to wait until I have a running engine with all of the drawings up to date before I post the link.---Brian

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #69 on: August 26, 2014, 05:08:25 PM »
Well, if you squint your eyes real hard, and look at it just the right way, it's beginning to look like an engine.At least all the big parts bolt together.---That's a good start.!!!---Brian


Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #70 on: August 27, 2014, 11:53:58 AM »
Things are going together remarkably well, so far. I had a bit of problem with gear mesh between the crank gear and the jockey gear, but I am sure its something that a bit of a run in with carborundum paste will fix quickly.Probably the next thing I build will be the large bearing support which registers and bolts to the large hole in the side of the crank case.---Brian


Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #71 on: August 27, 2014, 06:29:46 PM »
So---what do you do with sticky gears??---Well, if you live at my house you find a way to "unsticky" them. There are a host of different reasons that gear trains can be sticky---some can be fixed without setting the gears back up in the rotary table/mill and recutting them, and some can't. If the shaft centers for the shafts supporting the gears are not drilled the correct distance apart, well, you're toast. Nothing can fix that except maybe, if you are very very lucky you can SOMETIMES take a very small cut off the o.d. of the gears, to prevent the tip of the tooth on one gear from bottoming out on the root of the other gear, if the holes are drilled a few thou too close together. If the holes are too far apart, the gears will work, but will be noisy. If ya don't believe me, you can ask Chuck Fellows about that one. Sometimes gears are sticky even when the shaft centers are drilled "Right on". That can be put down to the tooth form being off a little bit, or a bit of spring in the arbor when the gears are being cut. Sometimes it seems to be just plain orneryness (if that's a word). About half the time, the gears I cut run together perfectly. The other half the time---well---If I can get the gears to turn at all (meaning they aren't locked up solid with each other). I cover the faces with a bit of 300 to 400 grit carborundum paste and put some power to them. Not for long, and not too fast, because that stuff cuts fast, and we don't want gears with pointy teeth!!! I recommend a rotating speed of about 300 rpm, and a time of about 15 minutes. If they aren't "unstickied" by then, run them in reverse for the same amount of time. The carborundum paste works very well, and once you can turn the gears freely by hand, take everything apart and wash everything really well with Varsol or a similar solvent. If you are still not 100% happy with the way they mesh, then cover everything with a good slather of grease, set them up with a power source, and let them run for an hour or two. The set-up in my attached picture shows the engine I am building with all 4 gears in place, covered with grease, and running in my milling machine. They turn very freely now, and should give trouble free service when I get the engine finished. The crankshaft gear is cut from cold rolled steel, the jockey gear is cut from cast iron, and the two large gears for the cams are cut from 1144 stress proof material. As I said in an earlier post, spur gears can be very noisy when running on a small engine with no gear cover. The gear cover serves two functions, one being to keep a good supply of grease around the gears, and another equally important reason is to keep the sound of the gears meshing contained.

Offline awemawson

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #72 on: August 28, 2014, 03:19:26 AM »
Back when I was cutting gears with involute gear cutters (rather than hobs) the usual reason for them not running correctly was not getting the cutter bang on the centre height of the blank. You could cut a pair of identical gears that would mesh beautifully, but if you flipped one gear over and tried, they'd bind.
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #73 on: August 28, 2014, 07:19:03 AM »
Today I'm going to start out making this part. If all goes well, I may even get to the base plate.

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Side Valve i.c. engine from Bar stock
« Reply #74 on: August 28, 2014, 09:05:22 AM »
After initially turning one end of the 2 1/2" diameter aluminum to size, I tried to cut the 6" length down in my little 14" bandsaw, but it kept grabbing and wanting to rotate in my hands. So---I walked it out to the main garage, where I keep my old monster power hacksaw that I built almost 40 years ago. It is self feeding and will saw anything up to a 5" diameter billet. It seldom gets used anymore, but on a job like this it earns it's keep!!!