Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

After no fewer than 54 emails, cc’s and bcc’s, refusals, admissions, promises, errors, and ultimately fulfillment of exactly what they promised late last year, let me just say this is the story of two engines. It is at once perhaps the best engine, and the best extant version of a classic, and the victim of industry growing pains.  Sophomoric blunders sully greatness, and a business culture of denial masks harsh problems.

Yet through all that, we eventually came to see eye to eye.  Enginediy/stirlingkit (makers of Kacio steam engines and MUSA/ENJOMOR internal combustion engines.).  If they didn’t understand it before, they certainly understand fully now that it is never acceptable to change the included features of an item after presale money has been accepted.  The back door addition of a $69 ignition module, and outright deletion of the drill start feature were completely unacceptable.  They were made to understand the folly of those decisions, and they reversed their error (I am told for all those affected).  They are trying to do right.

Now, the engine is complete, including the ignition with the braided steel, aircraft style plug wire, and a nicely executed one way bearing style drill start adapter/drive pulley.  Absolutely nice stuff. For scale, the one way bearing is 1/4” ID.

I’ve got it all rigged on a piece of 4/4 1x4 cherry, about 19” long.

Soooo, following a tradition from the radio controlled airplane days, I plugged in the battery, and gave the newly completed project a day to just sit there looking pretty, in hopes any errors would jump out and beg to be fixed.

After the obligatory twenty four hours,  having noticed no serious issues, I gave it a twist. About then I was really happy to have the drill start adapter installed.  Erratic starting and stalling, extremely touchy mixture, but after a fashion I managed to get it to run enough to consume two ounces of gasoline with 50:1 MMO for break in.  In the process those issues I’d been hoping would reveal themselves came to call.

Let’s start with the good news. The homemade belt drive water pump and Campbell’s Soup can cooling tank system works perfectly.  The round belt joined with nothing more than a cigarette lighter flame and a stern look held perfectly, even at a few thousand rpm’s engine speed.  The water pump was fine at speed also.  The cooling water eventually got to about 150-160 degrees, as judged by the inability to leave a finger immersed more than a second or so.  Hot!  And that’s what I want. Ideally I’d like it to steep, but not boil.

The switch for my add-on generator/usb charger went bad almost immediately. Sometimes they don’t like vibration.  Good news there is I buy them by the handful. Just a small solder job to replace.

So what about the engine? As a brand new engine, it’s Erratic, touchy, etc. eventually I figured out it likes half a turn of mixture, half throttle and spin it briskly to start. Loud! Did I mention this little monster is loud? It’s a snappy little brat on a straight pipe.  Eventually I discovered why it was so finicky.  After a bit of shakedown, the loose spark plug and head cover gasket leak revealed themselves, with cooling water seeping into the spark plug well, puddling around the spark plug and spitting a bit of steam.  Naturally that meant pulling the head and head cover, inspecting and clearing everybody, and reassembly.  They run bunches better with that nonsense sorted.  The issue I think is they’re using soft copper gaskets, which is fine, if everything is clean and smooth. Any grit on or in the powder coat can create a bump that won’t seal. Likewise any foreign matter. The assemblers aren’t one hundred percent on assuring the surfaces are spotless on assembly. Powder coat on gasket surfaces is asking for trouble. In future, assuring gasket surfaces are clean, bare metal will help. I also went through fits getting the oil pan to seal, powder coat in the groove it mates to was uneven, defeated the copper gasket. I doctored with high temp silicone.

These engines are not test run at the factory. This particular engine is of the initial batch, which itself is a bit of beta testing as an early adopter.  That said, it’s likely they’ll never be a plug and play item like a weed eater. They’re a hobby engine. Expect to tinker. One guy reports he replaced valve springs with lighter. Helped it idle better. Risk floating a valve at speed perhaps? I would be cautious how much lighter if I went there. On paper it sounds good though.  Also plan on playing with the base ignition timing angle a bit also. I’m after soft start and not overly hot running.

Overall the mount system all worked well. After teething issues, I expect it to be a nice demonstration set up, with the exposed lifters, breaker points with timing angle adjustment, and belt driven water pump and open water tank cooling. It’s got cool factor for days in my totally biased opinion.
 Another way to present this engine would be a belt driven fan and radiator set up. I would think a 3x3 inch computer radiator would be plenty. A fan and shroud with the fan belt running off one of the flywheel grooves would work.
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Sorted the wiring, replaced the bad acc. switch, and got it all reassembled. Changed the crankcase oil (30cc syringe with a blunt needle is a great oil change device.)

What I didn’t do is a phony “first start” video. Truth? It was a process to get it to run and stay running, then to take throttle. The loose spark plug and water leak didn’t help, but fixing them did. It’s getting where it wants to idle, and I want to find the sweet spot. I’m thinking a couple more tanks of gas through it and it’ll run a bunch better.

Surprises? It’s really loud. In continuous duty it’d need a tractor muffler at minimum. The four or so inch brass exhaust pipe extension I added barks pretty good, but any added weight on the exhaust would require muffler hangers. Simply hanging it off the engine would beg for trouble with the manifold mount.

 It’s got lots of torque. Grabbing the flywheel to stall it isn’t a real good idea much above idle. Absolutely do install a power switch. Don’t fool around plugging it into the battery directly. The switch is your safety.

The drill start adapter was worth fighting for.  I don’t think I’d ever be happy with rope start as the only option.  Just getting it set up the drill starter adapter is worth it’s weight in gold.  The additional drive pulley isn’t a bad thing either.

Well done, Jack..!  Very well done!

After a herculean effort to get this engine sorted out, your perseverance has paid off. 
That you did not let this end badly will help a lot of buyers down the road as I believe the vendors have been handed a lesson in good business practice 101.

Thank you for taking the time required to write it all up, the photography, and publishing here.


Gil

Well, I thought I’d go for the video. The engine decided to bleed out while running. I’m not yet even sure where it came from, but I had a significant puddle of oil, and about the time I noticed it, the engine stalled, and now the crankshaft has end play it didn’t have before.

I pulled the engine from the mount, mopped up most of the mess, and stowed it for the night.  My vision is somewhat better early in the day, so I’ll pull it apart and see what happened if I can figure it out.  Dammit.

I’m here