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

Fast forward now, a decade or two and move westward across The Pond to find the next Post War commercial model Stirling Cycle engine .... that I'm aware of anyway. Certainly by the mid-1970s, and possibly as early as the late 1960s, though I only have one unconfirmed source for this earlier date, this company started producing and marketing a pair of rather unique Stirling Cycle engines, which are rarely ever encountered, or even referenced. Earliest positive date I've seen is an ad from 1975.

The ECO Motor Co. of Guelph, Ontario, Canada produced a couple of exceedingly rare Stirling Cycle engines, one of which has what may well be the strangest linkage that I can recall ever seeing. The horizontal model has an inline cylinder/displacer with a free floating piston design, and an off-center crank, Delrin (may be Nylon) washer like disk, loosely captured in a horseshoe shaped U-frame that seems quite simply bizarre, not to mention perhaps a bit delicate, as compared to the super robust build of the rest of the unit. This company also made a vertical model that has an appearance somewhat similar to an Ericsson Pumping engine, but I don't have one, so don't know if it also has an unusual linkage. I only know of one of these latter type engines, that is held by another Forum member, and he also has one of the horizontal models like mine.

Please note that the engines from this company seem to be exceedingly rare, and are almost never seen, with very little authoritative information that I've been able to find on them anywhere. The could not have made them for very long, nor produced very many, as they are scarce as Unicorn Poop, to put it mildly, and actual sightings of one of these engines is about as common as seeing the source of the aforementioned material.

Mine was received as incomplete, with some extra holes drilled in the base which mounted some bolts carrying small aluminum sheet divider plates, the purpose of which I've yet to figure out. But whoever the former owner was, he must have thought they did something for him ... or for his engine anyway?!?!

Here then is the horizontal model of the ECO Motor:

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Not so odd that the photos didn't transfer in a copy and paste operation.

I'll try to find the correct images to re-insert if I can, a bit later.

I might be that forum member🙂. Sent you a pm