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

I had this D100e kit unbuilt, and had not yet decided how I want to modify it, so today it occurred to me to just assemble it stock first to see how it runs compared to my vintage D5.
  The D100e is really just a kit Version D5 with a different color paint job and a small generator + some LED bulbs and a few other electronic parts to do some simple experiments.
  I have watched a YouTube video of a young teen that built one of these and  video was his first Steam and his D100e did NOT want to run on Steam!....now that I have built mine, I may know why.
  All built stock, it did not even want to try to run on 2.32 PSI, I noticed the current pivot pin spring is much more stout than vintage unit, so I switched to ink pen spring for aquarium low pressure, this gave a VERY sleepy low idle and no amount of adjustment helped. It was so poor I began to suspect my pump was failing but I took the cylinder off and gave the port face a swipe on 800 grit sandpaper on flat glass, this showed a high spot in bullseye pattern around the pivot pin tapped hole, the brass looked displaced almost like the tap drill is one size to small so the tap is possibly pushing the soft brass high, what ever the cause, the sandpaper/glass treatment had it dead flat in under a minute.
  That's all it took to have it humming merrily away in photo. I think it may have run on steam pressure but poorly. I love this little pump for tuning!
  I am happy Wilesco is trying for close to 100% thread in soft brass, but they may need to add a small flatten step to port face After tap operation.
  I will build up the included generator now that the engine is doing well.

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