Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines
The Regular Stuff: Chat, Buy, Sell, Off Topic, etc. => General Discussion - Model & Toy Steam Engines – Stirling Cycle – Flame Lickers – Small Antique Originals => Topic started by: Stoker on April 24, 2023, 12:06:22 pm
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I might be that forum member🙂. Sent you a pm
Indeed, you well might!
Thanks for reaching out to me Doug .... I did reply to you a couple of hours ago, so let me know if you didn't get my PM?!?!
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I might be that forum member🙂. Sent you a pm
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Okay, files found and converted, downloaded and attached to prior post where they belong.
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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.
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odd, no photos :(
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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:
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
[attachimg=5]
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Finally found the lost ECO-MOTOR threads as noted in an earlier eBay reference thread "Here is a Real Puzzler??" seen here:
https://www.officeofsteamforum.com/ebay/here-is-a-real-puzzler/msg56745/?topicseen#msg56745
One is hidden away in the "Office of Steam 2021 Global Power-Up" as seen here about halfway down the first page:
https://www.officeofsteamforum.com/engineers-hall-at-our-2nd-annual-(2021)-global-power-up/stoker's-table-of-rare-pairs-well-rather-uncommon-anyway-c)/
The other reference was on the UM&OSF forum during the STWWW 2020 event, on the second page of my "table" as scene in the next post.