This year i`m going to attempt to build a mini steam car duration min 5mins. Two i have in mind are the 1905/6 REO or the 1906 cadillac still to find blue prints for it ,looks a bit of an oddity but i think it was the first car to have an enclosed cab. Firstly if i treat the build as Boiler, Burner,Engine, Transmission and so on i think will be easier to explain my thinking the boiler i hope i can get away with 1"dia x 1 3/4"long the engine a microcosm, m28. So miles to go
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I'll be watching this Ron, I love build threads.
This will be fun to follow, please take lots of pics
Looking forward to this Ron
I think it was the Chinese who said the hardest part of a long march was the first step
So the first step
Make yourself a test bed and what you see is simple to make the copper tube is for another project and the meths burner is only for test purposes boiler material hopefully will arrive later this week. The object here is to see how long it will take the boiler to run dry and the amount of meths to do so, no point making a boiler sticking it in a car only to find out it only runs for 2mins so making i little rig like this will hopefully produce the answers. Also i will be able to adjust the height of the meths burner so that i can determine the optimum space between the top of the wick and the boiler bottom remember the boiler size 1" x 1 3/4" long mabye 2" max
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Looks like an interesting build Ron.
I will be following and looking forward to the next update.
Material did arrive for the boiler i picked brass thinking it would be lighter than copper but the tube that arrived was thick walled and i thought due to its small dia i would machine the end caps as usual no material but i did have plenty 3mm brass plate so i cut a square and stuck it on to a small face plate with double sided tape also used a live tail stock steady but it moved so i tried again using 5min epoxy gave it 2 hours moved again then put it in a small 4 jaw chuck got so far then the tool just dug in. [ Guests cannot view attachments ]
So i just silver soldered the end caps now it was time to try it out. A 1" x 2" boiler gives a capacity of 22mil (round figure ) to start i put in 15mls
Sitting in the green house with the bedroom clock strapped to my wrist i lite the burner. The first run it ran for 1 1/2 mins then stopped it ran for a further 6mins which gave me a total of 7 1/2 mins so a little encouraged checked the boiler and remove 4mls of water the second run i put in 10mls of water again it stopped after 1 1/2mins then stopped again after 2 1/2 mins started again then 2 1/2 stopped boiler dry. I should have said i ran it yesterday for the first time under air just to check which connection was fwd and rev. and it ran like a Rocket and i thought no good i will never be able to reduce the revs will be really to fast. Today under steam it was the opposite too slow [ Guests cannot view attachments ] note the safety vale just a modern version of what Tubal Cain used ( he used cork on some of his boilers ) you will see in the next pics where i could see some leeks [ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ] hopefully the pics are ok. Would really like to hear from someone who has the same engine how to make good connections and if maybe this engine runs better upside down. Should have said when starting under steam the flywheel rotates ever so slowly on its own really giving me the impression it would self start (before giving the flywheel a flick ) if press was great enough i`m sure this will self start. Really wanted to move on chassis maybe but need to find solutions to boiler first maybe should submit to Sandy boiler design for boiler of the year award
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I wonder if a big problem with running to slow is if your steam is too wet?
Nick it does seem so it looks as if you can follow water down the clear tube to the engine and it just bubbles out of the rev. connection thats why i thought it might run better upside down the fact it keeps stopping I think it's because of the small dia. wick in the burner when you said yours took a lot of flame made me think.
If you're getting too wet of steam, another solution would be running a copper steam line out of the boiler and under, through the flame to the engine, or maybe trying a small steam dome on top of the boiler if you want to stick with silicone line.
The reason I wanted outlet coming from the side is because the smaller I make the car the less clearance there will be between the boiler and the bonnet/hood if I make the car non-scale then it won't really matter maybe the outlet is too low remember this is only a test boiler will have a rethink tomorrow
I'm late to the thread but catching up fast - really interesting and will be fun to follow!
Ron, I'm in to follow this along. Thanks for posting up the build process.
Nick just spent 20mins writing a reply and nothing happened
Trying for third time [ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ] just to say problem solved ( bigger burner wick worked) engine ran non-stop for 5mins exact gave a flick it ran for further 3 1/2mins with 15mls of water thinking if i tack a pipe inside tube before soldering end plate might be an improvement