Saturday, November 12, 2011

Movies of Caterpillar in action

We took the caterpillar out and used a electric drill to drive it from the live power take-off. Most of the noise is the drill.



Monday, November 7, 2011

Engine cylinders

Boring the engine block to fit the cylinders with a head made using a spindle from a scrapped Nichols mill. It is driven by a 4 pole 550 watt motor by V belt at about 400 rpm.
The engine is approximately in it's position.The cylinders , water inlet manifold and side plates are fitted. The heads are next to be made. These are fitted with 7 studs.









I have made the cylinders with wet sleeves which are sealed at the bottom with an o ring and flanged at the top .I believe the full size have the water jacket cored into the casting. I have made these from nickel chrome moly thick walled tube .You may think that my progress has been slow but turning the cylinders from solid  65 mm 4140 steel bar on my Hercus lathe with just 1 HP was very tedious. It also produced a huge quantity of swarf .Water enters the bottom  of the water jacket of the cylinders and into the heads.



This shows the sump which has a row of studs around the outside to make it easy to access the big-end bolts on the connecting rods. On the prototype the big-end bolts were accessed through the side plates but this is not practical on this model.




 360 of engine block.