Author Topic: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine  (Read 10114 times)

Offline gerritv

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Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« on: August 16, 2016, 02:27:56 AM »
I started this engine in summer of 2014. At the time I had a Taig lathe with milling attachment, working in a spare room in a condo. 2 years later we are living in a house again and I am blessed with 2 shops, one for wood and one for metal.
I also now have a horizontal milling machine (no idea what brand) and a 1920's Cincinnatti Cutter and Tool Grinder to let me grind anything I need.

I contacted Jan who sent me the plans next day. I use my Dutch on him so I can keep in practice. He is very helpful and supportive of anyone building to his designs. Page showing both versions.

First up, the cylinders. I chose this as first because without decent glass for cylinders there was no point continuing. I had already concluded that the Taig was up to the task, even though I knew the build would require creative thinking to make some of the larger parts.
Borosilicate glass (aka Pyrex) is quite common in the glass blowing field. Lots of sizes available, the problem being that it is not perfectly round inside. To overcome this I am using a brass piston as per the Mk1 design instead of graphite. I bought the glass locally in Toronto.
A bit of jigging with a Dremel/diamond disc and dripping water resulted in 3 pieces of cut glass. This was July 2014!

« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 03:33:07 AM by gerritv »
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Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2016, 02:36:15 AM »
Next up in July 2014 was the two pistons. I turned these from hex brass, salvaged from the shop floor at a place my father worked in the 1960's! Never throw anything out, it will be useful one day :-)

I basically made these the diameter that was closest fit in both cylinders. Almost identical. A groove was cut incrementally to suit the O-rings I had to ensure a good fit without excessive friction. I am not sure how much power the engine generates, if there is blow by when running I can shim the o-ring groove.
I still haven't decided how to hook up the connecting rods, will get to that in a little while now that work is progressing again.

« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 03:33:20 AM by gerritv »
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Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2016, 02:44:44 AM »
Still in July 2014, up next was the cylinder block. Again a piece from scrap my dad collected.
The Taig milling vise is not the greatest. I had bought a 2" toolmakers vise from Shars and mounted it on the vertical slide. Major improvement in work holding.
After squaring up the block it was mounted int he 4 jaw. I center popped and used the tailstock to center the piece in the chuck. I struggled with making the bore, the boring bar I had was not ground for brass. The only place I could grind anything was 12 floors down, after hauling my bench grinder out of the locker, etc. Eventually I did make a better boring bar and finished the cylinder counter-bores in Dec 2015 after I had my workshop in the new house sort of set up.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 03:33:32 AM by gerritv »
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Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2016, 02:57:22 AM »
Fast forward to Aug 2016 and there is rampant progress! In the meantime every room in the house was painted, yard was defoliated and a large pond built etc. A wood shop is now operational in the garage and the basement shop is mostly functional.
With our first year goal of getting all the house work done, we can both move on to enjoying our hobbies again :cartwheel:

The engine is built on 3 supports. The drawings call for 10mm Al plate but even though Canada is metric, you can't find metric Al at an affordable price. Because I am using 0.375 instead I expect to make changes to some dimensions on the shafts. The small support is first up, mainly to see how I manage the milling machine with various operations.
A bit of layout work, some cutting on the 4x6 bandsaw and ready for the mill. (The extra bolt showing on the vise is to steady that side, the clamp only acts on the RH side. Yes, a better vise is in the works ;D ) To machine the decorative scallops I used my 30mm Soba boring head. I set the radius to 15mm and fed in until I touched the destination line. On the last cut the workpiece shifted a bit so there is now a small tombstone to remind me to check the vise more often.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 03:33:48 AM by gerritv »
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Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2016, 03:12:09 AM »
Emboldened by progress so far, without any significant whoopsies or rework, I proceeded to the 2 main supports.
Having recently bought a paper copy of Textbook of Advanced Machine Work, I had seen how planning out work was a relatively straight forward but necessary step. The book is replete with Sequence of Operations charts, mostly starting with "oil the machine"  :LittleAngel: I planned out the sequence of operations so that I didn't machine myself into a "can't get there from here" scenario.
To that end I sized and squared up the 2 main support pieces. I marked out the 3 shaft holes and drilled then using a N drill, followed by an 8mm reamer. This allows me to use some 8mm ground HSS tool steel as alignment pins.
Using the 30mm boring head I cut the decorative scallops. Using the table stops made setup simpler for the second of each scallop. Basically move the table until work pieces touches the boring bar, set that stop. Then set the infeed stop to the correct distance. Without a DRO this works for me.

Similar setup was done for the large cutout. A slot drill allowed me to plunge in and then run to the 2 stops. Two smiley pieces of aluminum are now ready for some boring stuff.

« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 03:34:02 AM by gerritv »
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Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #5 on: August 16, 2016, 03:22:15 AM »
I am now proficient at boring! Both to size and to depth, without a DRO. There are 6 bearings to counter bore for and a hole to prep for tapping M12x1.5.
The general sequence for each hole was to align the workpiece to the collet/spindle using an 8mm HSS ground tool rod. The table height was fixed after the first alignment process. Once the work could move on the rod easily, I switched out to the boring head. I found a 0.7mm depth of cut was my limit for stressing the head and its small 6mm bar. After lots of setting changes to get to the correct diameter, it was on to the next hole.
Last step I cut the adjustment slots for the belt tensioning rollers. Not having metric mills I used a 0.25 slotting drill followed by a 0.3125 end mill to cut out the slot per the drawing. I will adjust the idler shafts to suit the changed dimensions.

The result is 3 supports with counter-bores for the bearings. They are a close fit without need to force them in. Likely I will Loctite them in during final assembly.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2016, 03:39:16 AM by gerritv »
Don't confuse activity with progress

Offline Steamer5

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #6 on: August 16, 2016, 09:57:55 AM »
Hi Gerritv,
 Looking good! Lots of progress in a short time!

Cheers Kerrin
Get excited and make something!

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #7 on: August 16, 2016, 12:02:59 PM »
Quite an interesting engine gerrit!  I was going to ask how the glass cylinders would be attached to the central metal piece, but looking at Jan's write up I see he used Loctite successfully for that. Great work so far, and I will be following along on this one. We used to have a transparent single cylinder engine here at the university that was run for one of the thermodynamics labs. It was always  hit with the students, because although we all know what happens inside the cylinder, its quite another thing to be able to see it happening. You could even tell slight changes in the fuel mixture as the combustion flame would change from yellowish back to bluish as the fuel/air mix went from rich to more lean. This will make a incredible model !!

Bill

Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #8 on: August 16, 2016, 05:00:01 PM »
Hi Gerritv,
 Looking good! Lots of progress in a short time!

Cheers Kerrin
We had a visitor from NZ for a week so while SWMBO was busy I had full time in the shop. First time in a while, with this much visible progress I am being encouraged to do more.
Don't confuse activity with progress

Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #9 on: August 16, 2016, 05:04:36 PM »
Bill, one of my all time favourite books is power Plants for Aircraft by Joseph Liston. Tempted to find a copy again. That book got me into programming (Fortran) to design a constant flow fuel injection system for my brothers 1961 Mini Cooper. That was high school in 1966, he was working for Univac and had free system time on the night shift. My interest in engines goes way back and the thought of seeing the combustion process was irresistible.
Don't confuse activity with progress

Online Roger B

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #10 on: August 16, 2016, 08:45:32 PM »
Very good, if somewhat interrupted progress  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp: I eagerly await the first live combustion videos  :) Long ago I used to use Gunsons Colourtune sparkplugs with a glass insert for adjusting my carburettors  :old:
Best regards

Roger

Offline Brian Rupnow

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #11 on: August 16, 2016, 10:17:49 PM »
I will follow your build with interest.---Brian

Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #12 on: November 14, 2016, 03:02:11 AM »
Finally a bit of progress. I have been distracted by the arrival of a King KC1022ML (G0602), building a bench for same and cleaning it up, moving machinery around in the shop, making progress on my Cincinnati Universal Grinder refurb and finishing the half of the basement that isn't my shop.

The bottom plate is up next. I need to mount the bearing/shaft supports so that I can measure dimension changes needed for the shafts. The material is Imperial, the drawings metric. Without redrawing everything I think this is my best approach to arriving at parts that fit together.
I bought a full set of ER32 collets so that I can use the horizontal mill for drilling as well as milling. I used a 5/16 end mill to counter-bore the holes, I really wanted to make some metric counter-bores, but need to use the tool grinder to finish those. The end mill worked out ok but not great. Thankfully I am the only one who will see the 2 bores that are out of center :-)

The plate was cut to size by removing the vise from the band saw and clamping the plate directly to the base. Metal Supermarkets pricing is lower when you buy stock sizes.

« Last Edit: November 14, 2016, 03:06:31 AM by gerritv »
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Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #13 on: November 14, 2016, 03:13:05 AM »
Glad to see an update on this unique engine. Sounds like you have been busy with other things...I can relate to that  ;)

Bill

Offline gerritv

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Re: Building the Jan Ridders Mk2 2 cylinder engine
« Reply #14 on: December 29, 2016, 09:29:50 PM »
Very good, if somewhat interrupted progress  :ThumbsUp:  :ThumbsUp: I eagerly await the first live combustion videos  :) Long ago I used to use Gunsons Colourtune sparkplugs with a glass insert for adjusting my carburettors  :old:
I recall those from my brother's 1961 Cooper S, heavily modified. Once we added a 45DCOE it was tuning time for a few weekends. I thought of them again when I had my 1976 308GT4 but with 8 cylinders and 4 2 barrel 32DCNF's it was too many plug changes :-(

Gerrit
Don't confuse activity with progress

 

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