Hello Everybody
I am chuffed ( pleased)
to announce that I have completed my Hoglet and it ran first time. This has been a very interesting 15 months project which has been helped by advice received from this forum. I think it is appropriate to thank in particular Ron aka ozzie46 for his advice on timing the engine- just do as he says!!!
I think this can be described as a mid Atlantic version. Fasteners are nearest metric equivalent whilst Imperial sizes are used for oilite bushes and piston rings etc. These were obtained from USA via a friend- the cost of Imperial items in UK is rocketing. I tried to buy Imperial size materials but found that they weren't-not metric either. Some of the aluminium was sold as Imperial but it was undersized. The precision ground steel ( drill rod) wasn't to the nominal 3/8 inch diameter. It was about 1 thou undersize and this caused problems when building the flywheel. I could not get the sides to grip the crank halves.
I am running it on Coleman's fluid plus 5% WD40.
Would the use of two stroke oil give better lubrication than the WD40?
I am also surprised how it quickly gets hot, should I use some sort of a cooling fan?
The proof that it runs can be found here:
I have previously built two other i/c engines. One was a small hit and miss engine Little Brother by Paul Breisch and the other was a modernised replica of Henry Fords experimental engine from 1893 as described in Gas Engine Magazine of March 2008 by Leon Ridenour. These have never run properly/at all. Perhaps I should go back to them.
I can thoroughly recommend this engine, it does what it says on the tin!!
Regards
Trevoc