R&B Gas Engine

[Jo]

A little history: Back in the dim and distant past BM I spent many years restoring British motorcycles and one of the consequences of this hobby was that I started going along to vintage vehicle rallies. At these rallies I was introduced to many wonderful things including stationary engines , traction engines and Ploughing Engines . Clearly the prices of these were far beyond what I could ever afford, but many seeds of desire were sown.

Move forward 10 years and I was ?happily married? (to my workshop) and reading through ME I chanced upon the R&B design which Bruce Davey had published in 1986. It seemed simple enough so in 1996 I took the opportunity of talking to Bruce at the Guildford show about building one. The long and short was I ordered one and chose to make it more realistic by fitting twin 12? flywheels.

A few months later I received the phone call from Bruce to say my castings were available, would I like to come up to and collect them. During this visit I took the opportunity of photographing Bruce?s engine so to give you an idea of what I am building:







Jo

[Jo]

This is the set of castings that I received for my money:



These castings at the time were not cheap but I have noticed that they have not gone up in price over the years. So today they are very good value for money.

Jo

[Jasonb]

Jo with the twin flywheel setup is there much spare length on the crankshaft to fit a decent pully for a flat belt? the one in the photo looks a bit on the skinny side. Though I suppose you could go for a spoke mounted pully.

Did you take some photos of the part built on at Sandown? if not let me know as I took some for Bogs. I also have some drawings for sight glass oilers if they are not included on your drawings.

J

[ths]

Hi Jo,

Nicely aged castings! By a gas engine, I assume it would have been powered by town gas, rather than the US term for petrol?

Do you plan on powering ancillaries with it? Looking forward to seeing it take shape.

Hugh.

[Bogstandard]

Nice to see this one started Jo.

I have basically the same set of castings plus a great bronze water jacket and hopper casting made for me by Rob Wilson over on MM.





All I need now is time to start getting things made.


John

[Jo]

Hugh: Yes this engine is designed to run on town gas but it will also run on petrol should I wish to make a carb. My plan is to use the gas as I have a nice large bottle of butane that I have no other use for.

Jason: I never say no to pictures. I have some proprietary oilers, they maybe a little big, so I would be interested in seeing your design.

---------------

Sorry but these early stages happened in the days before digital cameras so please bear with me as I will be describing much of what I did:

Where to start? It had to be the base, everything hangs off of it. The base is an aluminium casting which needed remarkably little work. The bottom was already nearly flat and I finished it off with a hand file: With the bottom flat it was clamped to the milling machine and the bolting surface for the cylinder machined flat. The casting was then mounted at the appropriate 18 degrees and the cut outs for the big end bearings made.

The original crank was only designed to take a single flywheel so my first job was to see if I could eek out sufficient material in the flame cut blank to fit two. Yes! Initially I started machining this on the lathe. I remember my enthusiasm was fairly high at this point and I had just joined a local company which was only 10 mins walk from home, who had fixed work hours and because I was an early bird I was still getting up at 6:30 and had an hour to kill. I chose to kill it in the workshop machining this crank. It was slow progress and very noisy as there was a massive "clunk" every time she came around :



I seem to recall it was about this time one of my neighbours  "happened to mention" that they had been hearing strange noises coming from my garage in the early hours whilst they were still in bed asleep: Oh dear  I also couldn't stand the noise any more so I chose to move the crank over to the mill and to rough it out this way:



Back to the lathe and the shaft and crank pin were happily machined between centres. The crank webs were machined from a disk of steel and simply cut to fit the crank. I will let you see the photo in the next installment .

Jo

[Jo]

The Flywheels were a simple turning job mounted on my 18? faceplate I attempted to get the inside of the rim running true machined the outer rim and face and bored/machined the centre, then using a boring tool fitted with a flat faced cutter in the tool post racked the saddle up and down to cut the key, turned it over and faced the other side.



The big end castings were cut in two using a slitting saw and then soft soldered back together. Then the outside was machined to size and the slots cut to allow them to fit into the base casting. They were then transferred to a self-centring four jaw chuck and bored to fit the crank.

(Note there was five years between starting the crank and finishing the bearings My excuse is I did a part time Master's degree which very much curtailed playing in the workshop).

Jo

[IanR]

I think Polly recommend 1 12" flywheel, or 2 9" ones, so with 2 12" it should have a nice slow tickover. And another governor to make.

[Jo]

You are right Ian she should be nice and slow, I always think a slow running engine looks and sounds so nice . This is the R&B governor :




Jason: Just found the picture of someone else's engine, it shows how much spare metal was in the crankshaft :


--

Back to the build: As with all beginners there was a tendency for me to go for the nice big bits first, so I then decided to machine the cylinder. I tried every which way to mount it in the four jaw independent chuck but it was too heavy and my arm started sagging before I could centre it. But then I realised a funny thing the mounting for the casting was not centrally and I could fiddle it and get her to mount into the three jaw chuck for turning and boring:





Next I machined the piston, another a simple turning job:



You can also see in this photo the big end caps which are another aluminium casting, which offered no challenge to machining and the cam gear shaft .

Jo

[Jasonb]

Jo, am I right in thinking that the R&B is throttle goverend rather than a hit & miss type?

Also have to ask the question, what are you going to make for it to run?

J

[Jo]

Jo, am I right in thinking that the R&B is throttle goverend rather than a hit & miss type?

Also have to ask the question, what are you going to make for it to run?

J

Yes it is throttle driven (I will have to make a hit and miss at some point). I have not decided what to make for it to run. I am open to suggestions

Jo

[Jasonb]

Here you go Jo, although its an IHC cataloge there are several items there to ease a Womans work, as this is a model may I suggest the one bottom right would be ideal for your "smalls

http://www.archive.org/stream/internationalhar00inte#page/4/mode/2up

Somewhere I have part of a set of drawings for a pump jack, that would look good, there are photos of pump rigs later in the catalogue.

[Jo]

Ah,  the R&B is not a domestic engine like that, she based on a full sized a small workshop engine from pre WWII, so she should be driving overhead pulleys, lathes, planers, saw benches etc . As you so rightly say: Woman's work

Jo

[zeeprogrammer]

Very nice model.

What is that bit of equipment between the chuck and the cutter? Looks like a steady rest but I've never seen one like that.

[Jo]

Zee that is my fixed steady, it was about on its limits supporting the cylinder casting at 3 1/2" dia . What is nice about this one and the reason you may be finding it confusing is that it is an opening steady so from the front you can see the clamp.

IMHO this design of steady is much nicer than the non opening ones (which I have on the Hobbymat and Cowells) as you do not have to thread the support from the end of the work so you can actually support much larger shaped work if you have a single  point on it which is within the holding capacity of the steady.

Jo