The Le Rhone 9C

[Craig DeShong]

Each set-up and operation becomes more and more tense as you put more and more work into the crankcase. Measure twice, cut once, goes out the door, you measure a million times before committing to the next cut.
Mike

But Mike, you didn't say I needed to look at the drawing 'millions' of times 

I have made a colossal error  in interpreting the drawings.  I could blame it on the drawings... but then I made them too so there is no way to squirm out from under this.  I'm going to need to get another piece of aluminum and start again.

so.... this thread will be dark for a while (at least in the area of progress posts) till I get back to where I was with the last post, and maybe I'll look a little harder at the drawings with this go.

[Vixen]

Hello Craig,

Rats.         

There must be some way for you to recover it??

Mike

[cnr6400]

Sorry to hear that Craig. Good luck with the recovery steps. Now pulling the blackout curtains for "dark thread".   

[RReid]

That's a shame, Craig. Not much relief to hear we all do those things, but we do. At least I do!

[steamer]

Oh man!   Sorry to hear that Craig...at least you have some of the fixturing done right?

Dave

[Brian Rupnow]

The only thing worse than making an outright mistake, is to misread your own drawings. Been there, done that. You have my heartfelt sympathy. I know you will carry on and redo whatever is wrong, but sometimes life just sucks!!!

[derekwarner]

Such is the beauty of back-checking our own work.....[we 'sometimes' never see our own error  ]

Just as a thought, could you not rotate the disk cover by 10 degrees    & provide a new 18 holes on the alternate PCD? ....

Derek

[Bjorn_B]

The only thing worse than making an outright mistake, is to misread your own drawings. Been there, done that. You have my heartfelt sympathy. I know you will carry on and redo whatever is wrong, but sometimes life just sucks!!!

Been there too 

Interesting build! Been half hartedly starting (and stopped) building a Bentley. Will never be completed, the bare case and a sorry excuse for a crank is all that was made.. Rotaries are interesting!

[Admiral_dk]

That is the reason why I always checks my Boss drawings and he always checks mine => this reduces the amount of errors quite a lot ...!!!!

Shame that most of us don't have somebody close at hand doing the same with our hobby projects - though 3D CAD can be very helpful here ....

So yes - I have done my share of things I'm not proud of 

[Art K]

Craig,
Really you didn't need to scrap a part to make me feel better. Unfortunately we have all made these sort of mistakes. I have a cylinder head with the holes .020 off center cause I couldn't read my own writing.
Art

[Craig DeShong]

Thanks for stopping by to see the latest.  Thanks also for all the condolences.  I’ve put in a few marathon sessions in the shop the last few days and I’m back on track with a newly fabricated engine case.

The next step was to cut the ‘flats’ for the cylinders.  I decided to do this work using the fixture I made above and my dividing head.  I’ve mounted the engine case on the mill and am using my dividing head to index the engine case to the nine cylinder locations.

Below I’ve cut the flats to mount the cylinders.  Not much left of that curved surface I made on the lathe.


Next I drilled location holes to spot the cylinder mounts.  These will be holes, drilled and threaded to accept the cylinders.  More on that in a future post.


Next I located and drilled/tapped the mounts for the intake ducts.  These mounts will need a little further work but I can’t finish them with the current setup.


Lastly, I drilled/tapped the mounts for the push/pull rods.  These holes are drilled at a 7 1/2 degree angle from their respective cylinder flat.  This was done by spotting the  location for the hole, rotating the dividing head the required amount, and then moving the mill table over the spotted hole and drilling/tapping the push/pull rod mount.

[Craig DeShong]

Thanks for dropping by to see the latest.

I’ve been going slow and making sure I don’t experience another error that might make me start a third time.

This second go round, I’ve re-ordered the steps of make things a bit more straightforward, so if I might have missed explaining a step.  I did decide to go back and bore the cylinder opening mounts up to near the full size.  I plan to thread these on the lathe, after making another fixture to hold the engine case.

In the following photo I’ve formed the mount flanges that will be used to hold the gear baffles that will drive the cam disks.  I realize it’s hard to see, until I cut away a but more material from the inside if the case.



The last step I need to do inside this engine case is to form the flats under the nine cylinder openings.  I've completed three of the nine flats. I need to do this because I will use some retaining nuts I’ll fabricate to lock the cylinders in place.  I'm using that 12 inch rotary table my friend loaned to me on a semi-permanent basis.

[crueby]

Wow.  Just, wow....

[steamer]

That's looking magnificent Craig!     Go Slow.....think about what you're doin.    We'll wait!

Dave

[Kim]

Pretty awe-inspiring work there, Craig!   
Kim