Engines > From Kits/Castings
RLE Last & First
Jasonb:
In a departure from my usual practice of not posting a build thread until an engine has at least been test run I'm going to make an exception with this one. Graham Corry of Alyn Foundry & Sons has announced this week that there will be a new batch of castings being done for his popular "RLE" design of hit and miss engines. For those that don't follow Alyn's Facebook page and who may want to secure a casting set then make contact via this e-mail address and you can check the price and place your deposit. alynfoundry103@gmail.com. Hopefully most of this thread should be complete and act as a guide to anyone who decides to order an RLE.
I got most of a set of castings for this engine a couple of months ago which Graham managed to cobble together from his last few remaining castings with the exception of the flywheels which will be getting cast along with the new batch of kits so that will likely make this the last supplied with castings from the old foundry and no doubt rammed up by Graham himself.
This will also be the first engine to be built to a new set of drawings as the original set leave a bit to be desired in this day and age. They will also be in metric which will hopefully attract some of the newcomers into the hobby who have been brought up with the metric system and have tooling and machines based on that system rather than Bananas.
The new drawings set will also take into account the newer carb design and show modified rocker arm, rocker bracket, cam and head details to suit it's straight vertical pipe entry. It will show the MOD gears, metric fixings, O ring for the piston and a fuel tank (No Baccy tins from now on) as well as optional square push rod and governor balance weight designs. Lastly there will be details of a cart with hopefully the addition of cast cart wheels and axle brackets and a spoke mounted pulley casting that will be available as extras.
I have been modelling the engine as work progresses making adjustments to suit how the castings machine up as I go, this is the state of play so far.
That's enough of the intro, time for some swarf :)
Starting with the base casting after a light fettling it was shimmed up on the mill table to get the sides tapering equally and the bottom flange milled flat using an insert facemill. While still held in position by the two clamps on the inside a round disc was held in the mill spindle to help best locate the centre of the two cast bosses.
After spotting and drilling for the hold down holes I ran around the edge to just clean up the flange so it was straight enough to use as a reference surface, you may also be able to see that I have milled the internal fillets to the left boss stopping at a scribed line that was done around the disc at the time of locating it which can be used as a guide to trim the bosses to a more attractive shape.
Now that the base had a flat bottom it could be clamped to the mill table, the skimmed flange edge set true and the upper surface machined again with the facemill. You may notice I am using polished inserts intended for aluminium and non ferrous on this cast iron part as I find the sharper inserts put a lot less strain on the lower powered and less rigid benchtop mills than the standard inserts do. The carbide will also cope a lot better should there be any hard areas in the castings which was not a problem with these specially coated Welsh products. ;)
I left out drilling and tapping the four holes to mount the crankcase until I had machined that but they could be put in now working to the sizes on the new drawing. A bit more fettling of the surfaces and clean up of the corners was done as well as spot facing the two mounting bosses before moving on to the next part.
mikehinz:
Jason, a very nice start to an interesting project! I'll be following! Hopefully I'll pickup a few tips along the way.
Thanks!
Mike
Alyn Foundry:
Thanks Jason.
The boys, Roy, Mathew and Alan have asked me to thank you personally for the help in getting Alyn Foundry and sons Ltd moving again. I have to say that in these very different times with massively improved communications they’re already processing their fourth order. It took me several months to get to the same level.
The R.L.E. as most people know was a “ scratch built “ design. It embodied many attributes of the traditional agricultural engines in preservation, seen on the rally fields around the country. It was described by many as a rather crude example of an engine design but from a famous automotive quote
“ It’s crude but it works “ There have been many engines built over the years and no two are exactly the same. The R.L.E. allowed the constructor free rein to alter and adapt it to their taste. I have seen one with a sideshaft and face cam valve opening and just recently Alan has finished his own, very quirky engine fitted with hydraulic valve opening and hot tube ignition.
Funnily enough there have also been enquiries about the R.L.E. in its original air cooled format.
Well that’s all from me I look forward to seeing and reading your thread as it unfolds. It’s such a pity that the boys couldn’t offer the kit at the original price back in the day. Sadly all foundries have been hit very heavily with various environmental taxation and material costs have skyrocketed.
As a footnote I will be particularly interested to read about the timing gears. We used to use the services of HPC gears and by bulk buying were able to offer them at quite reasonable prices. With the advent of the Far Eastern market I have just ordered 2 pairs of 0.5 MOD gears for the price one, single gear from here in the UK.
:cheers: Graham.
Jasonb:
Thanks Graham, good to hear sales are off to a flying start no doubt helped by goodwill which I hope you are being adequately rewarded for ;)
I've been smoothing out a few of the Crude bits on mine but you know I like a slightly more fettled look than you :) Actually they are nice castings and it is more just personal tweaks and additions than anything wrong with the basic engine.
I opted to cut my own gears though I did use very reasonably priced far eastern cutters. I have also adjusted widths to match the commercially available MOD gears from several sources so anyone wanting to buy them can do so and won't need to add anything to the width which is always harder than taking a bit off which would have been the case if I just picked the nearest metric equivalent width. Tooth count has also been picked so there are more options of sellers than picking the nearest to the 1" ctrs.
Admiral_dk:
Great to hear that buisiness is of to a good start :ThumbsUp: :ThumbsUp:
--- Quote ---a famous automotive quote “ It’s crude but it works “
--- End quote ---
Kind of similar to one of my favourites "KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid" .... as all extras, also give more possible faults to happen .... :cheers:
Per
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