# Bar stock inline four. Westbury seal inspired



## cooksservices (Mar 4, 2020)

I have held off from starting any build threads on my last three engines as I have never really been sure that they wouldn’t just be a lost cause. After completing my last engine (the three cylinder radial) which was a great success for me, I think I just need to have a little more confidence in my self. 


So it looks like I am starting my first build thread. I am still very much new to machining having only had the lathe for three years and the mill for a couple of months so I really am very open to any advice, criticism or other alternative methods of building or machining parts. 


I’m starting an engine based on ET Westbury’s seal major. This engine is usually made from a casting kit but I am having a go at building it from bar stock. I was going to build it just taking inspiration from pictures of the engine found online. So far I have the crank case started and the cylinder liners and valve cages made up. I really wanted to build this engine like my last three engines with no plans at all but after giving it a lot of thought it decided I would purchase the plans and build notes for this engine. I feel that I might learn more from seeing how plans etc are actually drawn up and followed. Although mine won’t be following any of the dimensions from the plans I will definitely be using them for inspiration. 

I am looking at 22mm bore and 24mm stroke but this may change. I have purposely left the liners quite thick so that I could over bore the engine later if I feel like it. 

There are a few aspects of this engine I’m not completely sure how I am going to approach yet but as with my last three engines most things were decided or adapted as the build progressed. 

I am going to try my best to keep a few slightly more detailed notes on this engine than I have on any of my last ones. 


Looking forward to having you guys following along with me on this one. 


Thanks for reading guys, I will get some progress pictures up soon!


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## dnalot (Mar 4, 2020)

Looking forward to watching your build. Nice to have another contributor. 

Mark T


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## johnmcc69 (Mar 4, 2020)

Sounds like you're off to a good start!
Also looking forward to this.

 John


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## cooksservices (Mar 17, 2020)

Hey, I have been very busy in he worship and not keeping up to date with the build thread. So much more pictures than info. I will do my best to give a description of all the pictures.


Here we have a rough kit of materials and a little marking out. 





Here I am opening up what will be the lover crank case and drilling the bolt holes for the sump.  




Here I am boring the cylinder openings for the cast liners. 





Here I have drilled out the holes for the one piece valve guides/seats and opened out the valve chest. 






Here I have opened up what will be the water jacket around the cylinders. 




I have also made the valves, pistons and liners, crank, bearing housings, and timing case for the timing gears. I will upload more pictures soon. Thanks!


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## sition (Mar 17, 2020)

ñice！


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## cooksservices (Mar 21, 2020)

All of these operations are probably quite simple to most but to me they are all firsts. It’s been a great learning curve and most parts have come out good or at least very useable.


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## kuhncw (Mar 21, 2020)

Very nice work.  Thanks for posting.

Chuck


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## cooksservices (Mar 21, 2020)

I’ll keep posting pictures until I am up to my current stage then hopefully I’ll try my best to talk through my work as I progress.


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## cooksservices (Mar 25, 2020)

Here are the liners and pistons. The liners are made from meehanite and lapped to size on a home made brass lap with fine grinding paste. The pistons are made from 7075 aluminium. I plan to make the rings from the same material as the liners. Due to some poor machining on my part the top lip on all of the liners came out at different heights. Due to this once the block has had a final cut the chamfer on the top of the liners to help insert the pistons will almost disappear on a couple of the liners. I am hoping I can make something like an oversize valve seat cutter the help re machine the chamfer. The same poor machining also applies the the valve seats so the same thing will need to be done here. Apart from these snags things seem to be going well. I have started on the con rods now, obviously I am making split rods which is my first attempt.
I would probably say that this is possibly not the correct way to make these rods but it’s the way I am attempting to do it. I would love to be corrected if I am choosing the wrong path.
Firstly I marked out all the locations for the bolt and oil holes, these were centre drilled and the bolt holes drilled to tapping size. Then enough material to make the rod caps was sliced off. The bolt holes in the caps were drilled for clearance and the holes in the remaining material were tapped for the cap bolts m2.5 I’m my case. This was a nail biting experience for me . The the faces were finished square and bolted up. Then the material was layed flat in the vice and indicated level left to right and front to back. The first holes were drilled at one end of the rod then the table moved up 52mm for the upper rod eye. Then the big end was opened up to 9.5mm and reamed to 10mm. The small end was the drilled and reamed to 6mm. Now the hard part begins, the shaping of the rod. I countersunk the cap bolts and chamfered the corners. Next the rod was bolted onto the rotary table the have the big end bosses machined, this was a little unsatisfactory as I found it hard to get it perfectly on centre so the bosses came out  slightly eccentric. I then switched them over to the lathe. I machined up a 10mm spigot in the three jaw and mounted the rods individually onto this and used a form tool to create the shape. Even on low speed I found that I had a lot of tool chatter. I switched over to using my lathe spindle hand crank and advancing slowly with the tool and some cutting fluid I think produced a satisfactory radius. So this is where I am up to right now. For the angle on the roads I am thinking of using a fixture with offset holes to mount the rods onto individually. Set up in the vise the offset of these mounting holes will give the correct angle. Thank you for reading. Any advice would be great. Thank you!


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## propclock (Mar 25, 2020)

Just a suggestion. Instead of putting a taper on each cylinder
just make a single taper ring/hoop. you put this on the piston
it squeezes the rings into the grooves and then the piston/ ring
slip into the cylinder. I use this all the time and it works great.
It also allows you to mill all the cylinders to 1 height. 
It also allows a nice gentle taper.


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## cooksservices (Mar 25, 2020)

I like this idea, some of the manufacturer special tools that we have for working on motorcycles are piston ring compressors made this way. The only problem I have with this method is that the liners already have chamfers on so one of the liners I think will lose it totally and one of the others only half whilst the other two will keep theirs. 

I made a little more progress on the rods today. In between important family duties (children’s nap time) I got a couple of hours in the workshop. 

I made my mounting block for the rods to machine the taper up to the small end eye and got all four rods tapered. This was the first time I had tried using a datum point (if that’s what it’s called) and it worked great. You can see the 5mm hole that is drilled in the corner of the fixture, this is where the tool would start from every time a rod was swapped or flipped over. This way no matter how off centre the outsides of the rods were, now they would all be fairly accurate according to the bores of the rod. I also managed to get two slimmed down to the depth the big end bosses were cut to. 
My next task is how to achieve a nice radius around the small end eye and decide if and how I am going to add any detail to the side of the rods. I am thinking if I make any detail I can use the same fixture as for making the taper but I can cut the detail into the side face of the rod.


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## Peter Twissell (Mar 25, 2020)

When setting up on the rotary table, I will often machine a fixture in situ.
My rotary table has a 24mm bore through the centre. I made a shouldered plug which fits in the bottom of the bore and has an M10 thread tapped through. To make a fixture, I turn the end of a piece of stock to 24mm and tap it M10.
The fixture can then be attached to the rotary table with a stud, plus a clamp or bolt into the tee slot of required.
With the blank fixture in place, I can machine a register on the mill true to the rotary table axis.


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## cooksservices (Mar 25, 2020)

Thank you that is great advice, I had always machined my register/fixture on the lathe then transferred it to the rotary table. It seems obvious now you point it out that if I machine the register on the rotary table itself then it will be true. Thank you very much!


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## cooksservices (Mar 28, 2020)

I finished up the small end rod eyes by hand, this may be slight cop out but I Was very worried about screwing up the rods now after so much work.

I have made up some piston pins drilled them through the centre and made up some brass buttons for the ends , these are a light press fit with some locktite.


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## cooksservices (Apr 9, 2020)

Hi all, i have been very busy in the workshop and not really allowing time to keep up dated here. i will do my best to catch up again. 

So following on from the last post after finishing the rods and making the pistons i pressed in the liners with some "suzuki bond" this is a grey three bond engine casing sealant. I then pressed in the valve chambers with wurth bearing fit locktite. 
Due to my apparent inability to make four liners all the same, once pressed home a couple were very slightly proud of the block as were some of the valve chambers so i gingerly milled these flat then gave the top of the cylinder block a face with a fly cutter. This didn't leave the finish i was hoping for, it seemed like the cutter was dragging some cast iron filings over the aluminium and lightly scoring it. 





Some of the valve seats were half gone due to my mismatched machining so I made up a valve seat cutter inspired by George Britnell's design. This worked perfectly and I re cut all valve seats to the same depths. 








After a light clean up on a sheet of glass with some fine grinding past the finish was satisfactory.

I then built up the crank, rods and pistons into the engine to test fit the big ends, there were ever so slightly tight so these were lapped in with some ultra fine grinding paste. now the crank turns freely and all of my journals line up well. Next i chose to make some gears to drive the camshaft.

These are m0.5 module gears and were made my home made indexing jig. I am not one hundred percent happy with these as one is very slightly eccentric for now it will be ok for setting up but before the first test run i will make another. The cam gear will also turn the distributor on the front of the timing case.




Next up was the cylinder head, this was a fairly straight forward operation, especially now as for the first time i have been keeping drawings of everything that i am making so i knew where all of my cylinder head bolt locations were. The trickiest part was probably the combustion chamber but i think it worked out ok. First the valve reliefs were cut square with the head then the head was tipped up in the vice to start cutting an angle upwards away from the valves and then swapping over to a much larger end mill for the final plunge cut of the squish.
The head was then turned over and the counter bores put in for the cylinder head nuts.




The head was then slimmed down along one side and some water ways machined into it. this will  allow me to fit a cover that will sit flush with the spark plug side of the cylinder head.
Next was to angle the head over on its side to drill and counter bore the spark plug holes. 





Next on the list was to make up the cylinder head water way cover this was another simple operation. This cover has one row of its own screws along one side and pics up the cylinder head studs on the other. It has a slot cut along its length on the underside to allow the cylinder head to hold a little more water.


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## awake (Apr 9, 2020)

Great progress!


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## sition (Apr 9, 2020)

nice


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## e.picler (Apr 10, 2020)

Very nice project and building. I will follow with interest.
Congratulations?

Edi


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## johnmcc69 (Apr 10, 2020)

Great looking parts! You're doing a good job with this.

 John


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## michelko (Apr 10, 2020)

Wow, cool build. This is gone be a big seal.

Keep on Posting your fantastic work.


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## cooksservices (Apr 10, 2020)

Thank you for the comments guys they really help! I’m finding it harder and harder towards the finish line to maintain a steady and careful pace.  There are areas on my other engines that I feel could have easily been improved if I spent just a little more time on them. Although there are still areas of this engine that I could spend more time on I feel that it will still be an improvement in quality over my last engines.


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## kuhncw (Apr 10, 2020)

Nice work.  I'm enjoying your thread.

Chuck


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## cooksservices (Apr 12, 2020)

So next up was the oil sump, this has had to be made in two parts as I didn’t have the material to make it from one. It has and intermediate spacer to lower the oil pan. The lower oil pan was machined out using a fairly blunt 13mm ball nose end mill. Having only had the mill for around four months my stock of milling cutters is fairly limited at present, I need a few projects under my belt to work out what sort of arsenal I should put together.  This still worked ok it just didn’t leave the nicest finish. The radius on the outside of the oil pan was cut with a 1/4” radius wood router cutter. 
The lower oil pan also needs to have an oil retaining tray, according to the build notes for ET Westburys seal engine this is designed to help stop the big ends making  a dent in the sump oil as with the big ends rotating at higher rpms there wouldn’t be enough time for the oil to return. I think that the theory is that the holes in the pan let oil through but as the big ends swing around it has no where to go but to be swooped up by the big end. 
This pan needs to be as closely fitted to the crank as possible. It took me a couple of tries with some plasticine (from the kids toy box) to get this clearance about right.  









The cams for this engine weren’t too much of an issue as I already have my cam grinding jig that I made during the build of my v twin engine. This produces in my opinion fairly good repeatable individual cams that will be locked into place with a grub screw. I do have some excellent instructions from another very kind member of the forum on how to produce the cam for this engine as one piece but for now a built up cam will be fitted. 

The cam followers were made from water hardening silver steel they were given a slight radius, drilled down to within 3mm of the bottom to help keep them light and then hardened. This is the first time I had used water hardening silver steel and I am very impressed with how hard it became. 






Next up is the distributor, in the plans for the seal engine this has the ignition points built in but I am hoping to have try with some sort of electronic ignition set up in the future so I have built distributor with no provisions for fitting points inside, for now the points will be mounted on the opposite end of the cam shaft. This distributor is probably a fair bit larger than it needs to be but it’s my first one so I wanted to keep it simple for now. If everything works ok there’s no reason why I couldn’t have a go at making a smaller one. I’m not sure how small you could go without the spark jumping across the electrodes inside. 






The inlet/ exhaust manifold was next. Again this was a learning curve for me to match up two halves with mirroring cutouts. Thank goodness for the digital read out is all I can say! I might have a go at another manifold with slightly different design once the engine is proven, I’m wondering if I could make the manifold a fair bit slimmer as the ports are only 6mm round then drill the exhaust ports right through both parts of the manifold to the outside and mount a tubular manifold onto that, this might help keep some of the heat out of the manifold. 





I have nearly finished all the parts I’m just trying to put together the write ups for all the parts as I get chance. Whilst we are on lock down here in the uk we have our children 6yrs and 2yrs at home 24/7 so I don’t get a lot of spare time. This means that when I do I don’t want to be sitting indoors on the PC. I want to be out in the workshop finishing off the last few parts. 

I’m finding it difficult to not start a careless sprint to the finish line as cant wait to hear this engine run! The first time you hear an engine running is so good. Hearing the voice of the working engine you have created from chunks of material.  Also I don’t want to finish this and then end up with weeks more on lockdown and wish I had spent more time on finishing parts. I’m trying to come to a compromise between getting it together to hear it and making sure he parts are finished to a good enough standard. 

Thanks for reading guys, your comments really help push me to better the quality of the parts I’m making.


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## cooksservices (Apr 14, 2020)

The last few parts have now been finished up. We have two clear polycarbonate engine covers, one for the lower crank case opening and one for the coolant gallery around the liners. 




Then I needed to make two angled manifolds, one for the water inlet on the cylinder head and one for the oil filler/ breather. These were interesting to make but quite satisfying. 








I had left no provisions for engine mounts so this took a little thinking about. Looking the the seal engine it has lovely neat little mounts cast in. I Came up with some small right angled bolt on mounts. Although this design of inline four should be well balanced I wanted these to be flexible mounts so I came up with this lower foot design to help absorb some vibration. 





 With all parts now made I began the assembly and set up.



I’m sure the first run or at least first few “pops” won’t be far off now!!


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## awake (Apr 14, 2020)

Very nice! Can't wait to hear it run!


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## cooksservices (Apr 16, 2020)

Hey guys, it runs!! Took about 15 mins of cranking over with regular pops to build up compression and I got a couple of short runs until eventually it kept running and just got better from there. The first run was very cobbled together, had a few oil leaks and a borrowed flywheel that wasn’t really big enough for slow running. After the first couple of sustained runs I then made a new heavier flywheel and fixed a couple of oil leaks. I’m now uploading a couple of videos.  

Now I need to make a nice base and finish the cooling system properly.


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## cooksservices (Apr 16, 2020)

Well here are two videos. The first was one of the very first sustained runs. 
The second is after making having about 250ml of fuels through it with a heavier flywheel. 

Thanks for watching!


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## awake (Apr 16, 2020)

It looks and sounds great! Well done!


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## Brian Rupnow (Apr 16, 2020)

A truly magnificent build. Congratulations.---Brian


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## minh-thanh (Apr 16, 2020)

Run Great ! Congratulations.


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## michelko (Apr 16, 2020)

Very cool. I like that window to the crank.

Michael


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## johnmcc69 (Apr 16, 2020)

Fantastic work Sam! That came together quick!

 John


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## dnalot (Apr 16, 2020)

Nice, sounds great

Mark T


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## kuhncw (Apr 16, 2020)

Very well done.  Great sound.

Chuck


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## ozzie46 (Apr 16, 2020)

kuhncw said:


> Very well done.  Great sound.
> 
> Chuck


Fabulous.!!
Ron


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## e.picler (Apr 16, 2020)

Congratulations!
It runs perfectly. Very nice idle and sounds great as well.

Very fast building

Edi


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## cooksservices (Apr 17, 2020)

Thank you for all of your comments guys. They really mean so much. After looking at so many of your engines in total awe of the quality of workmanship it has driven me to really try to step up the quality of mine. I still believe I have a long way to go but I am enjoying the learning. 
If anyone had any questions or comments I’d like to hear them. 

I had a go at making some silicone plug caps for the engine yesterday. 
I was inspired by a brilliant and very informative post I found on this subject by Gail Ignition boot molding


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## awake (Apr 17, 2020)

Nice! What did you use as the material - silicone putty, or ... ?


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## cooksservices (Apr 17, 2020)

This  silicone is mould craft gp310 rtv. This is one of the softest silicones they make. I didn’t realise until I had purchased it that I could buy it in different hardnesses. This has been very good to prove the mould and practice with. I have ordered some of the two part putty like Gail uses in the write up. 

I had been having a some issues with the spark jumping across the outer terminals on the distributor cap so I thought I’d try setting the cap with its wires into a mould with some of this silicone. It has worked surprisingly well and I’m sure it will be even better with some slightly stiffer silicone.


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## kuhncw (Apr 17, 2020)

What did you use for the cylinder head and manifold studs?  Did you single point them or are they purchased items?

The clear side covers are a nice touch.

Chuck


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## cooksservices (Apr 18, 2020)

Hi I wish i could cut threads that small nicely. These are purchased items.


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## kuhncw (Apr 18, 2020)

Thanks.


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## kuhncw (Apr 18, 2020)

What size are your manifold and head studs?

Thanks.

Chuck


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## sition (Apr 20, 2020)

How do the lower cylinder liner and cylinder block seal the water channel.
Thanks. 
Sition


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## cooksservices (Apr 22, 2020)

Hey, the head and manifold studs are M3x0.5mm

The liners are made as a light press fit and installed with some threebond 1215. I put a light smear under the top lip then pressed liner in until the bottom was in the water jacket area then turned the liner as I put another light smear of sealer onto the lower quarter then pressed it fully home. This produced a nice bead of sealant around the lower edge.


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## kuhncw (Apr 22, 2020)

Thanks for the stud thread size.  Luckily, I've  got a good idea of what a M3X0.5mm thread looks like.  I recently bought a tap that size for an insert holder I made for the Sherline lathe.

Chuck


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## cooksservices (Apr 22, 2020)

Aha me too I think I tapped around 100 m3 threads for this engine!


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## cooksservices (May 2, 2020)

So, I have the engine disassembled again to finalise some plans that me and a friend have been drawing up. This has been very interesting to have a look at some of the internal parts of the engine. I have found some issues that I’m sure will really improve the running of the engine.
Firstly was the seating of the piston rings at least three of the eight rings weren’t fully seated and one was very slightly tight in its groove. I think most of this is down to my poor/ rushed method of making the rings. They were cracked an stretched over a piece of strip then heated until they dropped off. If the rings aren’t heated evenly they will expand more at their hottest point creating a distorted ring. I have now made a new full set of rings and heat treated them on mandrel, lapped the top and bottoms and gapped them according to their individual cylinders.
The next issue to be addressed was that the the big ends had developed a little play. These were assembled with paper shims under the caps initially as they were very slightly tight, now that they have settled down I can remove these shims and that will hopefully tighten up the clearance again. If not I’m sure I could run the caps very lightly on some fine emery to close up any unwanted clearance.

I am surprised at how well the engine was running considering the problem with the rings, I am looking forward to seeing how much difference it will make with good piston rings. 

Whilst the engine has been apart I have also been looking into the idea of electronic ignition. This was after finding a dc cdi unit on a 50cc fourstroke scooter I had been working on. I wired up the cdi using a pick up the same as what is originally fitted to the scooter and made up a disk to fit the crank with two trigger bumps on 180 degrees apart. After some time thinking about this set up I had been wondering about the auto advance curve and if my engines running direction wasn’t the same as the original scooter would the advance curve become an retarding curve? Also being that this cdi unit was from a single cylinder and I am firing it twice per engine revolution would the advance curve start too early?
This led me onto a quick search on here where I found focketrys thread Howell V4 from Italy a quick reply and he came back with some very useful information. This will still need some more research and testin my end but it looks like it might be a promising alternative to the expensive model cdi kits.


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