# HoooooooYaaaaaahhhhh!!!



## Cedge (Sep 5, 2007)

After two days of scratching my watch and winding me arse, I've got the Elbow engine boxed into a corner and it appears that I'm only a few hours from having it ready to run.

The darned thinthrough approximately 270° and then it would lock tight as my first girlfriend's knees. I've had the thing apart untold times and tried different combinations of cylinder and piston positions. Nothing was obvious, but something was definitely not happy, regardless of where things were put.

Mental check list time..... 
Pistons squared, not once but twice. Check. 
Pistons shortened enough to prevent them srtiking the bearing surfaces. Check.
Cylinders honed with demel and polished with metal polish to cut friction...Double Check 

Rear bridge straight and squared... Check

I finally came to the conclusion that one or more of the cylinder holes  must have strayed during the process of  drilling them.  I gave in and broke out fresh metal and made a new set of cylinder drums. Amazing how quickly that went, but then I'm becoming an elbow drum expert after the previous two attempts...(grin)

I got the first new drum drilled and honed and then took it to the work bench for piston fitting. They fit beautifully.... Uh.... sorta.  I had them in the drum and moved them around to point in one general direction and something looked decidedly strange.  One of the piston ends looked as if it was giving me the one finger salute.  

Now I've just finished drilling those holes and I took extreme pains to make sure they were perfectly on radial angle, square and I even drilled both drums from one piece of metal ( 5 holes 3 inches deep ) so that I could match the holes later during assembly.  So I know the darned things are right.  I also know I squared the pistons, not once but twice, so I'm beginning to wonder if the engine has a gremlin infestation.

I snatched up the piston and put it on my 123 block once again. Lo and behold, it was WAAAYYYY  out of square.  Somehow, even after two attempts, I managed to miss the same piston not once, but twice!!  Talk about feeling gifted....LOL

Two small tweaks and the little guy assumed the proper position. I put the pistons back in the old drum and slid them home into the flywheel drum.  That was when the feeling of relief hit.  The engine not only turns freely by hand, but will almost turn both drums in sympathy.

Tomorrow's to do list includes finishing up the second new drum and trying to transfer the flywheel over to it. The new drums are a tad taller so that the pistons are maintained a little more cleanly.  I should have it ready to run quite soon now.

The feeling of relief, when it turned freely, was almost as good as the "it runs" feeling 

Steve


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## Bogstandard (Sep 5, 2007)

Hi Steve,
Elation at last.
With you assumption that you hadn't checked the squareness of the piston.
Rest assured, in frustration when you try to turn the engine and it hits 'the stop', just gentle pressure is enough to knock them out of square, been there got the t-shirt and baseball cap.
The way I stopped it doing it was to throw the lot in the garbage, just joking of course, what I did was to v-e-r-y gently assist the bottom cylinder to rotate until by tapping the lower cylinder with my screwdriver handle with the screws only just nipped it started to rotate by itself without asistance. I can do it now in about 30 seconds.
Did you see my post from yesterday about the oil, well to prove it, I did the same thing this morning, with exactly the same results, it needs relatively thick and slick oil.
When you eventually get this little bugger running, and you will, after a bit of running you will notice that there is a strange wear pattern on the pistons, it is like a herringbone pattern, it doesn't behave like a normal piston because it rotates in the cylinder as well as up and down, maybe this is why the heavy oil has to be used.

Smile times soon

John


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## rake60 (Sep 6, 2007)

Steve you could cut the suspense with a dull butter knife here.
_(or my hand ground parting tool that can only dream of being that sharp at the moment)_
I want to see that puppy running!  

I'm sure it will be soon. It certainly looks like it wants to come to life!

Rick


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## Bogstandard (Sep 7, 2007)

What you can do Steve, if you are having so much trouble getting it to run is send it to me. I will get it running for you. 
The only problem is that I will have to keep it, because our mail service has just brought in a new rule that five cylinder elbow engines aren't allowed to be shipped OUT of the UK.
If you want to I can PM you my address.

John


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## Cedge (Sep 7, 2007)

Grin... Hi Tin.

John can prpbably sympathize with me a little about now.  The old cylinder drums worked alright, but being way out at a 7/16 radius was making the full extension of the pistons a little dicey. I was a little afraid the darned thing was going to lauch a set out of the drum, espcially after trimming them a  bit for bottom clearances.  

Since I'd already begun making a new set of drums, I went ahead and closed the radius back to 3/8 and stretched the height to 1.25 inches. This gave me much better extended contact and made the cylinders unlikely to vacate.

I've gotten things very close to back being where I began the side trip. The new tolerances were a bit tighter so its been a day of wearing things in a bit at a time, by hand.  I got the lines on tonight and now I'm beginning  the tweaking stage.  Nope it hasn't run yet, but then I have not hooked it to the compressor  quite yet either.

I have few doubts about it running once I finish getting the new stuff settled in. John will tell you... it's a ticklish little devil that's right picky about where it wants everything to be and this one has 4 more places to ***** about  misalignment....LOL  It's coming along, but quite truthfully, I'm almost dreading the end of the project and have not been rushing it at all. 


John..
We'd all really appreciate it if you'd write things in clear english... I didn't comprehend a darned thing in your last post...(evil grin) 


Thanks for the encouragement...
Steve


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## Bogstandard (Sep 7, 2007)

OK, clear English (or should that be American).
SEND IT TO ME, YOU DON'T GET IT BACK.

John


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## Cedge (Sep 7, 2007)

John
..... but would you still respect me in the morning? Cheeky bugger....LOL
Steve


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