# My first IC engine project



## mayhugh1 (Jan 13, 2010)

Here is a Youtube link showing one of the first runs of my very first IC engine. It is a Jerry Howell V-Twin with 1" dia bore and 1.25" stroke. The pistons, rings and cylinders are cast iron. The flywheel, and valves are stainless steel and the rest is aluminum except for the carbs which are brass. For all my projects I use only materials that I scrounge from a local scrap yard. (Unfortuantely, they recently quit selling and are now only buying.) I worked on it for probably 400-500 hours over the past year and just finished it two weeks ago. Jerry didn't recommend it as a first engine project and I guess I would have to agree as it was pretty close to being beyond my capabilities. But, I finished it and am quite happy with the result. - Terry

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McRGRD4lQY4[/ame]


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## gbritnell (Jan 13, 2010)

Excellent build. That's one of the best running examples of Jerry's engine. Do you have the belt driving something in the block behind the engine?
gbritnell


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## nemoc (Jan 13, 2010)

Very nice job Terry. It sounds great. 

Craig


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## gmac (Jan 13, 2010)

Terry;
Beautiful job - "I like the damned the torpedo's" approach to a first engine. The belt drive really suits the engine.
More pic's would be appreciated 

Cheers
Garry


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## GailInNM (Jan 13, 2010)

Very nice Terry. For a first IC engine it is sensational. Good looking and good running.
 th_wav
Welcome to HMEM. Keep us posted on your next project.

Gail in NM


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## cobra428 (Jan 13, 2010)

Very Nice Terry, I have that one on my to do list

Welcome

Tony


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## putputman (Jan 13, 2010)

Very nice running engine. I am interested in how your fuel system works. I built the same engine and was very unhappy with the gravity fuel system he designed. I did not see a fuel tank in your video. Could you post some more photos of your engine and a description of the fuel system.


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## rake60 (Jan 14, 2010)

Welcome to HMEM Terry.

Pretty impressive build!
Congratulations!

Rick


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## mayhugh1 (Jan 14, 2010)

Thanks all for the nice comments. I am including two more photos - one showing the bottom of the base and one showing the rear. The transmission housing is just to give the motor a pulley to turn. Its real purpose is to hide the ignition coils which aren't quite to scale with the rest of the engine. You can see them embedded in cavities in the base along with the circut boards for the transistorized ignitions. The fuel delivery system I finally decided on was an electric pump to fill the common carb bowl that Jerry designed and to continuously recirculate fuel to and from it and the fuel tank. I milled a (too small) fuel tank into the rear of the transmision housing which is visible in the photo of the rear of the engine. I bought the fuel pump from a local hobby shop. It consisted of a small dc motor driving a simple vane type pump in a plastic housing. I removed the pump and motor from their housing and milled cavities to house them under the base. My goal was to 'hide' everything in the base that I didn't actually fabricate myself. (There is a clear plexiglass cover over the bottom of the base and the black things in the corners are rubber feet.) Jerry's plan set recommended setting the carb bowl fuel level with the jets in the two carbs which is what I did. Unfortunately, with it at this level the fuel pump pumped fuel into the carbs like crazy. Even still, the engine ran while I was playing with the various carb adjustments. I don't understand how the plugs could have fired as well as they did. Of course, bringing up a brand new engine like this, it is hard to tell what's going on with so many unproven variables - two carbs each with two needle valves and two throttle stops, synch rod, two cam timing variables for each cylinder, and of course the ignition timing, I was pretty much on my own trying to figure how why the engine was flooding out so badly. By the time I had realized the problem with the fuel level, the excessive fuel wash had ruined the rings and filled the shop with oil smoke and its own sump with fuel. Fortunately, fabricating the rings was such a big deal for me that I had made plenty of spares - in fact an entire second set. I changed out the rings, lowered the carb bowl by .25", and the engine has been pretty happy ever since. In fact it seems to run a little better each time it is started - probably the rings are beginning to seat. - Terry


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## Deanofid (Jan 14, 2010)

Spectacular work, Terry. Runs very well!
Quite a project for a first IC engine, and you should be proud of the result.

Dean


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## Maryak (Jan 14, 2010)

Terry,

Welcome to our forum. wEc1

If that's a 1st project looking forward to your 2nd. Beautiful work. :bow: :bow: :bow:

Best Regards
Bob


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## ariz (Jan 14, 2010)

very nice looking engine and great runner too
I like very much also the underneath, well organised

many compliments terry :bow:


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## CMS (Jan 14, 2010)

There's nothing like the sound of a V-twin, 45* or 90*. Very nice build and the idea of hiding the extra componits in a fake trany way pretty cool too. This is probably out of my league for now but where would one find the plans for this engine?


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## slick95 (Jan 14, 2010)

WOW, outstanding build. :bow: :bow: :bow:

It sounds Awesome...thanks for sharing.

Jeff


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## cfellows (Jan 14, 2010)

Hey Terry, glad you decided to come over here and have a look around. Hope you'll become a regular and share your considerable experience with the group. 

Got any videos or pictures of your compressed air radial?

Chuck


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## gbritnell (Jan 14, 2010)

Terry, I have built the Howell carb for another engine. You say there is a float bowl. Could you explain that a little better because it looks like the fuel lines come from the base directly to the carbs.
Thanks,
gbritnell


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## winklmj (Jan 14, 2010)

th_confused0052 Wow...just wow.


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## Mo deller (Jan 14, 2010)

Quite happy with it he says. If I manage to get anything running as well as that does I'd be positively ecstatic and grinning from ear to ear as I am sure you were really. 
Superb job Thm:


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## mayhugh1 (Jan 14, 2010)

gbritnell  said:
			
		

> Terry, I have built the Howell carb for another engine. You say there is a float bowl. Could you explain that a little better because it looks like the fuel lines come from the base directly to the carbs.
> Thanks,
> gbritnell



Hi,
  The bowl I'm talking about is the small brass object on my engine from which the fuel lines tee off to go to the carbs. It was part of the V-twin design and its purpose is to maintain a small resevoir of fuel from which the carbs can draw their fuel. The volume of fuel in the bowl is very small - about .5" in diameter by .1" high. The job of the fuel delivery system is to keep this resevoir filled while the engine is drawing fuel but not to overfill it so as to flood the carbs. So it is just a carb bowl and not really a float bowl. - Terry


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## Lorenz (Jan 14, 2010)

thats a beautifull engine! :bow:

i like the style of the 2 cilinders with the carb's.

nice work!


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## vascon2196 (Jan 14, 2010)

That is one hell of an engine...nice job!


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## putputman (Jan 14, 2010)

Terry, are you running on gasoline or methanol?

George, the float bowl has two 1/8" brass tubes sticking up in it. One is higher than the other. The lower one feeds the carbs and the upper is an overflow to a reserve tank or a pump that recycles the fuel. It is a real "bear cat" trying to keep the level right so there is enough to run the engine but not so much as to flow it back to the tank. It seems Terry found the right combination.


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## kustomkb (Jan 14, 2010)

Awesome Job!!

Looks and sounds great.

When I first saw Jerry's design I didnt think 90 deg would look very "cool"

Boy was I wrong. That thing is outstanding.

Could you tell us a little more about your ignition set-up?


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## mayhugh1 (Jan 15, 2010)

kustomkb  said:
			
		

> Awesome Job!!
> 
> Could you tell us a little more about your ignition set-up?



There is a pair of ignitions, one for each cylinder. There is a magnet on an aluminum disk located on the oil pump shaft in the back of the engine. There are two Hall-effect devices mounted on a delrin cover which covers this disk. The ignition circuitry boosts the low level signals from the Hall-effect devices so that they can drive power transistors which switch up to 3 amps through the ignition coils. Jerry sells the completed modules from his website as TIM-6's for those who want to order them as a kit. The time that the magnet is over the Hall-Effect device sets the dwell for the coils. This is the time the Hall-effect device is on and current is flowing through the coil. In my case that is about 45 degrees. When the magnet passes through the end of this dwell time the current through the coil is interrupted and the plug fires. I purchased the ignition coils from Jerry. He calls the "exciter coils.' He may have been building these himself because I was told that after he died they are being offered only to those who purchased the plan set since they have only a limited number. The coils are rather large since corona and isulation issues don't scale very well and that is why I hid them under the transmission housing. The answer to the other question about the fuel is that I'm running the engine on methanol.- Terry


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## kendo (Jan 17, 2010)

Wow Terry
       What a fantastic job you have done there. I've noticed that on your 
model there are no fans as on the original plans. Are the fans on the original plans
just for show, what i mean to say is are they really needed and does they engine run quite well without them.
Love the belt drive it really makes it look good, and what a sound from it, what can 
i say, fantastic. :bow: :bow: :bow:
Do you have any build pictures if so we would love to see them, can't wait to see
your next project.
                  Ken


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## mayhugh1 (Jan 18, 2010)

Ken,
   I left off the cooling fans because I thought the engine looked better without them. I didn't plan to run the engine for extended periods of time as, evidently, Jerry Howell did at shows. My fuel tank will hold about 1 to 1-1/2 minutes of fuel and I generally only make a couple runs at a time while playing with it and then let it cool down. When I started the project I didn't expect I would run it very much but I've been having fun with it, changing things, making adjustments and in general learning about these small engines. The big flaw, though, in not having the cooling fans is this. I'm running the engine off methanol which is what Jerry recommended and what he did. He said the 53 octane of Coleman camp fuels, etc wasn't high enough for this engine and he had heard detonation when he tried it. One big pro about methanol is that it has alot of hydrogen and little carbon. This makes it clean burning but the high hydrogen content means more water produced during the combustion process. This means more water vapor condensing in the crankcase from blow-by. Without the fans to let me run for extended periods of time in order to heat up the oil in the crankcase sufficiently to drive off the condensation I've been maming frequent oil changes- like evry 10-15 minutes of running time. There are alot of fine oil passages in the block that I don't want to clog with sludge and I'm also concerned about corrosion in the bearings and other steel/cast iron parts. Another issue with pure methanol that I stumbled upon while trying to start the engine in my cold garage one evening to show my daughter, is that methanol has low volatility at cooler temperatures. And below about 60-65F the engine is very difficult to start. After it warms up there is no problem. And so I found that I could blend 20% of either Coleman camp fuel or Naptha with the methanol and the cold start problem went away and the engine appears to burn as cleanly as it did with pure methanol. Then I noticed the silicone fuel lines that I was running swelled about 30% over night with this mix in them and so I switched to Tygon and that problem went away. I was really fortunate that the engine started up the first time, and then these other issues happened later when I could work on them one at a time. I also replaced the o-rings in the carburetors with viton as they had also swelled some even with the pure methanol. I thought I had Nitrile o-rings in there but now I thing they were just rubber. That greatly improved the high end throttle response. I'm trying to learn as much as I can with this project so I can go into my next project (Howell V-4) much better informed. That one will be liquid cooled and I'll plan to run that one for extended periods of time. - Terry


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## Quickj (Jan 18, 2010)

Terry,
Beautiful work. Thank You for sharing it with us.





			
				CMS  said:
			
		

> This is probably out of my league for now but where would one find the plans for this engine?



CMS,
Here is a link to the plans.
http://www.jerry-howell.com/V-Twin.html


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## Mo deller (Jan 24, 2010)

Out of interest might I ask what lathe you used for this build?
I looked at the plans for this v twin as a possible future project. Jerry states you need a 7 inch or larger lathe. Only having a 3 1/2 I was a little dissapointed. I wonder why he states that and what Part/parts in particular would need a 7" swing? 

Peter


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## Quickj (Jan 24, 2010)

Peter,
I think that lathe swing is measured differently in the U.K.
Here we state swing as the total diameter that can be turned.
On your side of the pond, it is radius. So your 3.5" over there is a 7" here.


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## Mo deller (Jan 24, 2010)

Quickj  said:
			
		

> Peter,
> I think that lathe swing is measured differently in the U.K.
> Here we state swing as the total diameter that can be turned.
> On your side of the pond, it is radius. So your 3.5" over there is a 7" here.



Ahh ok. The 3 1/2 here I think is what can swing over the bed. The gap is extra and probably would be 7 inches.

Thanks
Peter


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## radfordc (Jan 24, 2010)

Wow, that is impressive. It looks like you have a built in timing light? I can see it flashing in the video.

Charlie


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