Tony Bird
Senior Member
Hi,
With a friend I swapped a couple of Hornby tin plate carriages for a Stirling engine that wasn’t working. I have never made a Stirling engine from scratch though along with some steam engines I have repaired/restored some.
The job turned out to be quite straight forward, the model was reasonably well made and other than an interesting connection between the connecting rod and the displacers piston rod complete. There was a bit of an issue with a threaded hole in the case iron base which was addressed by gluing in and pinning a piece of 12mm aluminium sheet over it. The main problem was steel bracket that held the power cylinder and the displacer cylinder it was only 1/8” (3mm) thick. This was not really thick enough for the securing screws, Not that the screws didn’t hold, there wasn’t enough tolerance allowed for their length in projecting through and hitting either cylinders flanges especially having to allow for gaskets.
So, a new bracket 6mm thick was made new gaskets fitted, and the engine assembled which retained the interesting displacer rod connection. The result can be seen at:
The model performs well I think, and at a later date a permanent heat source will be made though not sure whether to do anything about the interesting connector as it is part of the models history?
Take care Tony.
With a friend I swapped a couple of Hornby tin plate carriages for a Stirling engine that wasn’t working. I have never made a Stirling engine from scratch though along with some steam engines I have repaired/restored some.
The job turned out to be quite straight forward, the model was reasonably well made and other than an interesting connection between the connecting rod and the displacers piston rod complete. There was a bit of an issue with a threaded hole in the case iron base which was addressed by gluing in and pinning a piece of 12mm aluminium sheet over it. The main problem was steel bracket that held the power cylinder and the displacer cylinder it was only 1/8” (3mm) thick. This was not really thick enough for the securing screws, Not that the screws didn’t hold, there wasn’t enough tolerance allowed for their length in projecting through and hitting either cylinders flanges especially having to allow for gaskets.
So, a new bracket 6mm thick was made new gaskets fitted, and the engine assembled which retained the interesting displacer rod connection. The result can be seen at:
The model performs well I think, and at a later date a permanent heat source will be made though not sure whether to do anything about the interesting connector as it is part of the models history?
Take care Tony.
