Stirlingengineforum.com

Shanex-2, a short stroke gives a low torque, high reving motor, where as a long stroke gives a low rev high torque one, the old type motors were the latter type, I think a high rev motor is the way to go, you can gear the out put to suit, and the motor is smoother in its out put. As the motor is gea...

Hi aviator, wish I could read Japanese (Ithink its Japanese), nice wee motor, proberbly about the size of the little one in my album (its 2.5 cc), ni theory you should get about .5 of a watt per cc, and if I pushed it my one might do that ie., 1.12W. I don't think that a regenerator on that size mot...

hayman, I use methylated spirits for the spirit burners that I use, the only thing different about them is that I use a bundle of 26swg iron wire for the wick, got the idea from the "Model Engineer" vol 1 (1898), once you could use asbestos string, its a bit hard to get these days! was loo...

As skunkworks says, a snifter valve in the piston, or as some motors have, a transfer port between bottom dead center and the the crankcase. pressurising the crank case is no different than the case of an atmospheric engine with an open crank. The pressure is the total pressure, the small amount of ...

Hi Aviator 168, I'm thinking, thing will come along slowly. First, with the pressure elevated above the piston, you would soon find that it would become equal to the pressure below the piston, theres got to be a leak there for a start. If the whole motor is pressurised the load on the bearings is li...

The Whispergen is I think pressurised to about 1200psi from what I can remember, I must find where they have moved to, thier old building is in the cordoned off area of Christchurch CBD. I know they got up and running fairly quickly after the February earthquake. Think the unit puts out 1Kw, early o...

hayman, what do you use for measuring the temperature, wish I could measure the hot end temp, most I can do is the cooling water temperature, or if I pull the displacer cylinder off and check the colour of the steel displacer I can see how blue it gets, dark at the hot end, fades out about 1/3 the w...

Shanex, first you are looking for the Kelvin scale of temperature, this gives absolute zero at minus 273 deg Celsius, then you want Boyle's law, part of which states that if you double the temperature (273 + ambiant temperature), in a confined space the pressure is doubled, so if the current tempera...

With a spirit burner, and the cooling system that you have, you are proberbly best to stick to hot end down, crankshaft up. While the other way is best with gas, its difficult with a wick burner to effectively heat the hot end with it on top. Ian S C

Another material for regenerators is stainless steel foil, .0015" to .oo2" thick. Either mark it lengthwise with an old ball point pen, lines about 1/8" apart from alternate sides, or dimpled with a star wheel (I think it's called a tracing wheel), The foil should fill about 10% of th...

Chriske, unfortunately my browser is out of date, and it won't do U Tube, but its amazing where you find people following the same or similar track to you, I found a fellow hot air man on another forum who lives only 40Km away, and when I went to visit him I found that I play, and umpire indoor bowl...

Chriske, have a look at my photo gallery, theres a diagram there, thats all I went by. It was in "Model Engineer" 17 April 1970. I just used the scale thats on the drawing. There are ball races on the crankshaft, and the big end. The piston is cast iron, and the cylinder is mild steel(hot ...

Hayman, my answer to that is, at the corners of the rectangular plate drill and tap 4 holes for 4 long bolts say about 3/16" or 5 mm, make these "legs" long enough so that when it is stood up there is room for the burner under the hot end. Don't just sit the legs on a table and get it...

Chriske, you'v set your self quite a task, I think its possible, I'v got a flame-eater, it has a boer of 1" and a stroke of 1 1/2". A motor that size might just about haul its self around a track, it would not be hard to scale it up a little bit, I'm not too sure of the size limits of Gaug...

hayman, the .040" clearance is as close as I would go, it must not scrape along the cylinder, and .060" would not be too big. If you think you can go thinner, go for it. Steel, mild or stainless. I think mild steel might be best, lap it in to the cylinder, and get a good polished finish on...