Total Hot Air Engine Newbie

[JamesSpedding]

Hi,
I live in North Norfolk, UK and I've just bought a shed full of wood and metal engineering equipment from the family of a local model engineer. In amongst the lathe, Mill etc was a table full of model engines. I showed a photo (see attached) to a model engine group I joined on FB and they said that they could be Stirling cycle engines and advised joining a more specialist group. Hello!

My son is 14 and desparate to get things working so I wondered if you could help identify any of the items and share advice as to how to get them going?

Thanks for any help you can give.

James

[Tom Booth]

Definitely heat engines. Not all strictly "Stirling". At least one looks like a "flame licker" (upper left)

The lower right may be a steam engine. Looks like it has a boiler.

What a treasure!

Consider yourself very lucky! I'd give an arm and a leg for that collection!

[Tom Booth]

This one catches my eye as particularly interesting, ( hope you don't mind my cropping your photo).

165033_crop_76_resize_44.jpg (100.36 KiB) Viewed 3228 times

as it is a fairly common Stirling engine design, but with some changes that appear quit unusual. Probably experimental, and, at a glance, I could be wrong but I'm guessing that it could not possibly run.

It looks like he was trying to get the piston to drive a cam mechanism. If someone got that to work I'd be very surprised.

Stirling engines can be difficult to get working. These could be working engines or could be failed attempts at new designs that did not work. They certainly all look to be custom built one off engines by someone with imagination.

Some basic advice to start with would be; will any of them move? Stirling engines, and engines in general, especially ones that have sat around a while, could be frozen up. If it won't move easily by just turning the flywheel with your finger, and I do mean easily, it probably needs to be taken apart and cleaned to remove any gunk, dirt, dust, oxidization. If it doesn't move and turn over very easily by hand it won't run and might be damaged by trying. A scratched cylinder could cause loss of compression.

I would start by very carefully cleaning them up. If they are frozen up and won't turn over, then it's a necessity.

Taking some additional photos of each engine from different angles would help. For this engine, I can't really see from the photo angle how that cam is connected or what it is doing. It might not be a cam at all. Could be a counterbalanced flywheel.

[Tom Booth]

This tiny little engine is not a Stirling, but an internal combustion engine, similar to the Cox model airplane engine

This is either homemade or I suppose, very old. Generally these work with a glow plug, like a diesel engine. Started with a battery.

165033_crop_55_resize_46.jpg (75.29 KiB) Viewed 3225 times

[Tom Booth]

This one appears to be a Beta type Stirling engine.

165033_crop_52_resize_31.jpg (104.65 KiB) Viewed 3224 times

Here is a video showing how it works:

https://youtu.be/MrArmbBIe5Q

[Tom Booth]

This looks like another Beta Stirling, this time with a Rhombic drive:

165033_crop_62_resize_19.jpg (124.16 KiB) Viewed 3223 times

And a YouTube video of a very similar Stirling:


https://youtu.be/NFs8A44Gucg

[Rob1962]

That is a work of art.Thank you for sharing.

[Jagang]

Consider yourself very lucky! I'd give an arm and a leg for that collection!

Sorry, but this made me think about this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs

[Jagang]

This tiny little engine is not a Stirling, but an internal combustion engine, similar to the Cox model airplane engine

This is either homemade or I suppose, very old. Generally these work with a glow plug, like a diesel engine. Started with a battery.

165033_crop_55_resize_46.jpg

Seems like this one is compression ignition only. No glowplug.
They call it "diesel", but it still features a carburettor though.