1911 Continental Engine

Would that be an eairler version of the engine used to run the hydraulics on WWII aircraft landing gear? Also Allis Chalmers used it on their model G. IIRC it was the "Continental Red Ball"

cncmillgil fired this volley in news:81d820a5-cba3-4f78- snipped-for-privacy@m38g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:

Almost all of the 8-10HP Briggs updraft carbs made before 1975 were designed to run on kerosene. It's about as simple a design as can be -- air bleed, main jet and needle valve, and nothin' else. No spraybars, no pumps, no extra nothin' at all; conventional float/valve combo.

BTW... You ought to re-make that float from cork to keep the original design intact. Cork seals up just fine with epoxy. Even if you couldn't find a solid slab of it large enough, you could glue up cork sheets to the required size.

LLoyd

"William Wixon" fired this volley in news:v9LXm.50744$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe04.iad:

One could assume that, I guess, but I haven't seen one of those made from cork in about three decades. Most are polyethylene. Maybe it was an OLD thermos top.

LLoyd

wow grumpy, bravo, congratulations and good luck! post some pics somewhere so we all can see. lloyd, i think that's what he said, i would assume "large thermos flask top" = cork.

b.w.

Have you asked at:

Pete Stanaitis

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Grumpy wrote:

I haven't tried epoxy, it must add some weight. Old style cork floats were sealed with Shellac. Shellac melts in Ethanol, so isn't any good in modern gasoline, but should be fine in straight Kerosene. I have made a few carb floats and tank sender floats out of brass sheet soldered together.

"Stupendous Man" fired this volley in news:7p9io4F3ucU1 @mid.individual.net:

Probably not a lot more than an equivalent film thickness of shellac. Epoxies can be thinned with solvents before curing, just as can shellac, so penetration and pore-filling aren't any more of an issue with epoxies than with the bug juice.

LLoyd

Dual fuel engines, ie gas and kero usually have a hot spot somewhere to vapourise the kero. You start on gas then when the exhaust manifiold hot spot is hot enough, you switch to kero. Look to trace the inlet flow path to see where the hot spot might be. Had a continental engine from Chicago? 1917 , the block casting looked as if it had been lost wax moulded. Just so clean and accurate. That was on gas only in a bull nose Morris. Usually the kero carb fed the kero /air mixturethrough the same butter fly valve as the gas carb.

For that matter, epoxy resins can be had with pretty low viscosity -- epoxy glues are thick because they have filler added.

Supposedly isopropyl alcohol is 100% compatible with epoxy as a thinner; I've certainly had good success with using 99% isopropyl to thin garden- variety epoxy glue for fuel-proofing model airplane engine compartments. You're supposed to not use anything less than 99% pure, though.

Epoxy glue + isopropyl will flash off to a very thin layer that will then harden quite nicely if you got your initial proportions right; I wouldn't hesitate to use it to coat cork. I would want to check it against all possible fuels, although I can't imagine it not doing well with cork.

Small nit: While it's true there are lots of filled epoxies on the consumer market, the viscosity of many industrial types of epoxy has to do with the chemistry of the epoxy and catalyst themselves. I have some 100% solids pure epoxy that's somewhat thicker than petroleum jelly that I use for lubricating and then bonding fishing-rod grips to the blanks. It's an industrial product.

Epoxy is often anti-thixotropic; it flows when it just sits there (I say it "drools"), but it gets stiffer when you brush it. That should make it good for filling gaps and it can be; however, its capillary action (wicking) often is poor, so it doesn't soak into porous surfaces as well as its viscosity would suggest.

Watch out adding thinners to epoxy. The volatiles have to go somewhere, and they come from somewhere, so they can leave a porous material behind, or they can become trapped in the epoxy and degrade it over time. 10% is the rule-of-thumb maximum for bonding or laminating. Much less for casting or thick applications.

(This information comes from several of the large suppliers, who I once interviewed for a 16-page article on adhesive assembly in metalworking.)

Huh. I'll have to remember that. OTOH, you _can_ get epoxy laminating resins that flow pretty well.

Watch out when adding thinners to anything! I only add thinner when it's going to have a chance to flash off, i.e. when I'm putting on a thin layer that's exposed to open air. If the solvent can't evaporate before the pot life of the stuff is over, then you'll have exactly the problems that you describe.

Which is why you won't see me suggesting thinner for laminating...

Yes, it was a cork plug that I made it from. I turned it on the lathe with the shop vac taped to the tool post to collect the dust, screwed it to thefloat arm as per the original,then mixed up some 2 part epoxy and dipped it. The consevation department gave it its blessing so it's pretty authentic. It looks exactly like the shellac dipped ones but will last a lot longer.

There is a picture of the tractor at this site

The guy standing next to it is a memeber of the stores staff. He was the one that found a radiator from the only other onein existance. The radiator is, as you can see,a peculiar beast. It consists of a bunch of horizontal tubes fixed into a ring on each end. A radial fan is in the middle and is driven by a flat belt from the same shaft that runs the water pump and magnito. Looks strange, but seems to work.

It was a VERY old themos top. I found it in a little suburban hardware shop. We should move that to the museum as well. They are almost as rare as the tractor.

I was told that the original cork float had up to 15 coats of shellac. A gentleman of vintage years, who still runs a carburettor shop, told me that his first job every day, when he was an apprentice was to dip a bunch of cork floats in shellac. I only used one coat of epoxy so I suspect that the coating thickness would be sinilar.

>

Not yet, but I will.

This one has two completely seperate carbys, that run in parallel. The Kero one is at one end of the exhaust/inlet manifold casting, with a sort of semirotary valve that selects which fuel is used. It also has a closed position to stop the beast. The magnito ingnition has noshorting switch.

Here are some more pictures and some informationon the tractor. Its been restored pretty well and is in good condition. We are making some "bolt on" steel bands to go around the wheels so we can drive it on "action days" without destroying the track.