First Rally (long)

Morphius, or a spot of people-watching, soon deals with boredom :-) I think your diagnosis is probably right and your experience of the non-asbestos halite parallels my own. I made a 5hp Petter M exhaust gasket from it and halfway through the season it simply broke into small brittle pieces and blew out. Keep you eyes open for some illegal material! Absolutely agree about a decent info board and the suggestion of one for the pen as a whole is one that could usefully be adopted - but by whom :-) regards Roland

as an exhibitor rather than a paying visitor. I

worked out a list of what I would need to take,

Roland), and all systems seemed to be go.

my case. I ran the engine on Saturday and there

got worse, so I gave the three hot-bulb nuts

A frantic search found a replacement and with

came to pieces as I removed the hot-bulb. I made

all went well. So she was loaded on the trailer,

early, I headed across Wales for Tywyn.

and then the hot-bulb, off she went, running

good at sitting around doing nothing, I was

engine. This was not a problem, the blurb I

questions, and I was surprised at the interest, so

forgotten me. I was chatting to a couple, there was

coasted to a stop and my elation turned to

his gasket material (he was there with a

persuaded me to try Blue Hylomar. I was not

alternative so I tried it. Withing twenty minutes, she

was delighted and I was very surprised. For

up. No matter what I did, I could not get it to

dawned on me what was going on (I think). The

suitable gasket from the rest of the engine.

quickly on the first day, the engine was hot

losing too much heat through the very thin

losing too much heat from the hot-bulb into

theory. I could also be grateful to know what

I will not travel as far. Its interesting to

engine will increase the enjoyment of the person

worth the effort. The usual, "Lister Z, 1928,

visitors. The other suggestion I would make, is

of the whole, a general section sign

would help. I had two people ask me what SEs

Glad you enjoyed it Arthur, the likes of me rely on the likes of you to put on a show!

How thick is the gasket? the thinner the better for strength, if necessary for thermal insulation use several layers separated by thickish shim reinforcement.

Glad you had a goood time Arthur. I am encouraged almost to the point of giving rallying a secong chance myself.

I have to agree with Roland about Gaskets. I had a hot-bulb gasket made up after sending of my nice cornflake box pattern only to be sent back a gasket made out of one of the modern fabrics. The combination of pressure and temperature did exactly as Roland said and produced a very poor seal as the gasket progressively disintegrated. In the end I was lucky enough to obtain a new unused original copper-asbestos job. It will be years before it goes. There was a chap who advertised in the back of SE producing them I assume now using some kind of alternative for the asbestos I think he was from Bolton?

I had real trouble with the thread on the cartridge holder leaking fumes and solved it by winding in fibreglass string into the thread. I think you need something to stay in place until a good layer of carbon has built up to complete the seal. Perhaps do like Nick suggests using shim thickness copper to take out the imperfections the two surfaces with a couple of layers of new material.

Interesting problem that needs addressing as it will undoubtedly strike us all in the future.

Regards,

John

Arthur --

On my Handyman, the hot tube is just screwed into the head, sealed with some pipe compound or the other. I have an 1/8" solid copper gasket betwixt head & barrel. None of your semi-flimsy materials in this lump!

Only starting issue I ever have is choosing best fuel for the day. If the sun's out, the central heating tank in the garden gets milked. If very cold, & a strong wind, I add 50% petrol to get easier burn. I then start with a little fuel & add c/h fuel when everything is hot If very hot, I pour in some old engine oil to thicken everything up. Compression ratio is 2.5 to 1, with only 3 of the 4 rings fitted .....

I do always have the flame just burning from the lamp -- engine wasn't designed to tick-over in a wind-blown field, doing nothing except incite nit-pickers.

I've cannabilised an old drawing board as a permanent display board. Tracked down & laminated a bunch of original ads & literature, & mounted 7 or 8 A4 sheets on the board. Really helps to interest & educate those thirsting for knowledge.

Must confess I rarely take any of my engines out in public now. Running a hot bulb engine + blowlamp means you must always be by your engine when running, & I always run for at least 75% of public opening hours -- that's why we are invited to show. Meant I rarely saw anything else at the event, & as I'm interested in most things with wheels or wings I missed a great deal. I need the motivation of looking at other people's stuff to make me get on with my various projects (aka sleepers) ........ Last time out was at Internal Fire, 'cos I knew most of the other engines present.

Colin

exhibitor rather than a paying visitor.

Glad to see you have joined the ranks Arthur. I bet there was a crowd and numerous offers of help when things did not go according to plan but sometimes, that makes it all the more interesting.

Hope you will enjoy more Rallies in the future.

I wouldn't advise copper. It works well as a gasket but also conducts heat far too well. I have come across gasket material that is reinforced with steel wire mesh for strength. That may work. I can't remember any details though. I do know it was used as manifold gasket on Mini's etc.

John

"John Manders" wrote

I know the stuff you mean, made by Reintz (sp?) I think. I'm sure it was mostly asbestos though and I havn't seen it about for some time.

Had a degree of thermal isolation not been a consideration I would have had no hesitation in recommending a solid soft copper gasket, but Arthur's theory Re. non-starting of S with thin Hylomar film sounds pretty plausible, hence my suggestion of alternating thin gasket material and sheet metal. I have seen this used before on a very high pressure nitrogen line which ran round the EMI factory in Hayes (never did find out what it was for). In that application the reason for the multiple layers was to allow the thickness to be adjusted for accurate alignment of the rigid pipes. I suspect a stack consisting just of layers of gasket material would not have had the required burst strength.

BTW. When I got my Bradford I was intrigued by the igniter gasket which appeared to have been cut from a piece of lead flashing! I imagined it would need replacing pretty soon, but it is still going strong after all these years and has in fact proved ideal on a joint which has to be disturbed fairly often, as it neither sticks to the faces nor hardens.

an exhibitor rather

Here is the details of the chap I mentioned who advertises in SE. I have not tried him myself but know people who have and he is highly reccomended. I will just replicate his ad so then it is up to you.

COPPER GASKETS MADE FOR EVERY ENGINE

Quick Service. Send pattern for quotation by return. Brian R Harfield, 3 Woodland View, Bromley Cross, Bolton BL7 9NS 01204

I hope this helps you out. Perhaps if you talk to him you could share the outcome with the rest of us for future reference.

Regards,

John MS

Nick, an elegant suggestion, but means I would be making up a few gaskets, and having a number of joints to seal..

My initial thought was get a copper one, but a few milliseconds later I realised this would be hopeless, because of heat transfer from the hot bulb.

I'm sure I'll turn up some suitable material over the Summer. Two more one-day outings are as much as I'm likely to take the Petter out for, and they're not soon.

Colin, I'm intrigued by what you say about the Handyman, the design of the hot-bulb must mean that it tolerates a metal to metal interface with the rest of the engine, without cooling too much.

Regards, Arthur G.

Only problem is that Brian's gaskets are exactly that, solid copper. Mind you, I still think that it would work OK, if sufficiently annealed. I think I've got a sheet of real asbestos containing hallite in the shed somewhere Arthur if you'd like me to send a piece for you play with, we still want to see your S type at

Regards

Philip T-E

"Arthur G" wrote (snip):-

Couple of candidates here:-

somewhere Arthur if you'd

One more thing that strikes me is that I am very suprised that the engine will not start and continue to run whilst it has the lamp on the hot-bulb. I would have thought that this would be more than adequate compensation for the poor insulation of the gasket. Did the engine just stop when you removed the heat or did it refuse to start or even fire completely?

Also who do I get in touch with if I want to take an engine to 1000 engine?

John

Good write up Arthur, just the sort of bone we need to gnaw at!

For my four penn'orth, I think you are right about the Thin Blue Line not being sufficient, but before you change anything, why not boil up a few kettles full of water and replicate a hot engine start. If it starts and runs, it isn't that ...

As a one-time professional mechanic, I've lost count of the number of times I've been convinced a problem was down to carburetion only to find the ignition at fault, that an engine had enough compression when it didn't - and so on.

On to gaskets. It seems to me that what you need is a composite gasket, two layers of modern Halite trapping a layer of the finest stainless gauze you can get hold of, all assembled with a thin smear of silicone sealer between each face and clamped up overnight in the vice would produce a gasket that could be reused several times, have the lateral strength you require and having poor heat conductivity.

As an aside, if the gasket blows out of a compressive joint, perhaps it's a good plan to run the edge of a steel rule over the faces ;o))

Regards,

Kim Siddorn,

Hi Kim,

it takes 12 gallons to fill the cooling tank, and that's a lot of kettles! The engine has a lot of good running history on its previous gasket, so I'm going to explore the gasket route before anything else. I hear what you're saying about deciding on the fault before exploring all the possibilities, but I'm pretty sure its the gasket. The faces look pretty good, but I've not checked them for flatness. The engine side is easily checked, the hot-bulb is not so easy and would be a sod to set up on a lathe for refacing.

The composite gasket sounds an excellent recipe, apart from how you cut it nicely. How do you cut a material like that into nice circles without some smart press tools?

Regards, Arthur

I'd screw up the whole thing between two bits of MDF and cut it out on a bandsaw, using a drill and a jig saw to cut the centre hole.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn,

Blank off the bottom hose and just fill the engine. IIRC about a gallon. ttfn Roland

-and - You don't need to fill the cooling tank, just fill the engine VIA the cooling tank. It's only the starting which is causing the problem ...

Regards,

Kim Siddorn,

Roland and I are not sitting at the same desk, honest, we must be at least

I'm going now, a bite then some welding to do and an engine to strip - more knews (!) as it happens ...

Regards,

Kim Siddorn,

Now that is a worrying thought :-) regards Roland