Andy,
Looks like theres plenty of room and meat on the crankcase to plug the existing holes and redrill to a square pattern , is there room on the cylinder base to slot the holes to suit ?
To plug the holes use an aluminium stud and screw it in tight with loctite or an epoxy adhesive then cut and grind flush, after the adhesive has cured mark out and redrill and tap the new holes - it wont matter if the new hole is 1/2 way over the old , they should hold ok just dont have loose fitting threads, and maybe loctite studs into the crankcase for the cyl hold down.
Stewart

Failure and wear not the same? Imagine your dealer telling you the the car you drove off the lot a month ago is just wearing in with a failure like the wear you describe.

Something caused the wear. This is a failure. These are your choices in no particular order.

A. Poor construction. It looked good to me in the pics, but If the bushing spun and it was oil starved a possiblilty.
B. Overloading. Hard to say, the engine doesn't make any more power than it did before so this is unlikely.
C. Lack of lubrication. Potentially it happend when you were running the low lube mixes.
D. Lubricant failure. Potentially the lubricant wasn't good enough.

The only way to find out is to make more rods and run each on one fuel mix to see the results. That would be a lot of work, which is why I'm not all that interested in homebrewing lubricants. Engineers are good at that. And within a few years they'll be good at bio based lubes.

Stewart,

All good ideas and certainly doable. Will back burner that for now, though it would have been interesting to make up a rear exhaust just to clean up the front profile for cowls and the like. My first gasser was the one that started it all, the Quadra. I made up a muffler/mount using aluminum, rectangular door frame material. The top and bottom were plugged with caps with the bottom one having an exhaust tube. The rear exhaust flange of the engine needed just two more gaskets for a perfect seal with the exhaust going straight back and down. This gave me a muffler with huge volume, very quiet with no loss in power. I have conventional pictures somewhere that I'll try to look up. This was mounted to a big "Ugly Stik" that was modified to look like an ordinary airplane. Outlines changed is all.

I think instead, that I'll make up a conventional style, glow motor muffler but with the necessary baffles to make it quieter. The Walbro carb will be replaced with an Enya .60 or other carb.

I really enjoyed the big airplane with the Quadra and I've flown/run most other sizes planes and engines. If you know me, you know that I also enjoyed a LOT the smaller planes. Missing though was good throttling and full four channel control. Got that beat and needed a new challenge. Diesel did not come to me naturally but I'm glad I got involved. Plenty of challenges here and neat stuff to do. But I never did lose all my attraction for big, but heavy engines or expensive electronic ignition always held me back. And glow conversions? ****edaboutit. At 35 dollars a gallon for even 5%, well,,,,

But a diesel conversion? Now we talkin' turkey. Strip off all the ignition stuff and you get light. Eliminate any need for an ignition source and you eliminate expense. Eliminate ether and it gets even cheaper. Add an easily homemade oil and you get better performance especially with the latest mix that Reg has come up with. Olive might be best but peanut might be second, still acceptable and cheaper. Never know till you try. AND, because we have needles in the right places, what if we could run, oh, say, 5% or less, VeggieLube. Now that would be an inexpensive way to power our flying machines.

And we're not alone in our love for innovation and the unconventional. Will, (Wvarn1957) indirectly has alerted me to this.


http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_12..._1/key_/tm.htm


These guys seem to be on to something. Like this thread, that one has became a LONG one, some three years running. Yes, I AM going to apply some of those ideas to my little Tanaka. Gas, glow, diesel,, why not.

And actually, Kelly suggested that I check out Will's other posts. Will is a real wealth of information, knowledge and experience. I'm anticipating that he'll be a valuable contributor to our quest.

PS

I may have a lead on another Tanaka that appears to have a square bolt pattern. Neat.

You should be able to run the same 20:1 to 50:1 ratios recommended for gasoline if the lubricant is good enough.

Got my calculator out today and figured out the cost of my 10% ether mix combined with car engine oil and modified olive oil....

For anyone in the UK tempted to try it - I used Millers XFE, this is a semi-synthetic oil produced specifically for use in diesel engined cars. The ignition improver is Millers Diesel Power Plus - the main ingredient of this is 2-Ethylhexyl nitrate and this is a direct replacement for the isopropyl nitrate normally used in UK model diesel fuel.

Quantities to make up 1 litre...

2.5% of the ignition improver = 25 mls
12.5% of the car engine oil = 125 mls
16% of modified olive oil = 160 mls
10% ether = 100 mls
8 % castor oil = 80 mls
51 % kerosene (paraffin) = 510 mls

The total cost of a litre works out favourably as well

I litre of a commercial fuel mix containing 30% ether and 24% castor oil = £7-50 = $14

1 litre of my 10% ether fuel = £4-63 = $8 - 70

How does it stack up against glow fuel ?

1 litre of glow fuel with castor oil lubricant and 5% nitro is £2 - 60 or $4 - 89

That is about the cheapest glow fuel, unless you decide on no nitro at all. If you start looking at fuel with synthetic oil instead of castor then the price difference compared to my 10% ether mix quickly becomes less.

As I am getting over twice the running time out of a tank of 10% ether mix compared to a similar engine size/tank size with glow fuel then the diesel running costs start to look good.

Previously, using 30% ether content mixes was working out rather expensive.

My glow and diesel engines are now on a much more equal footing.

There is a small price to pay with the 10% ether mix, it needs a high ether prime to get started in cold weather, warmer weather just requires getting fuel upto the spraybar. It is also much easier to use an electric starter motor. Once running there is no advantage to using the 30% + ether mixes that are sold as model diesel fuel... they show no better performance than the mix outlined above.

The advantage is.... the diesel experience, the smell, the rock steady running, the torque, etc !

Reg

Reg,

Many thanks for the precise formula and the clarification about the semi-synthetic being for diesel cars. That may make a difference. And very important, as you pointed out, that diesels have double the mileage so any comparisons have to take that into account.

Just got back from our new Home Depot store. You guys living in big cities just don't know. Until HD, I had to mail order any and all metric stuff. Before HD, I had to do the same for aluminum bar stock. Before HD, I had to do the same for thin wall, aluminum tubing. Just picked up some for that muffler for the Tanaka along with some hex head bolts. So it looks like this small mining town is waking up. Wonder what's up? Price of gold? Anyway, for gearheads, and there are quite a few around here, that makes life a lot easier.

Also at HD are 10 litre jugs of Varsol. So what? At 14 dollars that comes to $1.40 per litre. So what again? Varsol has an auto-ignition temperature of 227C and compared to kerosene at 210C, that's not too far off. Just a bit more Ignition Improver and we may have another alternative fuel to try.

About rods. I've done a search for thin wall, seamless, smooth tubing. As luck would have it, Microgroup Tubing has just that as used in many instrumentation applications. Just need to find a size that, along with thin music wire as the needles, we may be able to come up with a very workable needle bearing set up for even the little .15. As we don't have high RPMs to contend with, we can make the entire rod out of brass. The extra strength will help where needed and the extra weight, where not needed, can be trimmed off. This allows the tubing to be press fit in place. The needles will ride directly on the wrist pin and the inner bore of the tubing. Full complement and full floating. The tubing, by the way, has a wall thickness of .5mm or .0196. Along with .01 needles, that still makes a fatter dog bone but I checked, there's just enough room. The tubing is available in a variety of materials, will call the company to find out which is the hardest and most suitable for this application. I'll bet they never had such a request before.

But there may be an even simpler, cheaper way to make wear at the wrist pin a thing of the past. It'll take some serious R&D to prove out but if it works,,,,

Andy,
You have my attention ! I like the sound of the home made needle bearing.
Not having any machining facilities I am even more attentive to the suggestion of a simpler and easier alternative.

Do you have a Kavan (is that the right name) planetary gear starter? These are the small starters that are supposed to be very good.

If you do have one what does it actually weigh ? I drag all my gear, on my back, up some reasonably steep hills and anything which trims the weight down would be a bonus. I use a 2.2 Amp 12V battery to reduce weight carried. Although smaller than most batteries used for starting it gives me loads of engine starts.... never managed to flatten it yet. Now if I can just reduce the weight of the damned big clunky starter motor !

Reg

Reg,


For years I had been meaning to get a Kavan starter for its small size and weight but stump pulling torque. But never had need, me big in 1/2A you see and the bigger stuff always started by hand for me.

Andy,

You had asked for some pictures on the Kioritz, however I don't have anything. I do have some on my first proof of concept effort on a Mac 21 cc. The engine was basically worn pretty good and I thought I'd try it out on it ratha than one of my "good" engines. I could only get it to run sort of on a high (30%) castor mix because of the worn rings. It didn't run very long before the crank gave out. It did show that there was enought material in the cylinder to turn it out and mount a conventional contra piston and head. The pictures are not very good, but you can get the idea of how I did it. The Kioritz was a little more difficult because it had an angled spark plug hole and didn't have as much material at the top of the cylinder like the Mac which had a center, upright spark plug.

I have been wondering if one of Motorboys ignitors might be the way to go. Cut down the cylinder base till you have about 10 thou clearance after cutting out the squish band from the cylinder head. Use the Ignitor to adjust the compression ratio. It would be easy enough to try.

Incidentially, on the Kioritz, I replaced the stock rings with rings from Frank Bowman. They are pinned, but made so that they cover the pin and have minimum clearance and thus minimum blowby.

Have been unavoidably preoccupied for a while but I have made some progress. But first about rods. The needle bearinged rod has run into a road block. Hoping to get samples of that microtubing, my efforts to do so have failed. I even tried to bribe the guy on the order desk but no go. Minimum quantity and billing and all that.

So, I made up an all brass rod. If that one bends, well, I think that the crank will break before it does. Yeah, it's heavy but no spun bushings here and we ARE doing diesel so high revs not an issue. And so we have pictured, what I regard as rod failure, as opposed to rod wear. Not to say that the bushed rod wasn't HEADED for failure,,, Anyway,,,

Will,

Your pics of the dieselized Kioritz are appreciated. I think I see how you went about it and this has given me some ideas. A diesel head is in the works for the Tanaka, some teaser pics included. What I really like about the Tanaka is that the rear case sports a perfect, four bolt mount. And the pattern IS square. So, eliminating all those spark ignition parts should give us a light, powerful engine. Sure hopeso. And maybe some runs can be posted on YouTube before winter REALLY sets in. Hopeso there too.

But what's a Motorboys Ignitor?

I think he is refering to a "lanova cell" as we use in the fourstrokes.

Ok I tried modding "Rice Bran Oil" yesterday, it appeared thicker than other vegi oils and was cheap.
Results werent good looked like no reaction took place , took a long time to simmer all the froth out , after cooling and settling looks like all the glycerine is sitting unchanged on the bottom. So I looked the oil up on the net , looks like a good healthy oil to use in cooking and salads , but no good for our purposes , its high in vitamin "E" so this maybe holding the oilto stable for our process.
Oh well as they say nothing ventured nothing gained.
Stewart

I finally found some glycerin. I was in Wallyworld today looking at the bandage section and saw a 6oz bottle. It's marketed for dry skin. It costs something like 2.84 USD. 99.5% anhydrous glycerin. Maybe I'll cook up a batch on my next snowday.

Seems like to me if you had a bronze bushing on the connecting rod small end (at piston) and a needle bearing on big end it would hold up a lot better. Not Sure. Capt,n

Whenever I have an engine that has a solid aluminum rod, (no bushings) the wear always happens at the piston end. At the crank end, we have much fresh fuel/lube sloshing around and with the pin rotating a full 360 degrees, lube distribution is quite efficient. At the piston, the pin only oscillates. Plus, it's enclosed by the piston skirt and not much flow can be happening there, I think.

And meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of experimenting trying to perfect the production of Biodiesel fuel. As it turns out, I had originally made some really, really bad fuel. Lots of glycerine left in it along with water and SOAP. Geez, soap. It's a wonder I got the engine to run at all. But all that stuff was likely helping me from blowing up or seizing the engine entirely. TRUE and proper Biodiesel feels nothing like the oil from which it originated. In fact, it feels a lot like kerosene. I mean the viscosity and the feel between your fingers. No way this stuff is EVER going to run as a one component fuel. Gonna need oil, lots of it as in the usual, at least 15 to 20%. Wonder of wonders. But the fun thing is that Biodiesel has a higher cetane rating than kerosene or truck diesel. So what? Well, recall that we were trying to run an all kero (plus oil) fuel and while we could get a good run, throttling suffered. Adding ignition improver made things worse. Only TRUE raising of the cetane number, as in adding lots of ether, would give us easy starting, a milder compression setting AND good throttling. So the interesting thing will be to see how a good and proper biodiesel fuel will behave in all areas of operation. Sure wish it were Summer.

Andy that's interesting to hear. Yes, I agree that single component fuel won't work unless we have crankcase oil. Yes, cetane rating of biofuel is high. But CN alone doesn't make for a good model fuel. We also need low autoignition temp. Biodiesel's AI temp is much higher than petroleum products.

Why is raising the CN by adding ether any different than cetane boosters? I have the same problems with ether in four stroke engines as I do with excessive cetane boosters.

The connecting rod big end is constantly trying to shear the oil bacause of the surface velocity which builds the wedge that oil lubrication relies on. The piston pin end has low surface velocities and the oil gets squeezed out.

Ringwinger et al I have just found this thread after having seen some diesels running on youtube, so I am reading here many interesting experiences. I have already made some, and I will post about them. Since mediterranean diet involves olive oil, being italian now I want to make a remark about pressurepan oliveoil processing.
It is simple, that is "why not to fry the water out?" More seriously, if you fill the bottom of the pressure pan with cheap oil instead of water you will make a drying environment in which to cook the olive oil in its smaller container. As long as water evaporates from the olive-glycerin- water mixture, evaporation will substain the pressure within the pan, and temperature will be limited. If you leave the vapour dry you will have your modified oil with no water inside and with the possible benefit of pressure processing. Rather simple, why not to try?

Greg,

Recent work has produced BioFuel with much higher viscosity but still tests out as good fuel. Two test are used. One is to mix a quantity of 50/50 fuel and water and give a good shake. The water must settle out in ten minutes to a crystal clear colourless phase with no soapy middle layer. The other test is to add some fuel to methanol and shake. The oil must be totally soluble in the methanol giving you a crystal clear, colourless solution. All my recent batches pass these two tests with flying colours.

The low viscosity fuels are made from coconut and olive oil. The higher viscosity from corn, peanut, soy and canola. Don't know why this works out that way.

Postings on this can be seen here.

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/foru...771#5691026771

So, in the end, I may be able to run B100 fuel in a gas to diesel conversion after all.

On Norvels ONLY, adding just IGNITION IMPROVER always requires you to increase the compression to start. This is due to a cold cylinder. Using 40% ether ON NORVELS, for some reason, you DO NOT have to increase the CR to start. This characteristic works toward also not having to have a different CR for idle compared to full bore. Don't know why this is so, ON NORVELS ONLY. I suspect that it's the hard anodized cylinder. Anodizing is electrically insulating, maybe its also thermally insulating.

Biodiesel has a higher FLASH POINT than kerosene but much searching before and just now and I can't find any references to the AUTO IGNITION temperature of BioDiesel.

Meanwhile, I found a site that gives the best tutorial on diesel combustion and diesel engines I've ever seen.

http://www.biofuels.coop/pdfs/6_tech.pdf

Have given up on trying to make a bearing supported rod for small engines. So the Tanaka will be our test bed for a one component fuel.

Merugo,

From what I can make out, you are saying that as long as there is water in the pressure cooker, this will limit the temperature. So are you suggesting that oil, in place of the water be used and that this may allow the pressure cooker to work in making a better BioOil?

Hi Andy,

Glad to see you are still beavering away and experimenting.
The weather here has been heavy rain and strong winds in any combination you can think of.
Building work is proceeding with a couple of new models being built from plans until the weather improves.

I have been trying Polyspan and dope as a covering method. First results are impressive and the stuff is supposed to be darn near puncture proof. If it pans out O.K I may not use shrink film anymore.

I read mungo's comments with interest and gathered....

Put some cheap cooking oil in the bottom of the pressure cooker. Put the olive oil and it's water/glycerine/washing up liquid into a seperate container within the pressure cooker.
The water will evaporate from the olive oil mix, which is what we are achieving by "cooking" the oil in an ordinary open pan. The evaporating water will stabilise the temperature.

What I would like to know is.... how long to "cook" the olive oil in the pressure cooker ?

How do we know when to remove the heat and let out the pressure ?

What benefit are we going to get from using this pressurised method ?

We haven't got a pressure cooker so I can't have a go at this method.

Reg

Reg,

Funny weather here too. Here it is middle of December and we've also had MUCH rain. We got the snow earlier with below freezing temps but now, most of it has been washed away. Trust me, this is VERY unusual for this part of the planet. In a few years, I suspect we'll be dreaming of a white Christmas instead of taking it for granted.

So, lots of shop work, warm weather of no use if you get soaked.

And you know, in light of the preceding, there might come a day when two strokes of any stripe in any size will be banned. And they'll invoke Homeland Security to enforce it. So if we have a two stroke that first, burns a negative Co2 fuel, second, one that burns cleanly and then one that requires no oil for lubrication, we might just have an alternative.

About pressure cooking BioOil. How about doing the stove top thing first to kick off the reaction and then transfer to the pressure cooker to top it off?

Merugo has alluded to doing his own experiments so maybe he'll provide the answers.

I have a real concern about using the pressure cooker as described in Slope-soarer's post. As long as youhave liquid water in the pressure cooker, at the relief pressure the temperature is limited to about 250 deg F. However if you vaporize all of the liquid water then you no longer have the temperture limitation of a water/steam system. As soon as the liquid water is vaporized the temperature will start to increase and the pop off valve will no longer be venting until you start to replace the water vapor with organic vapor from the oil. Since most of these type of oils have boiling points in excess of 300 deg F the temperature can get very high. The yield strength of aluminum ( which most pressure cookers are made from) begins to decrease rapidly at temperatures above 300 deg F. I am quite concerned that this has the potential for a catastropic failure of the pressure cooker.

What I would suggest is that you continue to use an open pot, however when the frothing has stopped(which means the liquid water has vaportzed) then use a candy thermometer to take the temp of the mix up to about 350 deg F and hold it there for about a half hour.

vwarn et al
I am waiting for my wife being out for making the test. I use a stainless steel pressure cooker, never seen an aluminium one here in Italy, maybe they are banned.
The heating cycle should be this 1) the bottom oil goes hot and warms the olive mix, 2)when olive- water approximates 100°C the pressure cooker begins to seal itself due to effect of pressure on the cover. Until water dries the temperature is about 120°C and the pressure is within the pan limits ( no need to put the flame high) 3)When water dries in the olive mix, water vapour pressure will lower due to the lack of vapour, and the valve will send less and less steam. At this point the mix is done , cut the flame and wait for opening ( my pressure pan has the possibility of releasing the residual pressure by releasing a bit the valve, other types do not allow for it). 5) if you do not shut the flame the auxiliary oil will heat above 120°C . If you insist you will have it boiling at more than 300°C, really difficult to obtain from a kitchen open flame of any intensity under the pan. By sure before reaching any dangerous state, if ever, it will amply send its smelly warnig.....and ... what about the kentuky fried cicken recipe in a pressure pan seen somewhat above in this thread?

----------------


What is a Lanova cell? TIA


Ed Cregger

Greg,

Not to beat it to death but from the website mentioned earlier.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Diesel Properties:

Cetane

• One of the most important properties of a diesel fuel is its readiness to
auto-ignite at the temperatures and pressures present in the cylinder
when the fuel is injected.

• The cetane number is the standard measure of this property.

• Cetane – (ASTM D613) is tested by adjusting the fuel/air ratio and the
compression ratio in a single cylinder, indirect injection diesel engine to
produce a standard ignition delay (the period between the start of fuel
injection and the start of combustion).

• ASTM D6751 Biodiesel spec. has a minimum cetane number of 47

• Cetane IMPROVERS are fuel additives that are designed to readily
decompose to give precursors to combustion and thus enhance the
rate at which auto-ignition occurs.

• Typical compounds used are alkyl nitrates, ether nitrates, dinitrates of
polyethylene glycols, and certain peroxides. Due to low cost and ease
of handling, alkyl nitrates are the most widely used cetane improvers.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As in amyl nitrate, octyl nitrate and, of course the nasty MEKP. Now we know.

---------------


Yeah, but seeing those big black bubbles floating around the engine at full tilt sure would be fun.


Ed Cregger