Kerzel Hit Miss

[65arboc]

Hi all,

I follow this forum almost daily but seldom post as I have found answers to my problems by just reading how others solved theirs. There are some very knowledgeable machinists on here and I thank you all for the excellent information posted here. I have only been doing hobby machining for a little over a year now and have successfully built 2 running steam engines, a walking beam as my first and a horizontal twin as my second, both run very nice and I have gotten great comments on my machine work which I think is still very amateur in my mind. So now I have stepped up and built an Internal Combustion Hit and Miss Kerzel design. My problem is it will fire when I have a drill turning the fly wheel but will not keep running on it's own. I do not attach the drill to the crankshaft, instead I have a rubber wheel on the drill that I put against the fly wheel. I have good compression as the valves are sealing well and I think the exhaust valve timing is correct. I am using Coleman fuel in a Vapor type tank that someone on here designed so I know its not flooding with fuel. I have tried to eliminate as much friction as possible even changing the exhaust valve spring to a lighter wire. It still won't run on it's own and I am open to suggestions. I believe Brian Ruppnow stated once that this was one of the hardest engines to get started. Thank you to anyone that gives advice.

Jim in Pa

 

[Mike1]

Jim, If your engine is starting and running with the aid of the drill, it could be that the flywheels are not heavy enough to keep the engine turning over on it's own, adding a bit of weight to the flywheel rims in some way might be worth a try.

Mike.

 

[65arboc]

Jim, If your engine is starting and running with the aid of the drill, it could be that the flywheels are not heavy enough to keep the engine turning over on it's own, adding a bit of weight to the flywheel rims in some way might be worth a try.

Mike.

Hi Mike,

I have thought of that as I made the flywheels out of 3" sched. 80 pipe and machined the spokes from 1/4" plate, silver soldering them together. At this point I don't know how I can make them heavier. A brass ring would be nice but brass that large is $$$$! I struggled with making 2 the same the first time but I do have some 6" solid slugs of steel I may just turn down and bore them for my shaft size and not put spokes in them. They would weigh almost twice as much. I'm not ready to give this up as a paper weight yet!

Thanks,

Jim