Pacific Vapor Engine from Morrison & Marvin Castings

[idahoan]

Hello everyone,

First I want to say how much I have been enjoying everyone’s build threads and I know that I don’t comment on them and the updates nearly enough. There is really a lot of great work going on here (My favorite place on the net).

So I thought I would start a thread on my current project; it is an 1890 Pacific Vapor Engine from Morrison and Marvin castings. The engine was originally modeled by Lester Bowman who did a beautiful job making patterns and drawings. Lester made an engine for himself and there may have been some extra castings produced at that time but I don’t know for sure.

Roland Morrison took Lester’s (beautiful) original wood patterns and has been painstakingly using them as masters to create foundry proof match plate patterns from Dyanacast resin for a small run of castings.

The castings that I am using for my engine are from Morrison & Marvin’s new match plate patterns.

This is apt to be a long build because; well I have a real job, family and other things that take up my time. But I am committed and will do my best to keep on track.

I have a few parts made to date so for a while I will be playing catch-up. I started with machining the base (seemed logical) so that is where I will start this build.

Dave

The base casting as received

Indicated, shimmed and ready for the first cut.

Clean up cut of the top surface

Flipped over and the bottom cleaned up

Then a light skim cut with the Newfield flycutter for a nice finish

Set up to drill the mounting holes

Indicating the base prior to drilling the air intake hole pattern.

In the process of drilling.

Chips removed; Nice!

Here is the finished base except for the body casting mounting holes and intake pipe hole which will be drilled and taped later; after the body is machined.

The Pacific engines have this unique and pleasing diamond shaped air intake hole pattern. The air intake pipe will be plumed into the base where the engine will pull its air from.

I guess some of the early engine manufactures felt the air in the confines of the base would be cleaner.

More to follow and thanks for checking in,
Dave

 

[rudydubya]

Thanks for sharing your build here Dave. I'm looking forward to following your progress. That's going to be one classy engine.

Regards,
Rudy

 

[vcutajar]

Hi Dave

Interesting engine. I have already pulled up my seat. All I need now is some popcorn and a softdrink.

Vince

 

[lazylathe]

That looks to be a fair sized engine Dave!

Nice way covers that you made for your mill too!!! ;D

Can you tell us a bit more about the machines you are working on?
And maybe a pic of a completed engine?

Consider another chair pulled up to watch along!

Andrew

 

[b.lindsey]

HI Dave...certainly looks to be a very interesting project and judging by that base casting, some nice materials to be working from too!! Will be following along with much interest.

Bill


Edit: here's a link to the website showing the engine: http://www.morrisonandmarvin.com/pacific.php

 

[compspecial]

They appear to be lovely castings Dave, machine beautifully too!
Stew.

 

[rhitee93]

I'm in for the ride. That is a great looking base design. I can't wait to see the rest

 

[idahoan]

Thanks for the interest in my project and the kind words.

The Pacific is a rather unique engine with several interesting features. First is its pleasing bottle frame; the engine is a gearless 4 stroke design using a crossover cam located on the crankshaft. Attached to the crossover cam is a secondary lift cam which opens the exhaust valve. There is a piston trip ignitor along with a primitive surface carburetor. The fuel mixture is controlled by gas and air cocks in the intake plumbing.

Bill,
Thanks for posting the link to the Morrison and Marvin web site; both of those engines are fantastic pieces of model engineering; I can only hope my engine turns out as nice.

Andrew,
As far as my machines at home; I have a 9x42 Acra Mill (Bridgeport Clone). I purchased it new in 1987 and converted it to 2axis CNC about 10 years later. I have recently within the last year or so been running it with Mach3 software.

My lathe is a Weiler Condor; it is a nice German toolroom lathe (13" X 32") that I purchased from my employer around 1997.

Along with these I have other small machines one would find in a home machine shop. Band saws, belt sander, drill press, etc.

Here is a shot of a full-sized Pacific taken at one of the California Gold engine shows.

Next up; work on the cylinder.
Dave

 

[idahoan]

I started work on the cylinder next because the body casting hadn’t been received yet. Quite a bit of time was spent fettling (sp) before the machining was started.

I ended up flipping the cylinder end for end a couple of times because I wanted to make sure I didn’t back my self into a corner. There was minimal material on the OD at the top above the exhaust valve boss and I wanted to be sure it was running as true as possible.

Considerable time was spent indicating to be sure every thing was going to work out ok.

Here the cylinder is set up and aligned in the 3 jaw chuck for the initial cuts.

A skim cut was taken in the bore to clean it up and also a cut on the OD of the flange so there would be something to indicate when the cylinder was flipped around. Both of my 3 jaw and 6jaw chucks are set tru chucks; which makes them nice for this type of work.

The bottom end of the cylinder was roughed out and the cylinder flipped back around and chucked up on the newly machined skirt.

Now the bore is brought to with in .010” of final size.

Flipped around yet again (and indicated in) the register surface was cut under the cylinder flange. I don’t remember why I didn’t do this on the first set up; but I'm sure I had a good reason.

In the same setup the bosses for the water jacket cover were machined to size.

A final cut was taken in the 6 jaw chuck to bring the bore to the proper size for the shrink fit of liner.

 

[idahoan]

I decided to drill and tap the water ports before the liner was installed so there would be plenty of space for the pipe tap. They are tapped 1/6” NPT which is also the same as 5/16-32 MTP.

Here is the cylinder set up in the mill to tap the water ports. The exhaust valve chest mounting boss had previously been milled. This is used as the angular datum for the bolt patterns and the other ports, water, intake, oil, and ignitor ports.

I didn’t take many pictures of the liner machining; here is an early shot drilling the cast iron bar stock.

The liner is a pretty straight forward turning job; however I did leave it a little long so I could face both ends after it was installed in the cylinder. About .005” was also left on each end of the cylinder for a finish pass after liner installation. This created an almost invisible joint.

With the liner now installed and bored (.003” was left for honing) the bolt patterns are being drilled. Notice the exhaust valve chest; mounting boss is positioned against the fixed jaw of the vise.

Now the cylinder is flipped over and indicated in to drill and tap the head stud circle. The two smaller holes are water passages; they intersect the water jacket space and will feed water to the head.

Here is the mostly finished cylinder. Left to do at this point is to finish the exhaust valve chest, mounting boss but I will wait until the valve chest is machined. The water jacket cover mounting holes need to be drilled and tapped and the ignitor holes finished.

Also completed at this point are the two oiler holes drilled and tapped ¼-40 MTP and the intake port drilled and tapped 1/16” NPT

Thanks for checking in.

Dave

 

[idahoan]

A beautiful set of lost wax cast bronze water jacket covers were included in the casting kit. These covers are cast-flat and need to be bent to fit the curvature of the bosses on the cylinder. I wanted to bend them before the holes were drilled because I was concerned the holes may cause problems in the bending operation.

The covers were milled to length plus .005” for a cleanup cut after they were bent. Also at this time the mounting holes were spotted for future reference.

I made some quick and dirty tooling to bend the plates in the arbor press. The bronze is quite springy and needs to be over-bent due the spring-back. I guessed about 10% and hit it pretty close.

The press tool was made from a piece of Nylon that was in the scrap box and worked great. I did an initial bend without the pocket for the letters and it didn't work to well so a pocket was cut to clear the letters and it worked much better. The aluminum mandrill also from the scrap box already had the shoulder on it which worked well to keep the cover square with the bend axis.

Another piece of tooling was made to hold the covers for machining. It was turned to the same diameter as the pads on the cylinder. I transferred the 5C chuck from the lathe to the spin-indexer in the mill without removing the mandrill to insure concentricity.
Not shown in the pictures is that the top and bottom center holes were drilled in the vise after they were bent.

The indexer was used to roll the cover to the left and then to the right rows of holes. The covers were clearance drilled and the mandrill drilled and tapped 2-56. After the covers were secured to the mandrel with all the screws, the profile was milled using the CNC.

Here is a shot of the indexing setup.

One of the finished covers before being removed from the mandrel.

An expanding mandrel was made to hold the cylinder for secondary machining operation which has worked out well. Here it is being set up to drill and tap the 2-56 holes to mount the water jacket covers. On the original engine these bosses were cored and open to the water jacket; but on the model there is no reason for this and they are purely for looks.

The cover was manually positioned on the cylinder boss for the best possible alignment (it is a casting after all) and once the top center hole was located all the others were located from this datum.

Here are the beautiful little covers bent, drilled and ready to mount on the cylinder!

After an enjoyable afternoon in the shop here are the fruits of my labor.

And a profile shot.

Next up will be the construction of the crankshaft.

Thanks for checking in,
Dave

 

[deverett]

I nearly got a set of these castings from Roland Morrison when they were first offered. Seeing the complexity of the engine, I'm glad I didn't - it is beyond my capability. I will just sit back, watch and admire your beautiful work, Dave.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

 

[idahoan]

Thanks Dave

I have been waiting a while for the castings and it is nice to be able to get going on them and see at least some amount of progress.

This has been a fun project so far because my good fried here in Boise is also building one. He is quite a bit farther along than me; but he is retired and has much more shop time than I.

It is nice to be able to talk things over, share ideas and occasionally send Roland some progress photos.

Are you going to come and see us at the GEARS show this year?

Best regards,
Dave

 

[idahoan]

I got a harebrained idea to make the crank out of 1144 Stress-Proof thinking that it may stay a little straighter as the excess material was cut away. The smallest piece I could get that would work was 2 ½” dia. So a bunch of material needed to be removed.

After facing the stock to length in my lathe at home I took the blank to work so I could cut it down in my mill there. Flood coolant, a face mill and a 10 hp. Spindle motor made quick work of it.

Also while in the mill at work I drilled the centers and removed the excess material for the throw.

Cutting to length

The Stress-Proof sure turns nice

In my mill at work getting ready to make the round bar into a rectangle

Pretty much to size; I left .050” on the thickness so I could finish it on my friends shaper later on.

Set up to drill the centers

Action shot!

And the finished centers

More later,
Dave

 

[rudydubya]

Oooooo... ;D I do love watching crankshafts being made. And nice work on the water jacket covers. Following with interest.

Regards,
Rudy

 

[b.lindsey]

Beautiful work on every piece so far Dave. Those little covers will add a lot to the finished engine too!! The pictures as always are stunning...looking forward to each new update.

Bill

 

[idahoan]

Thanks for the kind words guys,

Continuing work on the crank.
After the excess material was removed for the throw; I did have to straighten it a little. It had about .02” bow over the length; a little tweaking in the arbor press got it acceptable.

Here is the blank set up in the lathe to turn the throw. The wire near the end is hold the blank against a threaded stud which I’m using to drive the blank. The stud is screwed into a hole in the flange of the collet adaptor.

Action shot!

Here it is with the throw pretty much finished. Besides the turning tool shown I also use small left and right hand insert tools to finish the inside faces of the cheeks

Using the band saw to blank out the extra material; the Roll-In saw makes this part of the job a breeze.

Both sides have been cut and now it’s ready to go back in the lathe; it’s starting to look like a crankshaft now.

Set up between centers and turning the long end.

I ended up turning the shafts to fractional dimensions larger than the finished size so I could rough it out and use collets for holding the already turned ends. My original plan was to do the whole job between centers; but I was fighting chatter real bad and the collet solved this aggravating problem. Here it is flipped around and working on the short end

Here is the set up in the mill to cut the key ways.

And a closer shot.

After the crank was finished I took it over to my friends shop and used his shaper to finish the cheeks to .750” thick. Remember that I had left them over size in anticipation of this. The shaper creates a finish that looks like it could have been ground. The shaper is also going to get a workout cutting the bearing pads on the body casting.

As I told my buddy; the bench centers allow you analyze or agonize over really small TIR numbers. Over all I’m very happy with the way the crank turned out.

Next up; starting work on the body casting.

Thanks for checking in.
Dave

 

[vcutajar]

Dave

Still following your work on the engine and absorbing your photos. A picture is better than a thousand words.

Vince

 

[rudydubya]

Nice work on the crankshaft Dave. And thanks for showing the use of the bench centers.

Regards,
Rudy

 

[idahoan]

Hi Lester

Thank you for the generous complements on my Pacific; it means a lot to me.
I was able to view your engine in Benton city back in 2009 along with your little Samson; both of which are beautiful engines. Hopefully someday I will be able to meet you in person and also see your finished Pacific run.

When Roland told me that there may be castings available I was excited and honored to be included in such an interesting and fun project. It has been a bit of a wait but well worth it.

The history you have provided on the engines is great; I have some pictures of Anton’s engine given to me by Roland as well as pictures of Buzz’s engine that I took at Antique Power land. I have searched the net for a picture or two of the Mystery House engine but haven't had any luck. Do you by any chance have pictures of this engine?
Do you know what the HP of Anton’s engine is?

Max and I both are using Roland’s 1/16” gas and air cocks and I have been working on a design for the intake valve body that will complement these cocks and the 1/16” piping.

We have thought about the piston trip ignitor but at this time neither one of us are exactly sure what we are going to do. I may give it a try just for fun; but as you did we may end up switching to something different.

Thanks for checking in; its great to have you on board.

Dave