Hello everyone, I just recently found the site and am enjoying seeing all the cool engines here. I was inspired to post my own after seeing Metal Butcher's very nice Upsher engines he built. I built this one in 2003 when I was attending technical college for machining. I turned out to be the only person in one class, so they let me build whatever I wanted and this was it. I got the plans from a friend of mine that copied them from an old magazine. There was no hit & miss version or governor of any sort included in these plans (I'm assuming they were an older version than what Metal Butcher has) so I designed my own. I had no way of knowing how heavy the flyweights need to be so I just estimated and made the spring adjustable. I still have no idea if it works. I only had the engine running once and decided it needed a new longer reach spark plug, which I have yet to finish. The crankshaft is a single piece design. The flywheels were CNC machined from steel and powder coated before engraving. The hopper is a solid piece of aluminum. Most of the exterior contours of the hopper were CNC machined and then filed and finished by hand. You can see inside the hopper where I learned a lesson about plunging with long endmills. ;D Everything else was manually machined, including the gears. Since I made this I've worked as a professional machinist for 7 years, so it looks pretty rough to me now. I would love to build something bigger and better.
