Henry Yunicks Red Hot Vapor Engine Re-Creation

LOL, I meant the bottom of the lower chamber as in cylinder orientation in the direction of piston travel.
If I'm looking at this correctly, the intake ports are on the top of the engine but are more towards the crankshaft than the original design and seemingly on top of the bushing plate.
 
Yes, the intake charge is coming directly from underneath the piston. This should allow for an ideal volumetric flow and superior pre-charge than any other two stroke via having higher compression under the piston than usual to force the charge into the combustion chamber.
 
Having intake charge enter under the piston during the entire piston upward stroke and not having to pull a high vacuum like the traditional 2 stroke eliminates that particular pumping loss and results in a higher volumetric flow as you stated.

Normally a high compression under the piston is required for transfer especially as piston speed increases with rpm.
What are you doing differently during the piston down stroke to accomplish transfer?
 
I'm just using reed valves coupled to a reduced vacuum intake coming directly under the piston to increase flow. Nothing special, really. The super low clearance/volume from the piston underside and valves allow for a higher compression than whats normally possible going through the crankcase.
 
Perfect!

May I suggest as you benchmark this first prototype that you add a pressure sensor to the combustion chamber so you can observe the cylinder pressure versus piston position.
You will want to know when the engine is in detonation mode and if it comes out of detonation operation.
You also want to know what the detonation pulse timing is and what effects the timing.

This testing should be done on some type of dynamometer where you can apply load at various rpms.
You can put an Eddy Current Dyno together quite easily using a generator.
 
Progress Report:
I've purchased all the hardware and a small lathe for the completion of the project. The lathe is probably inadequate but its what I can afford and have room for. After 3D printing all the components. That took almost 2 months to configure the 3D printer correctly. 3D printing is hard to get right! I tried to melt enough aluminum to cast my own components but I found that after 8 hours of blown extremely hot bonfire levels of heat using logs of walnut I just could not melt enough aluminum fast enough to justify casting it myself. I thought about building my own electric arc furnace but my 100 amp breaker box can't provide enough power to do that, either. So I'll have to make the engine, hook it up to a generator and use the power from that to cast more engines. So I found a foundry that is willing to cast the block, combustion chambers, pistons, intake manifolds, cover plates, and various other components to make not just 1, but 2 prototype 49 cc engines for free. Shout out to Art Castings of Illinois for their immense generosity in assisting with the project! The castings will arrive in less than a month as of writing this. By the time the castings come in my charcoal kiln should be done, I have an anvil and will be needing a a lot of charcoal for the forging of the yoke and crankshaft. For the yoke I'll be hand forging it using old leaf springs from an F150 layered with old bandsaw blades, because I flat out lost the last piece I welded up specifically for that task :banghead: . This will give me a steel thats considerably stronger than mild steel without costing an arm and a leg (good alloy steel plates 1" thick would cost a lot of money). As far as the old engine blocks go, I set them aside because the cost of a rebuild would run about 1000 dollars and I'd rather just put that money towards the Bourke engine project at this time. If you want to buy them from me I'm more than open to the idea of selling them, otherwise I'll set them aside for a future project (would make for awesome tractor engines for an old restomod tractor).

As far as sensors goes, I'll run the engine and see how it does. If its stable I'll immediately start adding sensors just about everywhere for everything hooked up to a generator that can double as a dyno. If that works well I'll just flat out go off grid with it and live stream the 24/7 operation continuously until it breaks. The other 49 cc engine I'll try to mount it on a small motorcycle to make a motorcycle that doesn't require a license plate yet can still go on the interstate.

I'll give you all pictures of the castings the day they come in the mail!
 
Yes! I outsourced the casting to a specialist foundry, Art Castings of Illinois. Harry has incredibly generously offered to cast the prototype parts pro-bono. I just got the castings in the mail two days ago. However, these are the preliminary castings. They didn't come out well, and Harry was iirc going to melt them down to try again. Instead I had him send them to me anyway to see if I can get at least some good components out of them. I was glad I did! I got good transfer port covers, some decent cover plates, and a few other parts. More importantly, I screwed up. I am now redesigning the block's intake dog ears because the reed valves don't fit. So I'm re-doing the model. However, the blocks I received I'll still try to make good use of them despite not having reed valves.
 

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Outstanding generosity on the part of Art Castings of Illinois.
Great work on your part also.

Can you post a picture of the reed valves?
 
Unfortunately there are only a few updates. My 3D printer broke again so I'm outsourcing the 3D prints. I'm having a foundry cast the components for me for the sake of speed. I should be getting good castings back within a couple months.
 
New updates! New 3D prints have been made and some improvements to the design. Instead of custom paper/flat gaskets O-ring glands will be machined into all faces so we won't ever have to worry about proprietary gaskets for the cover plates or combustion chambers. I feel very confident in the quality of castings moving forward. Also the Freedom Ship Project has agree'd that they want a series of Bourke engines and thermal cracker vapor fuel systems to power the worlds largest vessel ever to be made, on the condition that I build them at cost IE no profit. I'm more than happy to deliver!
http://freedomship.com
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Great looking update. Love the different collors
How soon before you can assemble a mock-up?

Freedomship looks like a great place for the rest of my retirement.
 
Mockup? No, these will be used for investment casting directly. Once the castings are machined I'll assemble a "mockup" and post pictures, but from there is just a matter of machining the rod and yoke assembly and testing!
 
YES! I've been working on a charcoal kiln and charcoal fired furnace to melt the metal for the casting and they are both finally done. I should be getting to casting the metals sometime later this month or early next month. I've also built a wax sprue extruder and just gathered all the materials needed for the casting. Now I just need to find time between my business obligations to get the job done.
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Yes, in fact. Amazing progress.

First order of news, I have obtained an original Bourke 30 CID engine straight from the 1950's. I've completely rebuilt it top to bottom and all I'm waiting now is the cerakoting. I've treated all the parts with RF85 and nikasil coated the cylinder sleeves. I've recently purchase a large leblond lathe a week ago with which I can turn my castings that I poured via the furnace I made to make parts such as pistons, cylinders, crankshafts, etc. My shop is much too small so I'm preparing a foundation for a shipping container to place my lesser used tools as of now. In a couple weeks I'll have the shipping container placed down and I'll unload my new (to me) lathe and install all the wiring to my phase converter. I'll finally be able to turn my castings into final parts and make new crankshafts.

Also good news, in a few weeks I'll be meeting with a private investor that is seriously thinking about kicking me 3 million dollars to construct a rapid prototyping facility for the production of these fickett-jacobs cycle pulse detonation engines.

If that goes well, because my company will have all the forging, casting, and machining equipment for limited niche production runs, I will co-develop a next generation cross flow 4 valve aluminum head with roller bearing shaft mounted rockers and roller bearing lifters for the old Ford 300i6 as a bolt on kit. Additionally, I'll reproduce forged cranks, fully skirted pistons made for 240 rods, and high flow exhaust manifolds for easy turbocharger installation. This should bring the old high nickel 300i6 blocks into the 21st century.

Once I get the lathe installed I'll post some pictures. Give me 3 weeks tops. When I get my original Bourke engine back from the cerakoting shop I'll post pictures of that as well.
 
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