What is this?????

Hi, this belonged to my late Father I know it is a vertical hot air engine but does anyone have any other knowledge as to what it may be, thanks

It looks to me to be an air cooled version of the Heinrici motor, and similar in some respects to the Ky Ko fan, although the crankshaft is quite different to the fan motor (it's crank was bent up from steel rod). I seem to remember a similar motor in a construction article in Model Engineer, probably in the 1990s.

It should be a good goer, but if you do run it you might catch the dreaded Stirling Engine disease, no cure, just more hot air engines.Here's one of mine. Ian S C

Ian

Would your engine in the picture run on a woodburner?

pm sent.

Dick

Dick, probably, I keep meaning to take it to my nephews place, but he's 40 K away, and I don't drive, but it will run on the electric stove with the element set at 1, and it really goes if you wind it up to 5, it just about jumps of the stove.

I actually made two fans, the other one is a Ringbom type motor, but if you know anything of these motors you will understand that it made too much noise(you might have heard of Tapper), it might not be so violent if it had lighter wooden blades, it would need 18" diameter, and maybe 4 or 5 blades, and some proper bearings, at the moment it has used skate board bearings, if they were any looser the balls would fall out.

I think I'v found a photo of an engine same / similar to yours in Model Engineer 18th Feb. 1977, "Stirling Engines, More Research and Development" by W. D. Urwick. I'm sure there are more pics, maybe a build article.

Ian S C