5 cylinder Radial Engine

[rdean]

Making valves today.
You can't do a production run on the valves as the stem and seat must be made at the same time without removing the stock from the collet. They must be concentric and that takes a lot of fiddling around with the cross slide and angles.

Here are a couple of shots showing the setup.
Making the stem.


Making the seat.


The finished product.


Family shot.


The valves still need to be lapped and checked for sealing before the heads are installed but my ignition module came in today.
They fit the spark plugs perfectly and the 90 degree end will make for a nice compact installation.



I will have to stop with the valves for now and mill a place in the nose housing for the hall sensor to mount in. I want to have that done before I install any of the heads.

Thanks for looking
Ray

 

[rdean]

I didn't think the hall sensor would be as big as it is so I had to remove a lot of the nose housing to make it fit.
I put the prop back on so I could see what it looks like


A view from the bottom


The magnets are in the aluminum ring directly behind the prop.

It did change the looks but not as much as I had expected.

What do you think?

Thanks for looking
Ray

 

[Chris Hamel]

Looks good

 

[tq60]

Make another cover...

Drill a hole for the cable so it goes through to back.

Maybe make a cover for the cover that goes over the top of the sensor so it is out of sight and protected.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk

 

[rdean]

Sorry tq60 there is no room in the engine for the cable and the sensor is on the bottom of the engine and cannot be seen unless you turn the engine upside down.
Thanks for the ideas though.
Ray

 

[rdean]

I changed the design for the hall sensor as I mounted it on an adjustable spacer and further out.


I also made a new magnet ring and placed the magnets around the outside of the ring. Even though they said the sensor would work fine with the magnets passing across the front of the sensor it didn't work for me. My friend Chris brought over some 5mm magnets that I glued in appropriate holes.

View from below


I think it looks better now.


The ignition works just fine now but I learned something I didn't know. I needed to place 5 south pole magnets and 1 north pole magnet around the spacer for the ignition module. In order to determine which pole of the magnet was sticking out I used a compass and brought the magnet close to the compass and watched which way the needle was pointing. Like poles repel each other and unlike poles attract each other. The needle on the compass is magnetized and will point to the north pole of the earth. I then assumed that that end of the needle had a polarity of south so it would be attracted to the earths north pole. I installed all the magnets using this theory but only one cylinder would fire. I checked and rechecked everything many times and finally went on line to get my answer.
The earths north pole has a polarity of south that is why the compass needle that has a north polarity is attracted to it. I removed all the magnets and reinstalled them the correct way around and everything works fine.


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Because opposite poles attract, this means that as a physical magnet, the magnetic north pole of the earth is actually on the southern hemisphere."

Thanks for looking
Ray

 

[rdean]

I made a test plate to mount the heads on to check the valves for sealing.


I also cut some head gaskets using my drag knife and a vacuum table mounted on the CNC mill.


I made the valve spring keepers and a few extra as I usually lose some along the way.


Thanks for looking
Ray

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Very impressed!

What did you make the valves out of?

Will they be hardened or left soft?

Following.

 

[rdean]

Raised by Wolves thank you for your kind words.
The valves were made from a special steel metallurgy alloy available in only a few places like "Our Own Hardware" and no they won't be hardened.

I have been working on sealing the valves, lapping them. This job didn't seem to be so tiresome on the last engine I made but it was a single cylinder. On this five cylinder I have worked on them for two days. I am afraid my quality control may have gotten a little lax after many hours of lapping. I usually take between 45 minutes and an hour to get where I am satisfied on one cylinder but some of these took well over an hour each.

Well they are on the engine now and we will see how many I will need to do over later on.




I plan on notching out the area of the wood board under cylinders 3 and 4 so I can gain better access. It will sure eliminate a lot of cussing in the future.

Thanks for looking
Ray

 

[rdean]

I made two half round cutouts in the base board to gain better access to cylinders three and four.
Much easier now.



This shows some of the rocker arms and one standoff I cut from a brass plate.



Test installed arms and standoffs to check for length and any binding but all is well.


Now they have to come off to drill for the valve adjusters but not today.

Thanks for looking
Ray