Current state of the building program

The model is approximately 90% complete with the major structures in place including; crankshafts, connecting rods, cylinder liners, timing/phasing gearing, scavenge blower, exhaust manifolds, spark plugs, distributors, oil and water pumps.

There are no castings used. The entire model is machined from solid bar stock and “made to look like” castings.

The engine is currently assembled with tight slide fit pistons (without rings) installed to check the accuracy of machining and assembly and to prove that it is possible to assemble the engine with all piston assemblies fitted to the rods. I am happy to report that it does go together and that it rotates freely.

The oil pumps together with the full flow filtration system are complete together with the manifolds for the oil spray to the crankshafts and scavenge return from the two top crank cases. The water pump, with feed and return plumbing is also complete. The scavenge blower together with pressure relief and control regulators is now in place. The current project is the ignition equipment. The 18 sparkplugs are fitted and if the engine is to run at the modest speed of 5,000 rpm it will require 90,000 sparks/min. If it were ever to get to 20,000 rpm (it is tiny inside) that would be 360,000 sparks/min! I am building a six-element infra-red optical trigger unit to mount on the end of the bottom crank. Each of these triggers will control one of six CDI modules. The final major project will be the production pistons with the 144 rings; 2 compression and 1 oil control. In practice I may not populate all of the grooves.