1913 Evinrude Row Boat Motor - New piston ring - First runs.
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- čas přidán 8. 04. 2020
- Engine was hard to start with significant blow-by when I purchased it. A good friend, Dan Anderson took the cylinder and had it trued and honed for me. Next was a new piston ring. Naturally there are none available. Unobtanium! So, nearby I have the luxury of doing business with a master machinist. He likes the occasional challenge so he was given the task of building me a piston ring for the engine.
The result was exactly as hoped for. We now have another piece of history back in service again for anyone interested. Thanks to James and Dan for helping out on this project. - Komedie
Wonderful Engine and Video great comments also 🙂☕
Many thanks for the kind words! . It was a pleasure to bring this engine back into service and figure out how to do it historically correct at the same time.
I am fairly familiar with the Brass Era Evinrude/Johnson engines but nothing of this vintage, that piston ring is incredible never in my life have I seen a ring like that, I cannot imagine the thought that went into coming up with THAT design then when you think about it for a bit and think of how the ring is going to expand as it heats up it really starts to make sense! Thanks for saving this old beautiful piece of history and bringing it back into the world of the living again. Sometimes nothing feels better than getting a project like this and just giving it some of the attention that it may have never had in its life and then hearing it come alive again! 90% of our world today has absolutely NO interest in any way in an engine that actually means something in the history of what we use every day now and just assume that its always going to run perfectly every time we touch the key. Thanks for sharing and you did a hell of a nice job!
Thanks for your very thoughtful reply!
@@PappyfromtheKeys Pappy you are very welcome and I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to see somebody care about these old forgotten engines as you are! I completely share your passion for not letting go of these incredible pieces of our history, they are apart of us that needs to not be forgotten, keep up your passion in keeping them alive and in most cases today its bringing these beautiful engines back to life, its an incredibly honorable thing we do! Thanks for your dedication Pappy!
It runs like a dream.Many thanks for the video.
Marvelous!
Very interesting ring design indeed, sounds great
Thanks, Don! It was a fun project to do and am glad I did it the way it was done "back then".
Also - in the absence of a 1/2" wide piston ring, I have gotten many club members motors running again by using two 1/4" wide rings sandwiched together. Its a very effective and inexpensive method to rebuild these low RPM engines. The rings I use are standard cast iron rings with a stepped gap, and both rings are notched to re-use the standard locating pin in the centre of the ring groove.
A guy in Gainesville, a machinist, has the largest collection of antique outboards I have ever seen. Bigger than the one in the Clayton, NY boat museum. He lives on NE 23rd Street and is retiring soon. Wondering who will take over the collection.
I know him. Am a good friend of his. He just had to move his collection as he sold the property and warehouse he had them in.
Wonder how many wrists were broken by those starting handles.
Got that right! By the way, they were affectionately named "Knuckle Busters" for that very reason!
I'm a lil confused by the description of how the piston ring is machined. My own experience is that the rings removed from almost any antique motor are going to show a thinner cross-section in the end-gap area simply because the ends of the ring are more free to move outwards than the opposite side of the ring, thus more likely to suffer from wearing against the cylinder walls. I have always replaced rings worn to that extent with new rings that have an equal cross-section all the way around. Maybe I need to be educated on the subject, but honestly I've never heard of piston rings being machined or ground with that degree of offset. The fact that the original ring was leaking compression badly enough to prevent it from being operational probably points to it being worn enough for it to be leaking compression around the ring and across the face as well as through the gap.
Normally I would agree and had the same questions and head scratching as you. However to have a ring worn .040 on the gap side and ZERO corresponding wear in the cylinder led me in this direction. There was glazed crosshatch remaining in all 360 degrees on the cylinder. Both the cylinder and ring are cast iron. No ductile iron would have been used in a cylinder 107 years ago so there should have been visible wear (not as much) at the gap area that corresponded to that theory. Our mutual Tennessee buddy had the cylinder measured and honed with no mention of abnormal wear anywhere. Only .002 wear in the cylinder and the wear was concentric. After that I got on the phone with some of our RBM gurus in the AOMCI and we came to the general consensus that the ring was built that way.
To further check I went ahead and installed the current ring prior to material removal and the amount of friction drag was very noticeable in comparison to having the material removed. Machinist also made mention that when you have a single ring of these dimensions that when he initially made the stepped cut he was surprised at the tension released by the ring and suggested that the ring may have been purposely manufactured this way in order to reduce long term wear. Apparently it worked.
As it turns out there were many manufacturers that produced eccentric rings. These were produced for the same reason I had mine done this way and probably Evinrude did as well......uniform pressure around the circumference of the cylinder. Do a search for eccentric piston rings and see for yourself.
Also, thanks for the comments on the double ring set up. Thought about going that way.
Just curious, did Evinrude sell these in Britain back in the early 1900s. Or where these just sold in the united states?