Diary of Progress

February

I bumped into Mike's DIY gas turbine site whilst looking for some information on powerstations. His site seemed far more interesting than power stations so I read on a little. After reading his site over and getting really interested, I decided that I could build one of these for very little money like Mike did (How wrong I was!)

After getting the basic ideas clear in my head I had to decide what type of combustor I was going to use. Stupidly I went for the more professional and more efficent design, the axial flow combustor. This seemed nice and easy at the time but soon started to pose problems. Anyway I carried on with it and thought I would still be able to build an axial combustor. Much of the rest of February was spent designing combustors and thinking plans over.

March

It was about this time that I spoke to Tristan about my ideas. He got really interested and decided he would help and that we would make this turbine together. Things started to move along a bit when Tris got involved, we started talking about designs and were soon thinking about what we needed to buy. We decided we would start with a turbo as this is the foundation for the project. After looking at reconditioned and new turbos we realised that they are far from cheap. Some were three or four hundred pounds so we decided at this point to look at the local scrap yard.

April

Went to the scrap yard and found a turbo on a Subaru justy or something, ripped that off for 30 pounds and took it home to inspect. When we inspected it we found that it was in perfect condition, well almost apart from the huge crack and hole in the casing :) we were actually contemplating running it when we first started, dont think we'd be alive now if we had, talk about time bomb!!! We took the Subaru turbo back and swapped it for one from an Iveco diesel lorry. Brought that one home and inspected it and were disappointed that it wasn't water cooled. At this point we decided to scrap the idea of getting turbos from the scrap yard and advertised for a turbo in the paper.

May

Found someone selling a Garrett turbo from a written off Saab 9000, we went and had a look at it and from what we could tell it seemed in good condition. Coughed up another 75 pounds and were well chuffed. It was at about this point we started thinking seriously about the combustion chamber to attach to the turbo. After spending quite a while trying to find a decent mild steel outer tube for the chamber we were directed to a company not far from us called East Midlands Tubes and Fittings. You'll hear more about them later on, as almost everthing we have bought is from them, thx John Goy/Coy/Hoy never were sure how it was spelt, in fact still aren't now

June

Managed to get down to EMTF and talk over our design plans with John Coy/Goy/Hoy, he seemed pretty interested in what we were doing. He probably just thought we were mad, probably still does now, hmm in fact he's right. Anyway we ordered a 4 inch diameter, 18 inch long threaded outer chamber, along with a 2 inch stainless steel inner tube, again threaded at each end, and a couple of reducers from 4 inches to 2 inches. The thread at each end of the tubes was needed so the whole thing would screw together as we couldn't weld.

September

The above pieces that were ordered came in so we went in and picked them up. Total cost about 100 pounds or thereabouts. Everything seemed ok apart form the weight of the tubes and reducers. They were far from light and ideally needed to lose a few pounds.

October

We decided that the tubes were too heavy for what we wanted to use them for, so we decided to look out for some lighter material. In the meantime we turned the old heavy tubes into a spud gun :D . After spending a day searching for somewhere that might deal with lighter tubes we found a place near EMTF called Richard Austin Alloys, after talking to the people there we ordered some 2 inch stainless steel for the flame tube, its nice and thin at about 1.5 mm and was only 40 pounds for 6 metres of the stuff. That should last us for all the flame tubes we'll ever need.

November

Made the decision to scrap the axial flow combustor and went for the tangential design where the air comes in from the side. we chose to use the 4 inch tube we got from EMTF as the air jacket/deflector and decided to order a 6 inch tuber as the outer casing. This was then ordered form EMTF. As we were getting more involved in building stuff we set about turning my shed into a workshop, not the biggest of workshops but perfect for our needs.

December

Started looking for an oil pump while awaiting the 6 inch tube, went to the scrap yard and found one from an old D reg Ford Escort, seems in pretty good nick for its age and only cost us 8 pounds. The tube from EMTF arrived and was collected, looks ideal for what we want to use it for and its not too heavy.