Introduction To this "News" Page:

Inventing, machine design, and shop work tends to keep me away from updating my website. Previously, visitors to this site have had to deal with a disorganized hodge-podge of webpages, with the most recent news scattered around higgledy-piggledy in a random manner that makes it hard to figure out where things are at, and what's going on currently. This is in keeping with the website's subtitle, "The Digital Junkyard", but to make things a little easier, without the hassle of starting up a "weblog", or "blog", I have decided (2-12-2006) to add this page for notes on the latest news and updates, to make the current state of my projects a little easier to figure out.

This approach makes it easier for me to drop in occasional updates. Instead of having to start up a new webpage, I can simply add a paragraph or two, or a sentence or two, to this page. For ease of location, I plan to add the latest stuff at the top of this page, right below this paragraph, so the further down this page you go, the further back in time the entries will be. When this page gets too big, I'll archive it and start making entries to "News Page Two", and so on.(Sunday, 2-12-2006)

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Major Design Progress Since 2007

It has been about 2 and a half years since my last update to this page, and high time for a new update!

Before getting into the update, a quick note. I have just found out that Geocities is going to shut down in late 2008, and that might be the end of this website. I will have to hunt around for a new website host, hopefully free, then migrate files, etc.. I am not sure if it will be feasible. We shall see.

"Migrating" my time from internet pursuits to the shop and drawing board has led to tremendous design progress on my steam car over the past 2.5 years. The boiler, burner, engine, condenser, water tank, and many other essential parts of the steam car have now been completely designed and blueprinted. However, I have avoided major building, other than the pilot burner and some small parts, because I have run into many situations where designing one part made major changes necessary in parts already designed. If I had been building these parts as soon as their design was finished, I would have had to rebuild many of these things several times!

There have been so many changes to my steam car design that I do not know where to begin. 2008 was my "engine blueprinting year". A number of changes came about in the process. My previous ideas for plastic or "polymer composite" parts in the engine turned out to have all sorts of problems, so essentially the engine is now all steel and iron. Frame rods are 4140 chromoly steel to eliminate stress breakages in extended service. The cylinders are still definned 1600cc aircooled-VW cylinders, available off the shelf, with 85.5mm/3.366 inch bore. These will be sandwiched between custom steel-plate cylinder heads with tie rods.

The biggest change to the engine since my last update is that the engine valves are now traditional flat "D-slide" valves. I found a reasonably simple and inexpensive way to build the required steam passages between the cylinder ends and the valves, out of cold-rolled steel plate, without a custom-cast iron cylinder block; the steel plate elements also form the valve chest, which is located between the cylinders and between the 2 cylinder heads. The valves and their easily-removeable/replaceable valve platforms, will be sawed and milled from malleable iron billet. To simplify design work and "stick with proven design" as much as possible, the valve and port dimensions are scaled versions of those in the Model 740 Stanley steam car engine (Stanley's last and best engine), matched to the dimensions of the Stephenson valve gear, which moves the valves to and fro, located in the crankcase.

I eliminated my previous piston-valve design for a number of reasons, mainly cost and fabrication difficulty. The worst part was the numerous (32) small precision-machined ports in the valve cylinders, which would have been a huge hassle to cut. Also, further design studies showed that the leakage and friction losses of D-slide and piston valves, in an engine of this type under road conditions, were only negligibly different, when considered as a percentage of total engine losses. I also came to the conclusion that Stanley steam cars with D-slide valves get about the same fuel mileage under real-world road conditions as comparable White and Doble brand steam cars with piston valves -- interestingly, despite those cars' higher expansion ratios.

Also, D-slide valves have several advantages over piston valves in direct-drive steam automobiles, including their ability to "lift" for pressure relief, without adding extra relief valves in the engine. I believe that they also give better steam flow than turbulence-generating poppet or piston valves, thus allowing the use of smaller steam ports and passages, and a lighter and more compact engine.

Another interesting engine change is that the crankshaft eccentrics which drive the valves are now seamless cast-fit babbitt bearings, rather than Stanley-style custom ball bearings. The babbitts are vastly cheaper and easier to make than custom integral ball bearings, and have given very good service in all sorts of comparable applications. In my engine, they will be extremely well lubricated by "splash and dip" in the oil-bath crankcase.

The crossheads will also be lined with cast-fit babbitt slides, and with much larger bearing surface than a Stanley engine of comparable size. Crossheads are of the "sliced-piston" type, asin the Model 740 Stanley engine, which compensate for engine frame flex something like universal joints.

I have blueprinted an inexpensive and easily-built custom condenser, of the "surface condenser" type, which I believe will give much better exhaust-steam condensing and water recovery than the condensers used in the antique steam cars. It will look pretty much like a conventional radiator as used in gas cars, except that the heat-exchange core will be built rather differently. It will have no fins, and I estimate between 4 and 8 times the airflow per unit frontal area, at any given speed, relative to a finned radiator core. As before, any overload steam will be bubbled into the water tank directly beneath the condenser, to condense and recover it. The water tank will be air-cooled as well, to keep it from overheating, and the same cooling-air jacket can be closed off from airflow and exhaust gas from the boiler circulated through, to thaw it out if frozen.

I have also designed the chassis and underhood area to allow unrestricted airflow out of this condenser, to insure maximum airflow and steam condensing.

One interesting feature which I developed during some on-line public brainstorming with Caleb Ramsby on the "Stanleysteamers.com" internet discussion forum, is a cylinder oil recycling system. This allows non-detergent, non-compounded, synthetic or mineral-base cylinder oil, probably dirt-cheap ordinary 40W ND motor oil, to separate from the water and float to the top of the water tank (above the water pump inlet, thus virtually no oil is pumped into the boiler) after passing through the condenser. A float on the top of the water surface locates the inlet end of an oil suction tube inside the oil layer. Oil is pumped from the top of the water tank, through a small oil pump in the pump box, to a cylinder oil tank located inside the hot boiler exhaust flue. The oil recovery/skimming pump pulls a slightly higher volume per stroke than the cylinder oil pump. Thus, cylinder oil is returned to the oil tank as quickly as it is removed, and the heated oil tank boils any water out of the oil, drying it for re-use in the engine. The steam boiled out of the oil tank is simply bubbled into the air-cooled water tank, to condense and recover it. A gallon of cylinder oil should last practically forever in this car, without the need to frequently refill the cylinder oil tank, or to flush used oil out of the water tank, as in the antique steam cars.

A major recent change to my steam car design has been a revolutionary new automatic control system. This evolved rather suddenly and surprisingly in May 2009. It is basically a hand-operated control lever, on the center of the floor of car, next to the steering wheel, looking a bit like a gas car's gearshift lever. Move it from "Off" position, to "Start", and the whole powerplant starts itself up from cold, even refilling the boiler if it has automatically blown off. If it has been left in the "Pilot" position overnight or for a few days, simply move the lever to the "On" position for instant take-off, with no boiler warmup delay. When you park the car, move the lever to "Pilot" position. No half-dozen or more valves to manually control, as in the antique steam cars. This steam car will be as automatic & convenient as a modern gas car. The mechanism ended up surprisingly simple, with no electric or electronic components, and the control system automatically drains the boiler and water plumbing to the main water tank to prevent freezing after shutting off. It looks like this will be a completely "freezeproof" steam car.

I also finally worked out a valve, linked to both the throttle lever and the handbrake, which drains any condensate from the engine valve chest, and also blows off any residual steam pressure in the cylinders, valve chest, and steam line at a stop. This one valve performs both drain and pressure relief functions. Just pull the hand-throttle lever a bit past its "closed" position, and the residual steam pressure is relieved instantly. This way, the car cannot "wander" a few feet on residual steam after a stop, as some of the old-time steam cars occasionally do. The Cruban Company in the 1920s sold a special throttle valve for Stanleys, which performed the pressure relief function, but it had the disadvantage of depositing oil in the superheater pipe in the boiler, where the oil would overheat and leave troublesome carbon deposits. My pressure-relief valve, which I call a "drain/vent valve", eliminates that problem. It was difficult to design this valve to handle 700 degree Fahrenheit superheated steam without damage or leakage, and none of the available high-temperature valves which I was able to locate would do the job with a short-travel linkage and light operating pressure suitable for linking to the hand throttle lever.

Yet another change is a rotary power takeoff shaft from the end of the crankshaft, to operate the pumps, electrical generator, and speedometer/odometer. The crankshaft is set up with overhung cranks on the ends, like the Stanley engine, but in my design the right side crankpin now has a short extension which engages a "fork" on the end of the auxiliary power takeoff shaft. Thus, when the crankshaft turns, so does the auxiliary shaft. The generator & speedometer are driven by small, durable, low-friction toothed belts on this auxiliary shaft, and the pumps are driven by an eccentric on this shaft, to which is attached a short-stroke polymer composite reciprocating pump rod which runs under the car to the pump box under the front hood. Early Stanleys have similar high-speed short-stroke pumps, which are noisy, but in my design, special check valve assemblies, with featherweight low-lift nylon valve balls and some other features, should run silently and with far greater durability than any old-time steam car pumps.

I have made numerous other changes to my steam car design since the last website update (see below), but this entry is running rather long, so I will sign off for now. I think I have covered the most important changes and design developments. Mainly this update is to report that my steam car design work has progressed, and that my steam car project is far from "dead". I have received a number of inquiries lately, noting the long time since my last website update, and asking whether the project is still moving ahead. It is!

My steam car design is looking very good! It has taken a LOT of extra design work to substantially reduce the fabrication work, cost, and tooling requirements for virtually every single part in the powerplant, but at this point it looks like the extra work is paying off. There is very little left to design, and then I can get to work building this steam car, hopefully in late 2009. The remaining work consists mainly of numerous small engineering details in the control system, and the final blueprinting of the pump unit.

Monday, 1-22-2007

Design Progress, Fabrication Delays

The workshop roof needs rebuilding, and the building is not only full of the materials for that, but with some other stuff that needs temporary storing. The lack of clear workspace has put a hold on fabrication work for the past several months, but I hope to clear it out and finish the roof soon.

In the mean time, design work continues. It is needed anyway. The boiler has been almost completely blueprinted and even further simplified, and feedwater controls are now as simple as in the Stanley system, after having become very complex for a while. Fuel system has been redesigned, now uses an accumulator with a sealed gas bladder instead of an air-tank. Air tank fuel systems lose air over time as the fuel absorbs the air (fuel bubbles air like soda pop when drained from such a system!), and automating the air recharge and system re-pressurization after standby got extremely complicated. With the gas-bladder pressure tank, that's all in the conceptual dumpster now. A self-regulating fuel pump, off the shelf industrial pressure reducer/regulator valve ($40 from my favorite supplier), and a low-pressure pilot fuel shutoff mechanism to save fuel in accumulator for the next boiler fireup, is about the whole fuel system, except for the pilot and main fuel valves and of course vaporizers and jets.

The custom axle design got too tricky, so I figured out a way to fit the engine to a "Ford nine-inch" car axle. The conversion ended up a lot simpler and tidier than I was expecting. This is heavier, but also lots cheaper, easier to build, and more durable than the custom axle. Did I say "durable"? Make that "bulletproof". That Ford axle is legendary for strength under high-torque acceleration, just what I will need!

A standard "hot rod" chassis has been decided on; the VW chassis formerly considered is "O-W-T out". Hot rod "chassiseses" are much simpler and extremely rugged, and very easy to equip with an engine/axle "drive pod" and boiler. A custom aluminum body is being sketched up for the new chassis, when time permits, which it usually doesn't.

Boiler has been almost entirely blueprinted now. Electric-start pilot light (both heated and lit automatically), and safety fuel shutoff if pilot goes out for any reason. Boiler-tube overheat shutoff using a fusible element. Multi-mechanical-input pilot light and main fuel control valves have vastly simplified the fuel plumbing; only 2 fuel valves now except for the pressure regulator. Blueprinted new feedwater & low-water automatic control valves, with high off the shelf content and minimal machining/assembly work. Most of the controls are in one compact integrated "black box", which I am blueprinting right now.

Top of boiler lifts off to give easy inspection of all the boiler innards. It fits on with a gas-tight sliding tadpole gasket (hi-temp rated). No tools needed, no pipes in the way. Easier said than designed. Boiler air preheat (exhaust gas heat regeneration) blueprinted. More billet steel engine components than previously planned. Frame crossmembers, conrods, and eccentric rods/valve gear still look good for fiber-reinforced polymer, but cranks, eccentrics, & crankshaft are all steel. Simplified engine frame assembly. Designed compact automatic gear cutter for custom steel final-drive gears. 6-pitch 55-toothers, #2 cutter, any gear hipsters out there will see what's going on with that.

Sheesh, and that's just since August 2006! (Notebook 36; I just started filling up Notebook 37). BTW, a "notebook" is about 180 pages, 8.5x11 inch, each packed to the margins with tiny writing and sketches. College ruled, 2 lines of writing between the lines. Sometimes a single tiny component generates 10-20 or more such pages, most of which end up X'd out, before a buildable and workable (-looking) design is reached. Yeah, I've been busy.

Notebook 35 goes back to the previous update below, and includes a lot of sidetracks and initial boiler control ideas which have now been deleted & replaced by much simpler and more "conventional" (by steam car standards) stuff, the kind of stuff people actually log road miles with. I did work out automatic cutoff control, engine warmup controls (automatic condensate ejection), boiler tube element fabrication equipment (I finished building these machines before shop clogged up again). Amazing how bad my initial (Notebook 35) ideas for controlling the new natural-circulation boiler were! Improved feedwater heater (exhaust steam to feedwater heat transfer). Boiler blowoff tank and superheater warm-up protection worked out. Improvement and simplification to pump construction and pump valves. Not only initial control ideas, but also initial plumbing ideas for new boiler were amazingly bad. Looks really good now, though; high off the shelf content & "high [easy] buildability"; parts/suppliers list assembled and ready to order.

What you have just read is my comments while thumbing backward thru my invention/design notebooks back to the time of the previous update below. The curious thing is that the past few months have been very frustrating due to no shop work since the shop filled up with roof materials & temporary storage junk in late summer, but on reflection I am very glad that I did NOT "quit wasting time with drawing/calculating and just BUILD!" some of my earlier concepts -- especially those gawdawful early water controls and boiler plumbing -- what a disastrous & discouraging waste of time that would have been!

The single-tube-element "mini test boiler", with gasoline burner, designed to test/tune one sample tube element under radiant heat, pressure & temp conditions, and to verify firing rate, has been completely blueprinted and will probably be the first thing built/run when shop work resumes. Professional (Dudgeon brand) hydraulic pressure-test pump has been purchased & is "in the house", that's going to get some use. An interesting feature is that for simplicity I plan to try a minature version of the early Stanley "three tube indicator" to indicate water level during mini-boiler tests and tell the tester (ahem) when to pump in more water. It won't be used (or needed) in the full-sized automatic boiler. The three tube indicator, the later version anyway, is 3 parallel steel tubes brazed together in the zone where the boiler water level is supposed to be. The middle tube carries water/steam at boiler water level, being connected top and bottom to the boiler. Another has cold water circulating thru it. The third is dead-ended at its top and is connected to an open glass tube at the bottom and filled with water. When boiler water level drops in the middle tube, the circulating cold water in one of the remaining tubes can't keep the water in the 3rd tube cold. Some of it boils to steam, pushing the water level down in the 3rd tube and causing water level to rise in the open glass tube connected to its bottom. Incredibly simple, no moving parts. When boiler water level rises, the circulating water in the second tube cools the boiler water in the middle tube (which is isolated from the boiler heat), and the steam in the third tube condenses, causing the water in the glass tube to drop. High water in glass tube means low water in boiler (operate pump), and vice versa (ixnay on the ump-pay).

Wednesday, 4-12-2006

Boiler Drum Eliminated, Radical New Boiler, Easy Boiler Repair

My new natural-circulation boiler design has evolved further.

I have now eliminated the reserve drum! I realized that I could give the boiler the same steam/water reserve (needed to compensate for lags in fire & water control response, and for thermal lag), by simply upsizing the steam-generating (not economizer-section) tubes from 1/4" to 3/8" outer diameter! This led to several related design changes, including a simple steam/water separator in the steam manifold, but the results are looking very good. The extra weight and cost of the larger tubing are actually more than compensated for by the weight and cost savings from eliminating the drum and its (tricky) plumbing!

Two curious side-effects of this tube-upsizing are that the radiant-heated heat transfer surface area is increased by 50%, and the resistance to natural circulatory flow is now a fraction of its former value. These are curious side-effects, because these improvements weren't even necessary!

The boiler design is now even simpler, more compact, and easier to build and develop. Also more likely to work, a lot sooner!

So my new natural-circulation boiler now has no circulating pump, and no drum. Yet it has _better_ circulation than my Lamont design, and just as much water and energy reserve, and the reserve is located right inside the steam generating tubes instead of in an outside drum!

The steam-generating section of this boiler contains about one gallon each of boiling-temperature water and steam, not as good as a Stanley boiler's 8 gallons each, but enough to run the car about half a mile with the burner off. There is no need for larger boiler reserve capacity, because of the high output of the pumps and burner, the efficient economizer, and the fast-steaming thin-wall tubing. More "stored energy" would just add unnecessary weight, size and cost to the boiler.

I also just came up with some improved construction details which I think will make this boiler much cheaper and easier to build, also several pounds lighter and quite a few components simpler, relative to previous boiler designs.

Due to minimum tube-bend radius limits (diameter of bend at tube centerline should be no less than 4x tube diameter, minimum, for most types of tubing), upsizing the generating tubes has added about an inch to the boiler diameter. The outer diameter of the boiler is now 25" instead of 24" as before. However, that's a lot better than a 24" boiler with an approximately 8" diameter separate reserve drum next to it! Overall, the new drumless boiler will be lots easier to fit into a vehicle.

Another nice thing is that this is now an all-tubing boiler, and the diameter of the tubing is small. Even the worst possible boiler disaster (extremely unlikely) would be a small-diameter joint or fitting coming apart, or a tube rupturing, just a pop, "whoosh", and harmless cloud of steam. This would stop the burner instantly and vent the steam pressure slowly and safely. This is a perfectly safe boiler, absolutely impossible to explode, and also exempt from government regulations relating to "pressure vessels" and boiler drums.

The generating section is made of small, inexpensive, identical tubular elements (LOTS of them), which can be replaced one at a time, with a few minutes of screwdriver work, in case of a leak. My design philosophy here is that a lot of easily-designed and easily-built/assembled parts is better than fewer parts which are more difficult to design and build. And with small, easily-replaced tube units, there is no running off to the welding shop or buying a new boiler at the first pinhole leak a couple decades down the road.

The numerous radical boiler design changes of the past couple of weeks now seem to have resolved into an unprecedentedly buildable and workable boiler design with many major advantages over my previous boiler designs. Steam and water flow path dimensions and serviceable tube junctions have all been worked out, and this boiler's weight, cost, size, reserve capacity, steam-generating rate, efficiency, durability, and other factors look more than acceptable. Final small-detail design, blueprinting, building, and testing, to prove (or disprove) the design goals and estimates I have noted on this page, will have to wait until after "income tax time".

Like the circulating pump in the Lamont boiler, I never really liked the idea of a boiler drum, even a small one, and it is great to get rid of it!

4-2-2006

Boiler Circulating Pump Eliminated -- Farewell, Lamont! -- Burner Improved

Building work has led to a number of changes to the steam car design. One was a simplification to the main burner flameholder ("grate"), which should make it much easier to build. This in turn led to some changes to the pilot light. The pilot light already built, the P5, illustrated elsewhere on this website, was superceded by a new design, the P6, which incorporates the same new flameholder construction as the main burner. I almost completely finished building the P6, when I ran into a serious (unforeseen) fabrication problem. This led to another redesign, the P7, which looks like an annoying delay but actually led to several additional design improvements, making the pilot a LOT simpler & faster to build, & cheaper in production. For one thing, most of the precision machine work usually devoted to steam car pilot lights has been eliminated in the P7 design.

A load of steam car parts and materials arrived at my shop a few days ago, and reviewing the components for the "Lamont" boiler circulator pump led to some disgust with the fabrication work required for this pump, and especially with its size and weight. This in turn led to some brainstorming on the subject of boiler circulating pumps and boilers in general. Through the steam car grapevine, I have recently heard a few reports of natural-circulation boilers which allegedly out-circulate and out-perform Lamont boilers -- without a circulating pump. I discounted these reports at first. However, while brainstorming on the subject, a number of my ideas in this direction suddenly popped together into a new natural-circulation boiler design. By using more and shorter circulating paths, the flow resistance to a given rate of boiler water circulation (measured as back pressure at beginning of circulation path) can be greatly reduced. My Lamont boiler design exploited this effect to reduce circulator pump back-pressure & horsepower requirements. The interesting thing is that at a certain point in the flowpath multiplication/shortening design analysis process, the back pressure is low enough that the head of water in the boiler itself (constantly renewed by water lifted by generated steam), ideally combined with conserved/redirected kinetic energy of steam-driven recirculated water, provides the pressure to drive circulation.

The problem with natural circulation boilers in steam cars is that with the very limited height available under a modern car hood, a large number of circulation flowpaths is required for high (Lamont-level) water circulation and steam generation rates. And in existing/typical boiler designs the number of extra circuits needed greatly increases the fabrication work and cost of a natural-circulation, high-output boiler, relative to a pump-circulated Lamont design. However, I unexpectedly came up with a self-circulated boiler design in which the considerable extra fabrication work is extremely simple and easily "production-lined" and automated. Also, thinking that a rather extreme low-flow-resistance design would be required to match Lamont water circulation rates (5 times the maximum steam generating rate), I "overshot" and ended up with a design which calculations indicate is capable of far greater circulation and steam generation rates than my previous Lamont design! However, I plan to fire it at the previously-planned rate, rather than at the much higher rate I think it is capable of. Conservative design is always good practice with experimental machines.

So, I am now working on final construction details of a new, compact, high-output, natural-circulation, no-circulating-pump steam automobile boiler. The most astonishing thing is that the changes are all in the generating section, and the new maximally-radiant-heated self-circulating generator section will fit into the same space as the pump-circulated steam generating section of my last Lamont design! Albeit by using up some previously unused boiler volume in the vicinity. Plus the new design can use the same economizer, burner, outer case, superheater, and separate steam/water drum as the GL24 (my last Lamont). So my completed boiler blueprints need very little modification. This was quite a surprise. Sort of a "pumpless Lamont boiler". I call it the GS24 ("[steam] Generator, Self-circulating, 24 inches OD").

Eliminating the boiler circulation pump looks like it will lead to reductions in cost, weight, and development time/hassle which are only partly outweighed by the extra complexity, cost, and weight of the new self-circulating steam generator section. Plus, the steam system controls are greatly simplified. Several control system elements needed to coordinate circulator pump and burner operation have been eliminated. I never really liked the idea of a boiler circulating pump, and it is great to get rid of it. All operational calculations & analysis to date indicate that this will be a much more reliable and rugged boiler than my Lamont boiler design would have been. Income tax paperwork is currently keeping me out of the shop (April 15 is right around the corner!), but I hope to be back to steam car work in 2-3 weeks.

2-12-2006

2005: World Travel, Shop Reorganized, Various Design Changes

To begin this news page, a brief recap on 2005. The year saw me flying off on two (well, two and a half) steam-related trips. One was to England in May, to visit the ModelWorks factory in Daventry, Northamptonshire, where Locomobile replica steam cars are being manufactured. Quite an eye-opener. While in England, I traveled around the country via rental car (not a steam car alas), and enjoyed the gracious hospitality of many English steam car enthusiasts, including Simon Cast of ModelWorks, Jeff Theobald, Bill Rich, Jim King, and Mike Clark. I also experienced delightful -- and often thrilling -- tours in Jeff's, Jim's, and Mike's Stanley Steamers, and got some close-up inspection/study of quite a few other steam cars and steam machines. I have an illustrated article in progress on the trip, hopefully for publication in one of the steam magazines, but as with website updates, inventing and shop work are impeding my progress.

The second trip was to the annual National Meet of the Steam Automobile Club of America (SACA) in Berrien Springs, Michigan, in September 2005. This followed a disastrous attempt to attend the SACA-NorthEast meet in New Hampshire the previous month. That trip was derailed by dangerous flying weather, which caused me to miss a connecting flight in Cincinnati. So, instead of "My Trip To New Hampshire", that trip ended up being "My Night In Cincinnati", and from all accounts I missed an excellent meet. Actually, I could have arrived at the meet 1-2 days late, but for a 3-day meet, that is like walking in halfway through a movie, and after considerable air travel aggravations I was in too foul a mood to continue.

At any rate, the Berrien Springs meet, my first national meet, was a good one, despite the absence of many regular attendees, and was an opportunity to meet many people I'd previously only corresponded with via e-mail. I am often easily distracted, and there were plenty of (to me) unprecedented distractions at the meet, and I also missed some events due to long-distance travel fatigue/jet lag, so I didn't get to meet many of the people I wanted to talk to, or to check out much of the equipment which I wanted to get a closer look at. However, as with the trip to England earlier in the year, I returned home with a headful of new information, ideas, and inspirations. This too, is the subject of a planned article, again delayed by shop work.

The biggest news is the complete cleanup and reorganization of my workshop. Over 5 tons (literally, 10,000+ lbs according to the truck scales) of junk was sorted through and hauled off to the City Dump, storage shelves and workbenches were added, and new tooling was acquired, including a rotary table for my milling machine. A stand for my sheetmetal fabrication machine has just been completed as I write this. There is lots of room to work now, and for road-registration, parts-sourcing, and technical reasons I have decided to build my prototype steam car around the complete 1964 VW Beetle chassis/floorpan in the shop. This gigantic shop-reorganizing project took from October 2005 to February 2006, and is nearly complete.

The boiler design was changed again in 2005. Blueprints of the latest boiler and burner were shown to interested parties at the 2005 Berrien Springs meet. It is still a pump-circulated "Lamont" type steam generator, but the new design uses multiple paths of 1/4" steel tubing in both the economizer and evaporator sections, and a new type of circulator pump (currently classified pending construction/testing) has been worked out. The main advantages of the new boiler design over previous ideas are far lighter weight (estimated 100 lbs, including burner & pump), much lower cost (important for future production), and much easier fabrication and maintenance. The sections of the steam generator will be easily & independently removeable for inspection, maintenance, and replacement. This boiler design has been more thoroughly calculated and detail-blueprinted than any of my previous ideas, which all ran into major "unknown factors" and construction problems. Construction of this steam generator unit is scheduled to begin soon, starting with the burner.

The engine design has also changed somewhat; for fabrication reasons, more steel and fewer composite components are now planned. The increase in unsprung weight will be small, and more than compensated for by the adoption of an electric generator driven by a small auxiliary oscillating engine (with 2 moving parts) and mounted on the chassis, rather than a generator driven by the main engine and mounted on the axle. Despite the lower thermal efficiency of this approach, its on-off control scheme and the elimination of full-time high-ratio gear drive friction losses should increase the overall fuel efficiency of the vehicle. A new type of condenser has been designed, which I believe will be far easier to build and much more efficient than those previously used on steam cars. Likewise a new method of removing/recycling cylinder oil from the steam/water system, and a new automatic engine cutoff control, have been designed. Fuel and feedwater pump construction, and the power pump drive system, have been greatly improved over previous designs, which ran into major fabrication problems.

These major 2005/6 design changes are mainly the result of careful first-hand study of roadworthy steam cars, and advice from their owner/operators, during my travels. Seeing "the real thing", and especially experiencing steam cars running on the road, inspired me to get a lot more realistic about how to build one. At present, my new designs look a lot more "buildable" & practical than my previous, more theoretical designs. I have also begun to think a lot more empirically about steam car design. It is not as simple as whipping up some calculations and drawings and slapping together some pieces of metal. Not by a long shot. There are always a lot of unknown & unforeseen factors to be worked out. All projections and design goals are "subject to building and testing" -- and with any machinery, designs always change somewhat after intial construction and tests. At best, a good design minimizes "trial and error", rather than eliminating it.

One side note: early in 2005, I decided to buy a Stanley steam car, to obtain direct practical experience with existing steam cars, as a guide to designing my own steam car. Later in the year, however, my ever-present doubts about the considerable time & labor involved in operating and maintaining an antique car, led me to drop this idea. I decided that an antique steam car would only take my time, effort, and attention away from my lifelong goal of designing and building my own modern steam car(s). I still have mixed feelings about this. It would be lots of fun -- and highly educational -- to own & operate one of the classic steamers. But on the other hand, antique steam cars require an awful lot of time and labor to keep in good running condition. Realistically, conscientious ownership and preservation of a historic steam car would delay completion of my modern steam car project by many years. And this project has been delayed too long already by a steep "learning curve", intricate design process, fabrication challenges, considerable research and tooling-up, and many other factors.