How tight and how to loosen?

[surgy]

How much "compression" should my simple lamina engine have? if i have too much compression how do i lesson the amount of compression? I thought that everything was supposed to be as air tight as possible?

[mrweaseluv]

close to air tight is probably the best way to say it. On one of my first models I made it as close to 100% air tight as i could get and blew out the jb weld seals each time just as it started running because the presure couldn't escape fast enough. i let the displacer piston leak slightly aroung the rod on my next model and while it worked and didn't blow the seals i am sure i lost quite a bit of power due to the leak. a better solution would have been soldered seals instead of jb weld so the presure would not have blown it out.

[Longboy]

...........You control the compression by the stroke of the piston. mrweaseluv is not describing a lamina engine.

[surgy]

Hello, thank you for your help I have everything together and my piston is as air tight as i can get it, it feels a little springy, when i try to pull it out and then let go it springs back in and bounces a bit then stops. at first i didnt think i had enough heat so i used alcohol and then gasoline and then a half a cup of WD-40 lol no luck the piston pushed halfway out with the WD-40 but other than that i get nothing. I uploaded a few videos to YouTube but they are extremely poor quality, i hope you can see something useful to fixing my problem in the video, but i doubt you can even tell whats going on.

heres the links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOtGgprFwng

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdwI5sU7J1U

once again thanks for any helpful hints or suggestions.

[mrweaseluv]

yes surgy my bad on this, should have checked my info before i spoke.