Stirlingengineforum.com

Hi,
I live in North Norfolk, UK and I've just bought a shed full of wood and metal engineering equipment from the family of a local model engineer. In amongst the lathe, Mill etc was a table full of model engines. I showed a photo (see attached) to a model engine group I joined on FB and they said that they could be Stirling cycle engines and advised joining a more specialist group. Hello!

My son is 14 and desparate to get things working so I wondered if you could help identify any of the items and share advice as to how to get them going?

Thanks for any help you can give.

James

Definitely heat engines. Not all strictly "Stirling". At least one looks like a "flame licker" (upper left)

The lower right may be a steam engine. Looks like it has a boiler.

What a treasure!

Consider yourself very lucky! I'd give an arm and a leg for that collection!

This one catches my eye as particularly interesting, ( hope you don't mind my cropping your photo).
as it is a fairly common Stirling engine design, but with some changes that appear quit unusual. Probably experimental, and, at a glance, I could be wrong but I'm guessing that it could not possibly run.

It looks like he was trying to get the piston to drive a cam mechanism. If someone got that to work I'd be very surprised.

Stirling engines can be difficult to get working. These could be working engines or could be failed attempts at new designs that did not work. They certainly all look to be custom built one off engines by someone with imagination.

Some basic advice to start with would be; will any of them move? Stirling engines, and engines in general, especially ones that have sat around a while, could be frozen up. If it won't move easily by just turning the flywheel with your finger, and I do mean easily, it probably needs to be taken apart and cleaned to remove any gunk, dirt, dust, oxidization. If it doesn't move and turn over very easily by hand it won't run and might be damaged by trying. A scratched cylinder could cause loss of compression.

I would start by very carefully cleaning them up. If they are frozen up and won't turn over, then it's a necessity.

Taking some additional photos of each engine from different angles would help. For this engine, I can't really see from the photo angle how that cam is connected or what it is doing. It might not be a cam at all. Could be a counterbalanced flywheel.

This tiny little engine is not a Stirling, but an internal combustion engine, similar to the Cox model airplane engine

This is either homemade or I suppose, very old. Generally these work with a glow plug, like a diesel engine. Started with a battery.

This one appears to be a Beta type Stirling engine.
Here is a video showing how it works:

https://youtu.be/MrArmbBIe5Q

This looks like another Beta Stirling, this time with a Rhombic drive:
And a YouTube video of a very similar Stirling:


https://youtu.be/NFs8A44Gucg

Tom Booth wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:14 am Consider yourself very lucky! I'd give an arm and a leg for that collection!

Sorry, but this made me think about this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs

Tom Booth wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 12:37 pm This tiny little engine is not a Stirling, but an internal combustion engine, similar to the Cox model airplane engine

This is either homemade or I suppose, very old. Generally these work with a glow plug, like a diesel engine. Started with a battery.

165033_crop_55_resize_46.jpg

Seems like this one is compression ignition only. No glowplug.
They call it "diesel", but it still features a carburettor though.

I'm constantly searching on the internet for posts that will help me. Too much is clearly to learn about this. I believe you created good quality items in Functions also. Keep working, congrats! slotimo