Anzani Engine Project

JohnReid · 11 February 2010, 07:53 AM

Great story and pics.Thanks for recording your work!

David Paule · 17 February 2010, 07:19 PM

Not much to report tonight. We got somewhat sidetracked when we had an opportunity to take a tour through a private air museum. It was fascinating. Mostly it was from about 1920 through about 1938 or so, and included disassembled OX-5 parts, Wright engine parts, miscellaneous old airplanes and engines and a great set of model airplanes. Anyone want to buy a full scale Travel Air Mystery Ship project?

I was able to buy a baker's dozen of original mica spark plugs, brand new, and some spark plug terminals to go with them.

I think that Roger and Craig had machine shop envy, too.

Unfortunately I'd forgotten the camera! What a night to forget that.

Oh, there is a small bit of news that pertains to the Anzani. There is an engine mounting plate, such as WW I airplanes often used, which was available. It was intended for this model Anzani - you don't find those at every little airport. I took the aft case to it and tried it out and yes, it fits perfectly. The mounting holes line up exactly. The Anzani bolts directly to this plate.

For those of you not familiar with the idea. on some of the old airplanes that have this system, the front fuselage bulkhead is a stamped and formed steel plate, usually with plenty of lightening holes and flanges. It holds the longerons, usually the fuselage wires that terminate at the front bulkhead and would nowadays be called a firewall. Well, it's never a firewall. In fact, the engine usually protrudes aft through it. On rotary engines there's often the crankshaft sticking through it. For this one, the accessory mounting plate and magneto stick through it.

So all in all, we had a lot of fun but we didn't make much progress.
.

AAC Cadet Leader · 17 February 2010, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Paule

NotAnyone want to buy a full scale Travel Air Mystery Ship project?

where dat?

David Paule · 17 February 2010, 08:18 PM

We're in Northern Colorado. If you're interested in the Mystery Ship project I can put you in touch with the owner. You can click on my name and send me an email and I can relay that to him.

David Paule · 4 March 2010, 06:54 PM

Last night we met and the guys cleaned some of the connecting rods. We found that alcohol gets the preservative off better than Stoddard solvent. In fact, Stoddard solvent didn't even dissolve the preservative.

We also determined that the aft end of the crankshaft is pressed into the crankshaft body. The male part includes the aft main bearing, while the female piece contains the cam and gear drives. It is held in with a couple of pins, pressed in, and I declined to remove it. I am afraid that the proper press-fit will never again be achieved if the pins are pressed out, and that new pins would never be found.

Sorry no pictures.

I still haven't found any work stools yet for the work space in the hangar, and that's getting to be a problem. I need to do that. Floor mats would not hurt, either. But stools are the big thing.

David Paule · 14 March 2010, 08:52 AM

Sorry for the delay.

We met again this last week, and the guys spent the evening cleaning parts. Here's a picture to prove it. Notice that they aren't using the bar stools that I recently got for them.

The aft end of the crankshaft, referred to in the previous entry, is shown here. You can see the holes for the press-fit pins in the journal. The smaller journal immediately to the left of those is the piece pressed in to the crankshaft. As far as I know right now, that's the only assembly to the crank.

The third picture is one of the connecting rod retainers. It is half of an assembly. The assembled ring floats outside the connecting rod's big ends and along with a pair, keeps the connecting rods fron being flung away from the crankshaft. You can see that these are difficult to clean.

The guys are using either, as one choice, Stoddard solvent, very similar to paint thinner or barbecue starter. The other choice is alcohol. They report that the alcohol cuts the green preservative better than the solvent.

We are managing supply and waste with a couple of five gallon cans with lids. Clean solvent in one, and that one has a lid with a spout. The other is strictly for waste solvent. We only put three gallons of solvent in the supply can for ease of handling. When the waste one has all the dirty solvent, it is easy to take to the local hazardous waste facility.

We have a 20 gallon parts cleaner that I borrowed in the hangar. I'm reluctant to use it because, well, that's 20 gallons of waste to deal with. Seems a bit unnecessary, and besides, the cleaner is brand new and clean right now, hate to get it all mucked up.
.

David Paule · 29 March 2010, 07:25 AM

Last week, we continued cleaning parts. I know cleaning parts is kind of boring so please bear with us. We don't know what kind of preservative was used, except that it is a dark green color and adheres well to the metal parts.

Stoddard solvent - slow to cut the preservative. It is our least-used solvent right now. Latex gloves are adequate protection.

Alcohol - Rubbing alcohol seems to work slightly better than denatured alcohol. Latex gloves are adequate protection, but get permanently stained after one use. Both are definitely better than the Stoddard solvent, but it still takes scrubbing or rubbing, and a considerable amount of time, say 20 minutes for a simple part. And that's one of the reasons this is glong so slowly.

Lacquer thinner - this is a harsher solvent that takes the preservative off well. Since the preservative can be thick in spots, I've been letting the parts soak for about 10 minutes. That definitely helps. After soaking they clean up with alcohol relatively easily. Lacquer thinner destroys latex gloves, so Roger and Craig do the actual hands-on cleaning, using those gloves with alcohol, while I handle the soaking parts with chemical-protective gloves. I wish I could tell you what kind I use, but the label says they are okay for this, and I don't remember the type.

So far we haven't gotten into trouble by mixing the dirty solvents in a five gallon pail and covering it. I store that in a corner of the hanger remote from other flammable materials, just in case.

Craig will be unavailable for the next three sessions, so there might not by much activity for most of a month.
.

David Paule · 29 April 2010, 10:21 AM

The guys did come over last night for a cleaning session and worked on the lifters. I'll try to get a photo of one of the assemblies, it's pretty interesting. I forgot my camera last night.

Some of the six lifters were really stuck together with preservative. A couple are still soaking in a solvent today.

Craig and Roger managed to put me to work cleaning something. I chose the cam, and spent my time cleaning all three lobe races and the gear teeth. There are three lobe races because the center one is for the intake valves, while the exhaust is a split system and share two lobe races. The two lobes are the same, one on each side of the intake... guess I need a photo of that, too.

The most efficacious tool seemed to be a pipe cleaner. I wore out a couple of them.

The gear is built in to the cam, it's a single part. I've just got to remember that camera. One of the defects of a remote facility is that I've got to haul things back and forth, and remember to place things into the vehicle. I did remember the beer.

Incidentally, the feeling last night is that the denatured alcohol worked better than the rubbing alcohol. I'd said differently in a previous posting. We speculated on what the other ingredients were in the denatured alcohol, eventually ruling out rutabagas and Brussels sprouts in favor of some unidentified petroleum product.
.

David Paule · 3 May 2010, 06:23 PM

Here are pictures of the cam. It's all one piece. As I mentioned, the two outer lobes are for the exhaust, and the inner lobe is for the intake.

You can work out for yourself how fast it rotates relative to the crankshaft.

And in spite of my cleaning efforts, it doesn't look pristine, does it?

David Paule · 3 May 2010, 06:41 PM

Here are the photos of a lifter. The left photo shows this one assembled.

The center photo shows the case on the left, the intake lifter in the middle, and the exhaust on the right.

Notice that the intake lifter has a roller to contact the cam? But the exhaust lifter merely has two thin sliding surfaces. I haven't verified it but I'd suspect that the relatively high Hertzian contact stress is why the cam (please see the previous entry) has a gradual tapered ramp for the exhaust lobes. I presume that is the entry side of the cam, but as I said, I haven't verified that.

Also, you can see that the exhaust lifter has dual trunnions for the two pushrods. The exhaust rocker also has two trunnions.

Just so that you'll know, this forum limits us to five attachments per entry. And the attachments are limited to 50 kb unless they are PDF files. Those are something like 976.6 kb. There's also a maximum for all the attachments in the entire discussion, but so far that appears sufficient.