This had doomed written all over it before I even began! I saw Johns and Stews several months ago when I first got my lathe and they blew me away -

I find it really amazing how it runs and had to try one and after the success of my two little wobblers and my DRO and belt drive on my mill, I was up for anything and more importantly, in a state of mind that I knew this was perhaps a little above me and that I wouldn`t let it put me off if it did go wrong. I sound defeatist but I was just being realistic. After all, I bought a lathe several years ago and tried building a clock gear after about 2 weeks - as you can image, I soon gave up and lost interest.
Anyhow - this has taken me a good couple of weeks on and off. I knew everything had to be bob-on and so I took my time. I had all the bits I needed in scrap stock, the only thing I purchased specifically for the project was 1/4" silver steel for the pistons. I have also been using Stews build thread to help me along as well as asking quite a few questions, so cheers for putting up with a little pestering Stew.
I stuck pretty much to the plans on John-Tom, one thing that I noticed John and Stew had both changed on their builds, was to incorporate a valve port block on the vertical (flywheel) support as well as the horizontal base. I wasn`t confident enough to take this onboard as I would have had to change other dimensions and although this was an obvious alteration, I just didn`t dare stray from the plans.
Anyway, all the bits are shown below:

So I put them together and NO LUCK! It binds up right away - no movement what so ever!!! So I locked in each piston one at a time and turned it with toothpaste for about 20 mins each one

and then back together and I was thrilled to bits to find that it turns manually.

So project complete, right? It turns manually....


Regards
Chris
p.s have these engine meant to turn under pressure? Only I have been trying to get it to run off the compressor for several hours and I am coming to the conclusion that it is impossible right ?
