building a Duclos "flame sucker"

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Bernd:
Nice Mad Jack,

Almost a total rebuild of the engine. Glad you got it straightened out and running. Had to be a good feeling. :ddb: :ddb:

Bernd

kvom:
A very interesting history. Persistence pays!

We are doing a mass team-build at my school of this engine, but from the photos ours are much larger. Did you scale it down, or did Duclos make several sets of plans?

madjackghengis:
I don't know what Mr. Duclos did with his projects in his book, I built mine from the magazine article in "Projects in Metal", and it has a half inch bore, and one inch stroke. I've seen pictures of the same engine half scaled, with a quarter inch bore, running, and found that kind of amazing beyond belief. At a time when I seriously thought I'd never get mine running, I considered scaling it up to an inch bore, or maybe even two inches, just to be sure to get it running, but it turned out all right as it is, once I solved all my errors, and found the critical points which must be perfect.
I am still interested in building one with a large bore, as large as I can reasonably figure out to build, just because I know they are a simple engine to keep running, and we have to burn pretty much every day, with the acres of woods we have, and I'd like to get some of that back, if I can. One with a three or four inch bore should be able to do some work. What size are the multiple engines your class is building? Are you going strictly by the book, and using a rotary table to machine the cam? As Cidron commented, good heat conduction between the engine body and the base plate is essential, and will determine how long the engine runs before it gets to a heat it must stop. The original ones of full size all had means of conducting the heat away after it was used, mostly with water cooling systems. Glad to hear such projects are being done in school, I still have the "C" clamp I made in high school machine shop, although the motorcycle front end I built and made a mess of is long gone, turned into other things. :headbang: mad jack

madjackghengis:

And here is the awaited video, finally got the camera figured out. These engines are rather sensitive to the flame position, and will make amazing rpm when it is just right.

another thirty seconds of run time, I reckon it's time to get back to the radial engine, now that this long piece of work is finally a runner. :beer: :mmr:mad jack

jim:
good video!!

i like idea of a bigger version, i'm going for a 1" bore on the i'm doing now. if that works ok, i'm going to try 2".

one thing i wonder about is the valve and port design when you go up in bore size. i have some concerns as to the valve buckling the bigger it gets, but i'll have some fun finding out!

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