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Australian Model Engineering 11September-October 2006

his story actually starts some ten years

ago. I had always wanted to own andoperate my own steam driven automobilebut got somewhat sidetracked by wellmeaning friends into building a half scale Wallis and Steevens steam tractor (AMEMay-June 2002, issue 102), a 5 inch scaleloco (AME May-June 2005, issue120), asmall hit and miss petrol engine (AME Jan-Feb 2003, issue 106) and numerous othersmall working steam “toys”.

Operating the tractor, given its completefreedom to roam, was great fun as longas one didn’t mind manually feeding itsinsatiable appetite for fuel and putting up with the discomfort to the vertebrae caused

by its basic and primitive suspension. Teloco certainly was comfortable to operatebut I soon became bored going round andround the same track and I learnt the truemeaning of the old Army expression of“hurry up and wait”. I wanted, no, craved for

a steam driven car. Te luxury of inflatabletyres, sprung chassis, padded upholstery,the complete freedom to travel just aboutanywhere as long as these wanderings were within a club’s boundary so as to remainunder the insurance umbrella. Oh what Joy! Te only steam cars I had ever heardof were the Stanleys. Knowledge of othersteam car manufactures such as Doble and White and other early European designscame later. I was somewhat surprised thatthe U.K. never produced a steam car eventhough the Poms have written enough onthe subject. Te photo of Bert Francis’s twothirds scale Stanley in AME July-August1997, issue 73 got my full and undividedattention. Tat’s the car I wanted!

Certain friends again tried to divert myplans by introducing me to a bloke who hadsuccessfully converted a Volkswagen Golf

to steam. He had blanked off two cylindersand fitted the other two with poppet valvesand powered the whole schebang by flashsteam. Procrastination set in until I spiedKevin Hyde’s beautiful Stanley in AME

Jan-Feb 2000, issue 88. Decision made!

I contacted the Editor of AME, DaveProctor (thanks mate), who providedcontact details. After many telephoneconversations and correspondence withKevin (who unfortunately lived on the otherside of Australia in NSW) I accumulatedenough information to commence myreplica/model of a 1904 Stanley Steamer. Without the wealth of information whichincluded photos and hand drawn sketchesprovided by Kevin this project would neverhave seen the light of day. I was neverfortunate enough to meet Kevin personally,he passed away in May 2005 and I shouldlike to dedicate this article to him. Our last

telephone conversation was in December2004, Boxing Day, when I rang to informhim that my Stanley was in steam and upand running. 1904-2004 one hundredyears on.

In his first letter to me (5 Dec 2003)Kevin answered my initialenquiries. He agreed thatLPG was the way to go andsuggested that a boiler built tothe AMBSC would be muchbetter than flash steam becauseof the problems associated withcorrosion and control. In his words “LPG is the way to go

for heat. You say one third fullsize — as the Stanley was onlya small car it would need to bebuilt almost full size, approx. 7feet long, 4 feet 3 inch track.If built to your suggestedscale of one third it would be

useless making it 28 inches long, 17 inches

track. Mine is almost full size, maybe 12inches short but the track is the same as theoriginal. Te Stanley was only a small carin 1904.” In a later letter he commented “I will have to get my Stanley out of the trailerand take some measurements for you. Idon’t do drawings. When I’m making amodel it’s all in my head. Tat way nobodyknows if you are doing it right or wrong (asif they would know)”. Well I thought, thisbloke will do me. He knows what he istalking about and doesn’t mince words.

Te first step in building the car wasthe differential as the dimensions of thediff. housing determine the spacing of

the four horizontal bolts to which all thecomponents including the main driveshaft, crosshead guide bars, valve gear(Stephenson’s link) and base plate for thetwo cylinders are supported. Te diff.internals are from a modern car with thecrown wheel replaced with a straight cutbull gear. Te smaller straight gear of theengine meshes directly with the diff. gear,i.e. the car has no clutch or gear box as noneare required with a fully reversible steamengine. Te mesh of the gears is adjustedby running nuts on these four longitudinalsupport bolts. Kevin couldn’t remember what he had used for the diff. internals but

he thought it was from a small Mitsubishi.I visited a number of car wrecking yards without really knowing what the heckI was looking for and no doubt caused anumber of wreckers to question my sanity when I told them it was for a 1904 StanleySteamer! Kevin reckoned that any small car

Te Stu & Stanley Story The story of the building of a Stanley Steamer

by Stu Martyn

Engine under-hung bolted direct to diff. Note front hanger off cylinder base plate

Diff. asembly. Note anodised aluminium reach rods.Original were oak — torsional type damping.

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Australian Model Engineering12 September-October 2006

diff. would do but every diff. I looked atlooked pretty big to me. I finally settled ona diff. from a Datsun Sunny. Te axles thatcame with the diff. were too short to giveme the required track. I cut the axles and welded longer axles to the original splinedsections. o get alignment I used a spigotto hold the bits together during welding. Accuracy is not really critical here since for

a road speed of 10 mph the axles only doabout 140 rpm. However, it is nice notto have wheel wobble. Te outside carcassof the diff. is fabricated from pipe weldedand bolted together with brackets providedfor the leaf spring attachment. I purchasedfrom Kevin the previous mentioned bullgears being too lazy to machine themmyself. Te ratio of approx. 2 : 1 proved tobe too low for Kevin’s car and as it’s turnedout the ratio is too low for mine as well,even though I’ve increased my bore sizesto 2 inches (Kevin’s bores are about 1.75inches). Mine doesn’t like gradients or softground. Sometime in the future I’ll replacethe gears with a chain and sprocket drive– it won’t be traditional but using Kevin’sphilosophy who would know?

My lathe only has a four inch chuck soI was lucky to gain temporary employment with a mate who owns and runs a large workshop and he was agreeable to myuse of his larger lathes (after work hours)to machine the larger components for mycar such as the drums for the rear axlemechanical brakes. For the guts of thebrakes I’ve used shoes, operating cams, etc.from a Honda 750 cc. motor cycle. Tebrakes are operated through linkages by a

foot pedal and the handbrake lever whichover-ride the pedal. Tey work like a charmin spite of Kevin’s comments, viz. “I havefitted hydraulic brakes to my Stanley, this

being the only way to go — mechanicalbrakes are B/S”. He must have had somedrama with his original mechanical brakes.

Te front axle should have been a pretty

straight forward exercise. It was made upof 2 inch water pipe with king pin bracketsand the spring hangers together with anunder-slung reinforcement bar all weldedin place. Kevin was on holiday up Cape York (Qld) way when I built the front axleso I took what the Yanks call a SWAG (aScientific Wild Ass Guess) as to camberand castor. I got it all wrong inclining the

king pins the opposite way to conventionand have lived with the front end of the carlooking a bit like a drunk sailor for the past12 months. What appeared to be a majorrebuild exercise to correct only took about3 hours to do. I removed the axle, cutoff the welded bits with an angle grinder,turned the axle upside down and weldedthe lot back together and repainted the lot.Eureka! It looks like a bought one. One ofthe axle stub shafts was still about 3 degreesout. I thought about heating it up with thegas axe and levering it to what I desired butcould see me ending up with a curved axle.In the end the job turnedout tob e

easy. I just cutinto the axleat its base withthe trusty old

angle grinder, wacked a weld on it andbugger me ifit pulled to

Rear view: note water tank padded supports, boiler bagging and brake drumsturned to match interior workings, from a defunct 750 CC motor bike. The

extension pipes standing vertically from the boilers are for the safety valves.

Single pedal is foot brake — steering very, very direct tiller type

Water tank. Thevertical standing

piece of steel is wherethe sight glass goes.

Boilers in position, water tank10 galls. Mounted east-west.Two holes on front section of oor are for the bases of the

LPG bottles. Note the ash SSsmokeboxes/dog food bowls.

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the exact position — Hey! Hey! oo easy.Moral of the story – what appears to be

difficult at first sight turns out to be easyonce a start is made. When Kevin finallyreturned from his holiday he told me hehadn’t bothered with castor or camber andthat his Stanley steered without problems.

Kevin used the rims from Honda postiebikes and BMX spokes for his wheels andturned up the hubs. I couldn’t locatethese rims in this neck of the woods for areasonable price – Ned Kelly now lives in WA. I settled for 750 cc Honda rims whichare slightly bigger and talk about the luckof the Devil, I located a bloke in Perth whomakes his living by making spokes — namethe material – steel, stainless, whatever, he will make them for a very reasonable price.urned up the hubs from mild steel stock

3 inches dia., drilled all the spoke holes(without a dividing head — I don’t haveone) fitted new tubes and tyres and am veryhappy with the result.

Te rush was now on in earnest tomount the wheels, but first the chassis.Te chassis consists of a rectangular shapefabricated from 2 x 1 inch box steel with asheet of 1 ⁄ 8 inch plate welded to the bottom

of this to form the floor for the cabin andthe twin LPG fuel bottles mounted in theforward compartment. Next of course thesprings. Tey are leaf type, elliptical foreand aft configuration, mounted at eachcorner of the car and are hand made from1.25 x 0.1875 inch spring steel. At firstI was a bit daunted by this task especially when the ‘experts’ rushed to advise me thatspring steel must be preheated, temperedand all the rest of the voodoo rites (knownonly to themselves) performed to get

Lights from a London Hansome Cab, bulb operated squawker (horn), gauges for steam andgas, brake pedal and tiller steering

Above & below: Gas burners. A burner froma LPG hot water system cut in two (only

one half, i.e. for one boiler shown). Theseburners run so quietly they make a whispersound loud, and they throw out about 36000

BTUs each

Marine ply body — note amateur attempt at upholstery.

Another rear view

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cylinder ports ended up being about 20%of the size recommended by people likeGreenly. Bugger! In spite of this the littlecar still goes like the clackers. I got themissus to follow me down our street toget some idea of what speed I could do inStanley. She sat on 60 kliks and I pulledaway from her like the old Commodorehad stalled! I then ran out of street at a

right angled bend. You don’t want to knowthe toughts going through my mind! Tat was the end of the speed trials.

My engine has 2 inch bores each witha 3.5 inch stroke. All bearings are of thepre-greased and sealed type and the locotype crossheads are fabricated in steel andfitted with brass wear pads. Te crossheadguide bars are made from 1 inch square castiron and attached to the four longitudinalengine bolts by suitable brackets. Exhaustis direct to the atmosphere. By 1924Stanley steamers utilised condensers andhad a range of at least 100 miles.

Now the fun begins. Decision timeon how to generate steam and enough ofit. Flash steam out. Tought seriouslyabout water tube boilers, in particular theBolsover type but scrubbed this idea veryquickly. Te AMBSC gets a bit carriedaway in their requirements for water tubeboilers — especially water tube thicknessand the use of shell re-enforcement. I don’tknow where in Australia tubes of this wallthickness can be obtained. Te AMBSCCode Part 1 Copper clearly states a max.pressure of 100psi., a max. boiler diameterof 8 inches and a max. water capacity of 25litres (sorry about the metric) but it doesn’t

stop one from using any number of theseboilers in parallel. I use two boilers each with max. dia. of 8 inches — flue tubelength of 10 inches — with about 108 x0.5 inch dia. tubes per boiler, giving about12 square feet per boiler of heating area.otal water capacity of both boilers is 6litres which is almost a flash steamer! Tissmall quantity of water enables a fast initialfiring up time as well as guaranteeing quickrecovery after a heavy draw off of steam.

At 100 psi I expect toget about 5HP fromthe engine with a totalheat input of around 72thousand BU’s. Tetwo boilers are connectedtogether by substantialheaders, thermal flowtubes and a large bottom

feeder manifold. Eachboiler is fitted with twosafety valves sized asper Code and are of thevertical type. Te onesight glass is mountedremote to the boilers just to the rear of theseat on the vertical partof the car body. Te rearview mirror mountedtowards the front of thecar is not to check onfollowing traffic but toview the sight glass. Ibuilt a rather heavy duty(6 litres/minute) doubleacting hand operatedfeed water pump whichenables me to beatthe heating input andthus lower the boilerpressure. I haven’t hadto use it for this reasonyet but it’s nice to havean added safety feature.Te operating handlefor this pump (which isabout 17 inches long)

ends up between thedriver and his passenger.Te seating arrangementcan only be described asintimate and sometimesone gets some strange looks from hispassenger when the pump is operated.

Second source feed water is obtainedfrom a 5 inch scale Westinghouse steamdriven air pump which has been convertedto pump water. It was such a pretty looking

little pump so I mounted it externallyon the drivers side of the car rather thanputting it under the seat where it wouldhave remained hidden from view. Te twoexhaust stacks angle out from the top of thecar body just behind the seat and certainlydon’t look Stanley, more like some modern

Who said smug? I’m as happy as a pig in pooh! This photo, takenafter I had xed up the problems experienced on Stanley’s maiden

run. Speed trials followed.

Even though Gay looks ready to jump it was our rst run together. I think she liked the positioning of the hand operated feed pump.

A photo of his Stanley at Inverell, sent to me by Kevin.Photo taken by mate Clive Chapman’s brother of Kevin

driving his Stanley at Timber Town in 2003

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Australian Model Engineering16 September-October 2006

day V8 petrol engine exhaust! Hopefully,it’s different enough from the original tomake the purists puke. Stanley boilersof this era contained a very large numberof small flue tubes, ran at about 400 psi., with the boiler barrel reinforced with piano wire tightly wrapped around it. Tey kepta record of every boiler they built or later

repaired. Te Stanley cars were fitted withan ingenious little device to control thefeed water flow from the engine driven(crosshead) feed pump. It consisted of atube mounted vertically on the boiler sideconnected at top and bottom to the boiler.Inside this tube was a temperature sensitiverod which in turn operated the feed waterbypass valve. Pretty smart engineering. When the boiler water level droppedthe water in this tube covered less of thethermal sensor which then became hotter(flue temp.) and closed the bypass valveallowing feed water into the boiler.

I tried to make my LPG gas system

fool proof. Because of the cyclic operationof the thermal demand the main burnersturn on and off controlled by the boilerpressure. o accomplish this I modifieda refrigerator temperature control unit.I removed the bulb at the end of thecapillary and connected the capillarydirectly to the steam manifold. Steampressure is then applied directly to the littlecopper diaphragm inside the control unit which operates a small micro-switch. I’mnot worried too much if this diaphragmbursts as the capillary sized steam feed pipeis so small that any steam passed wouldbe negligible. Te micro switch in turncontrols an approved LPG 12 volt solenoidin the main gas line to the burners. As you would be aware it is essential that bothburners must be fitted with a pilot light so

that when the main gas is supplied to themain burners it is immediately ignited toprevent gas pooling. Being an electricianby trade I initially tried a high voltagesystem and spark plugs to accomplish this.It worked after a fashion but had a majorfailing in that any detection that the gas was successfully ignited was missing from

the system. Tis can happen if either oneor both of the electrical systems fail. Don’tforget all this is happening out of sightunder the car. Scrubbed that idea. In theend I fitted each boiler with a Marty Burnergas pilot light (refer AME May-June 2005,issue 120). I removed the original Marty

burner “petal” head and replaced it with astraight tube to produce a pencil like flame.Each of these pilot lights heats up it’s owndedicated heat sensor (thermo-couple). Athermally generated electrical signal is thensent (independently) from each thermalcouple to it’s own electrically operated gassolenoid valve. Tese valves are mountedin series configuration in the main gas

supply line. Initial firing is accomplishedby manually holding “on” both of thesesolenoids and hand lighting the pilots. Tesolenoids now remain on until loss of flameor the system is deliberately shut down byturning of the main gas cocks. Te mainburners are left turned off until the pilotssettle down. With this system if either ofthe pilots go out the whole gas system shutsdown.

I came across a discarded instantaneousgas hot water system and used its burnersfor my car. I cut the burner in half andused one half for each boiler. Each of theseburners throws out approximately 36000BU’s and run quietly at a very low gaspressure of about 2 psi. I adjusted the jetsizes of the Marty pilots to also run at thispressure. wo small LPG bottles are housedin the car’s front compartment and feed thegas through approved flexible hoses to amanifold and then to a gas regulator (set at2 psi) and thence by fixed copper plumbingto the solenoids mentioned above. EachLPG gas bottle comes with its own shutoff cock. Extension rods, fitted with theirown handles, are attached to these cocksand pass into the car’s cabin area enablingthe system to be remotely controlled from

the driver’s position. I repeat that theseburners do their thing very silently so I went to the trouble of providing peepholes in the side of the flame enclosure sothat the flame can be observed if required.Readers and potential builders should beaware that LPG installations, depending on

Stanley makes an appearance at Bunbury in October 2005 Photo: John Shugg

Another photo by John Shugg of Stanley in Bunbury

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where they reside in Australia may have tobe approved by a “Gas Regulator”. Tat’sa flash new name for what us peasants usedto call an “Inspector”. I would also advisereaders/builders to check whether the draftCodes proposed by the Aust. Gas Assoc.(AGA) have been legislated, i.e. becomeenforceable by Law in their State. As faras the bureaucrats in W.A. are concernedmy car is classed as a ype B, I class, gasappliance. o me it’s a model StanleySteamer!

Te body was made from marine plyglued and screwed together and needsno further description. Kevin went tothe trouble of making up brown papertemplates of his Stanley’s body shape andposting them to me.

Mudguards caused me to falter. Howdoes one perform those compound curves?In my old club one of my mates has a son who indulges in medieval sword play and hemakes his own body armour out of stainlesssteel and the finished product doesn’t havea blemish on it! Really complicated shapessuch as full face helmets. He has an English

Wheel! Whatthe hell is that Ihear you query.It’s like a verybig “G” clamp with the clampends fitted withshaped wheels.Te material is

clamped prettyfirmly betweenthese wheelsby the “G”clamp action.Te materialis then movedb a c k w a r d sand forwardsby hand andthe pressure

of these wheels apparently stretches oneside of the material. Tis gives a curvedshape. Tat was too complicated for thisold fogey so I prevailed upon him to makethem for me and he produced a wonderful job making the four mudguards from 1 ⁄ 8 inch aluminium plate. Tey were so wellfinished they didn’t even need sanding priorto painting. Tanks again Simon and ony Jones for a job well done. He also set thecurves for the seat from the same material.

Have you ever done any upholstery work? I haven’t, but it’s pretty easy whensome one who knows how shows you. Oneof the members from my old club who I hadhelped out to finish his steam boat boiler,owned and ran an upholstering businessearlier in his working life, and he put me

up to the tricks. Te seat lining material iscut to the rough shape and gathered up inloops at equally spaced intervals and thenthese loops are sewn in permanently. Onmy seat they run vertically. Bicycle spokes(or a length of strong steel wire) are thenpoked into these seams. Tese spokes thenhave pieces of strong twine attached to

them at equal spaces in such a way that theypass out of the material loops through littleholes cut at the back of the material. Allthese pieces of twine ends are then passedthrough the seat padding (in my caseexpanded foam) and then through holesin a false aluminium backing piece wherethe twine is pulled tight and tied off. Tisgives the undulating shape (or pincushion

affect if so desired) to the seat material. Te whole assembly is then bolted or screwedinto position in front of the real back. Teoutside bits of the material are then pulledtight around the boundary, held in position with contact cement and covered with ashaped piece of brass strip screwed to holdit in place. Pretty simple really. Te thingsone learns in the model making field! Mythanks to Allan Mathie.

Some of you may wonder about thelights affixed to my Stanley. Despite myrefusal to accept these lights which Allanoffered as payment for the work I’d done

getting his boiler finished and passed (Ibelieve in helping out a fellow club memberand charges for one’s time shouldn’t apply).I finally succumbed to his smooth,persuasive and dulcet tones. Tese lights area matching pair and originally came froma London Hansome cab and are probably worth more than the finished Stanley.

Painting is definitely not my forteso to make things easier I thought thatpressure pack can painting was the wayto go. I wanted my Stanley to look theperiod so selected Burgundy as the car’scolour. Would you believe that the only way I could get this colour in pressure pack

cans was from a motor spare parts dealerand they only came in touch up sized cans.Each can cost about $9. I used abouttwenty cans to finish the job. It wouldhave been cheaper to get the job done bya professional painter. Oh well, a mug andhis money are soon parted.

Te completed car was paraded up myfront driveway for its maiden run up thestreet. It didn’t perform to my completesatisfaction although the neighboursthought it was fabulous and a group ofus celebrated by attempting to find thebottom of a full carton of VB and thensome. Te car seemed to lack grunt whichreally got me pondering — Was the steamdelivery pipe big enough? Were the smallvalve apertures having a disastrous effect? Was the gear ratio not enough?

Rather than rebuild these in attemptto isolate the problem I built a little cardindicator machine from informationgleaned from a set of Audels Engineers andMechanics Guide lent to me by my learnedmate Clive Chapman. Tis valuablelittle tester records pressure against pistonmovement.

I feel I’ve rambled on enough in thismissive (sign of old age) so details of the

card indicator will have to wait for anotherarticle in the future. (Watch for the nextissue ... Ed.) In the mean time, vale KevinHyde.

Photo supplied by Kevin of his Stanley under construction

To nish off here is another shot of Kevin with his Stanley at Timber Town Photo: David Proctor

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