Well, after much work I wish I had more favorable results to announce! After fitting a new piston and ring and resurfacing the valve faces, not to mention the rebuilding of the burner, I was sure I had licked the performance problem but no such luck.
The car (1918 735 7 passenger touring with an Empire burner) has the fuel cut off set at 550 lbs, a drill #55 nozzel size running at 140 lbs fuel pressure.
The burner never cycles off unless I am stopped at a light (on the plus side the pilot is not needed too often although it seems to be working OK these days)
It will raise steam at the rate of 50 lbs in 30 seconds (450-500 psi)
While cruising the car will hold pressure at about 15 mph on level ground, seems to burn a ton of fuel (50/50 diesel/gas) and drink a lot of water (<20 miles per tank). The burner does not smoke, it howls when cold. The boiler is running at between normal and 1" high on the kidney gauge, a thermocouple on the pipe at the engine side of the dry loop reads about 700 F at 550 lbs of pressure while driving.
The valves on the 740 engine where set up with equal openings at both ends of the valve stroke while not in hook-up. The engine runns very smoothly with the right rear tire jacked up. Being in hook-up seems to have little effect on the performance, maybe giving a mile or 2 per hour improvement.
I have played with nozzel sizes, fuel pressures, etc, all without any precieved improvement!
Any suggestions? Could I have too much back pressure in the exhaust (clogged condenser or oil separator) The brakes do not drag.

Since most of your time is usually spent driving is in hook up, your slide valves should be set while in hook up while turning the engine over in the forward running direction . If your engine presently sounds square while chuffing along in hook up, then you did all right. I normally take it out of hook up only while starting out from a stand still. With any of our steamers, very rarely will I have to take it out of hook up climbing a hill . Running out of hook up really eats the steam, immediately. Save water, save fuel, use hook up as much as possible. To check for exhaust back pressure, remove the exhaust hose from your engine and take the car for a drive. If there was a restriction in the exhaust system, it would now be removed and you can tell the difference. Quite often a car with an exhaust restriction, will blow the engine's exhaust hose off during acceleration. On most all condensing cars, they came with a condenser pressure relief valve plumbed in right before the condensor. Usually this is being openned at speeds over 45 mph and while powering up steep hills. Please bring you steamer to the St. Helens, Oregon steam meet and we will see if we can reason out your problems. With all of the "brains" there, someone will surely have the right answers for you. Often the correct answers are no brainers and it was just something that was over looked. Quality of fuel will affect performance. Fresh? I select my fuel by having the most BTUs/gallon and be clean burning. In June I blew a fuel pressure bottle and since I was running straight keorosene, I did not have a fire. If I had been using straight gasoline, undoubtably I would have has a serious fire and my 8 passengers would have had problems too. After a steamer has been ran hard about 5 miles, everything becomes hot and the performace just starts to peak. Coburn Benson in his hill climbs can relate to the added performance from a hot Stanley. My question is, "how do you keep a Vanderbilt racer hot while you are waiting for your turn at the starting line?"

Hi,,,Brent simply went for a short run around the block,,,I was too stupid or just plain HOT,,it was a verry hot day,,,,So I approached the start line w /about 400lbs and a full /well almost/ boiler,,,so at the start line, I could get the superheater real hot as pressure came up,,a small opening of the throttle and open chest drip gives a different sound,,,listen carefully and it will say a lot abbout the temperature,,,,much as the exhaust does,,,goes from whoosh,whoosh,,,to puff,puff, then CHUFF,chuff ,,tCHUF tCHUF,,,ON THE FLAG I SIMPLY OPEND THE THROTTLE AND HUNG IT OVER THE END OF THE QUADRENT ,, and hung on,,,1 mile ,,1min,1sec,,, and yes Brent's original 1908 model K beat me,,by hundreths of a sec,,,and G Nutz had calculated our times were to be within a second,,thus valadating his calculations,,It was a day that will be rememberd by everyone there,, Back in my Harpsichord thread is a 15 sec clip taken near the start line by Malcolm Lee,,, I put it there on purpose as at that time some of the guys were not so polite,[saca and to a lesser degree here ] ,and the music lovers were acting more as gentlemen,, Hope you good fellows understand ,,,,Cheers Ben p/s dont try this,,unless you test how much water comes over the top// boiler priming// it'll nock a head out,,

Hi Pat,
I got up early this morning to leave at sunrise to drive it into Portland but turned back after about 15 miles of 5-15 mph driving, just seemed too dangerous with traffic and all and only going to get worse as the day wore on.
Tinkered a lot on the way to try and make it run better, thought maybe after it warmed up it would go better but it didn't. I was running it mostly out of hook-up to seat the valves. I will see if I can get a trailer or something together to get the car to St Helens. Will see you there one way or the other though, Eric

Ben - Thanks for the reminder about the link to video clips in one of your earlier posts. Using the 'Search' feature button in the tool bar above, I went back and found it - Exciting moments aboard!

The Dead Horse Hill Climb takes my breath away, ....even though the camera goes wild and misses most of the action, there is enough there to generate a big Wow! by anyone who realizes what just happened.

Below is a link to this page of video clips, various credits are due. Posted there by Malcolm Lee the clips very enjoyable to watch. I watched them all at least twice, ...now that I have Comcast at 6mb- each clip loads in about 3 seconds, .....but worth waiting for even if you have a slow dialup.

[homepage.mac.com]

JW - Admin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2006 04:47AM by JW.

HI,,,the clip ''Steam Clean Track,,,is Castle Hill,,near Gloscester Ma,,event of Vintage Sports Car Club,,,Its a composit of 3 runs,,thats how I lost a passenger,,it was a different run [practice in moring] Mal took the clips from different places on the course,,The hairpin is about 4ft smaller than the Vanderbilt's turning radius,,One Bentley missed and it took 45min to get it off the grassy knoll,,Bentleys, Bugattis, and the Stanley certainly made an interesting day,,I had not seen the track [ Crane Estate lower driveway] before the race,,and I really didn't feel like letten er out,,,One Bugatti was up on 2 wheels,, I drove over the road to this event too,,fun day,, Malcolm has spent much time and effort to make these,, thanks for the credits,,,Cheers Ben

Another factor is how hot the water is going into the boiler. I have a feed water heater attached right before the line enters the boiler. It works extreamly well. Another point to look into is what the condition of the boiler is in. If there is a lot of sludge on the crown sheet the car will not perform well. I used a lot of boiler compound in my 1919 and after running the car total non-condensing I got very good results in the 45-60 m.p.h. range. The water level in the boiler shold be 3/4 full. If your boiler is 18 " high your level should be between 12-14" with 4"-5" of steam. All your power is actually in the water. Another adventage in having high water is it will save your boiler by setting the low water fuel shut off at 6" (1/3 from the bottom).
Also the length of the superheater is very important. I can't rember how long either of mine are, ask Pat Farrell on this isue.

CWR

We just returned from St. Helens steam meet and Eric's 1918 735B was up and performing excellent. He now maintains between 40 to 50 mph on the road with a full load of passengers. He fixed it by pulling the Brillo pads out of the plugged line to the condensor. The Brillo pads started out located in his oil trap, but they got loose. Now it is a strong running 735. 4 steam cars were there plus a steam motor cycle. 28 steam boats, a steam tractor and Tom Kimmel attended too. Lots of fun. More later.

Well,
Had the car out on my "test course" last weekend and it was like I was driving a different car! Runs much more smoothly, uses a lot less steam (also water and fuel!). All because I had not secured the stainless scrubbing pads I had packed into my feedwater heater/oil separator. The pads blew into the exhaust line and got stuck in every bend on the way to the condenser, 4 pads in all. Kind of restricted the exhaust flow in a major way. The exhaust line from the engine to the feedwater heater on this car is a bolted in flexable steel line so it could not blow off when there was so much back pressure.
Well all of this must have had a bit of a silver lining anyway, in the process of trying to fix it I got the loose and craked piston fixed before any damage was done and got the burner all (or at least mostly) sorted out.
Anyway thank you all for your help, Eric

BUMP ,,, Hi Gary,,heres the tag end of the thread,,a good read,,,Ben