Dog Days of Summer in North Carolina

In ancient Greece and Rome, the Dog Days were believed to be the time of drought, bad luck, and unrest, when dogs and men alike would be driven mad by the extreme heat. Today the phrase doesn't conjure up such imagery. It just means it is hotter than hell and dripping in humidity. Welcome to North Carolina in July ! 

I had a friend from Virginia come for a vacation to Topsail Beach a couple of weeks ago and invited him to take a spin on the Lykamobile. It was about 95 F (35 C) and the humidity was around 50% (which is drenching in 95 F heat). The Lykamobile did not like this at all. The inverter kept cutting out with its warning beep and the boiler only got up to about 180 PSI. Just enough to go a couple hundred feet. It was disappointing to all.

At first I thought it might be a low battery, not the case, the battery checked out. So I opened up the Silverline Inverter Manual we received and discovered that the inverter has a temperature safety cutoff of 65C (149F). That makes me think given the high daytime temperature possibly the inverter went into thermal cutoff. So the next day after everything had cooled off and in the morning with the outdoor temperature around 70F I take off the top panels and fire the Lykamobile up and with my temperature infared senser gun measured an astounding temperature on the Burner Tray of 663F (350C).

I measured where you can see the where the stainless steel burner tray has turned colors due to the extreme heat.

So imagine with the top panel on, this area turns into a really hot oven, and in the Dog Days of Summer that inverter has little chance of keeping cool. There is a small fan that tries to suck in cooling air into the inverter, but I believe the enviroment in that back area would not be conducive to "cooling" the inverter.

What to do..... I decided that the rock wool in that section of the burner tray was not doing a very good job and that maybe using some automotive exhaust wrap heat shield material over that section would help. I purchased a 12 inch by 38 inch piece through Amazon (of course!).

But first I made a template using some cardboard.

And then cut it and formed it. (I found that the embossed aluminum was difficult to cut with tin snips, and eventually used a Dremel with an abrasive cutting disc).

I used a metal tie wrap to secure the shield and then fired up the boiler again to see how the new insulation would help.

Below you can see quite a drop in surface temperature ! 159.8F (71C)

To me that's an amazing drop in temperature!!!

I had leftover exhaust shield so I decided to add it to the back end of the boiler, reasoning every little bit should help in this area. (I did measure about 250F in one section of the rear boiler - probably where my rock wool had slipped some). I used two more metal tie wraps and snugged them up with a special tool they make for the metal tie wraps.

 

The Lykamobile is all back together now and happily steaming away again.

Leather Engine Compartment Flap/Cover

Here are a few examples of the Locomobile showing what was provided in regards to the cover for the engine compartment "back in the day".

Steam Traction World provided us with a plywood enclosure that fits very snug to the body and frame. 

I have discovered that this is an issue for me. When steaming down in our yearly Christmas Parade here in Topsail Beach, NC, the engine and boiler compartment gets very toasty. In fact with the plywood panel installed it got so hot that it melted or caused to greatly deform the electronic box I use to house my boiler level controls.

My solution to this was to basically run without the plywood panel. This poses a somewhat unsafe situation too. I have had on occasion a packing nut on the feed pump become loose and water can get sprayed on to your legs or a fitting seeping hot water too that wasn't tight. Therefore taking insight from original examples of the Locomobile I decided to make my own leather flap. This allows for some protection and much better ventilation of the engine/boiler compartment.

My first task was to use some construction paper to "paper doll" the flap.

I used this to layout the outlines on the leather I purchased from eBay and cut the leather to size.

I then used some tools for punching stitching holes into leather and began stitching everything together. On the bottom of the flap I did stitch in a piece of 12 ga steel to add weight to help keep the flap in place while diving.

The finished product installed:

I have tested it out and so far, it is working as I expected. 

Happy Steaming :)

Lykamobile Superheater

 After some searching on the internet and from some prior discussions with Jim Trotta, I decided to try and make a superheater for the Lyka Series 2. I found some inspiration from a Locomobile modification posted December 2016 (click on this for the link). I only wish I could bend pipe as smoothly as shown from the link. First task was to figure out a bending configuration. I approximated the diameter of the boiler and laid this out on a piece of cardboard and by using some string I had, I played around with the loops of the superheater. 

Yes it looks a little silly, but I needed to get an approximation of the length of pipe I would need. From other research on the internet I found that 3/8 inch stainless steel 304 pipe was recommended. I sourced this from www.zoro.com a 6 foot length for about $40 including the shipping charge. Additionally I decided to make a fixture to bend the pipe around a radius of pipe attached to my work top with a couple of pipe flanges. I used 2.5 inch pipe x 3 inch nipple (again sourced by Zoro.com). To bend the pipe I filled the pipe with dry sand and capped off both ends. The sand's purpose is to support the pipe internally to prevent the pipe from collapsing. 

But before going any further with pipe bending I had to finalize the pipe bend layout. This necessitated taking the bottom burner tray off the boiler. This is a major undertaking. You just about have to strip everything to do this and lift the boiler up to clear the burner tray for removal. If only Steam Traction World had made the parking brake bracket a bolt on assembly this work would have been MUCH simpler. The bracket prevents the dropping of the burner tray, so the boiler has to be lifted!

Once the burner tray is out, I could estimate the pipe fittings on the underside of the boiler using the burner tray. See below.

Steam Traction World actually had cutouts on the outer cladding for a superheater (I believe) and all I had to do was to cutout the inner sheet metal. As you can see in the above cardboard layout, I have drawn in the pipe fittings of the boiler to avoid. 

Next the bending of the pipe. You will need most likely an Oxy-Acetylene setup.

You will need to heat the pipe to a medium red color and with the assistance of a friend help you bend the pipe. Below is my bending fixture mounted to my bench. The threaded bolt is used to hold the pipe and by pulling on the pipe while heated to a red color will bend fairly easily. We did get better as we went along. I'm sure if I were to do a second superheater it would be more consistent in regard to the bend radiuses.

The pipe length was cut on the left side of the above picture, and I had to purchase a 3/8 NPT die to cut new threads.

Cutting the threads was a bit tricky trying to align the die straight. My threads were a bit skewed, but I was able to get full engagement with the 90-degree fitting. I used 9 inch and a 12 inch stainless steel 304 pipe nipples and pre-assembled these onto the superheater. I have learned that when tightening these pipe fittings for use on the Lykamobile, when you think it is tight enough - go ahead and tighten some more! Nothing worse than having to go back and tighten for steam leaks!

Below the green strap is the incoming steam from the throttle.

The pipe above is the exit for the steam from the superheater.

Flare fittings

From the Throttle to the brass flare fittings on the superheater I will bend and use 1/4 inch copper pipe (3/8 inch OD) to reroute the steam to the superheater. The steam will then travel from the superheater back up to the other flared brass fitting through a newly bent 1/4 inch copper pipe to the piston manifold. In addition, I felt like the superheater needed to be supported, so using some rods and some scrap metal I had, I fashioned a way to suspend the superheater through the boiler tubes. Much like how Steam Traction World did to support the burner tray. The pictures below explains this.

Below is a picture showing the boiler lifted by my engine hoist - again if that parking brake bracket was a bolt on, this would not have been necessary.

Pictures of the superheater underneath the boiler.

While I had everything apart, I decided to once again try to seal the throttle from leaking. It is a minor leak with a small amount of moisture, but it bothers me that I can't get it sealed. So I took everything apart, the special steam gasket I used was useless with a chunk of it blown out. But what was most important, I noticed some machining chips stuck in the throttle that I must have missed originally. Possibly the chips also "migrated or flowed" their way to the throttle and got stuck. About half my throttle holes were plugged. See below pictures.

Anyway, I reassembled the throttle and tried some high heat RTV (orange) to seal the assembly. (note this didn't work long either - still have that very small leak)

Below shows the two copper pipes I bent and covered with insulation for the superheater.

The following picture shows the fittings and pipe that the steam exits from the superheater to the piston manifold.

I have steamed the car twice so far. I feel like the amount of condensation is greatly reduced coming out of the exhaust pipes. I did a crude temperature measurement of the outgoing steam pipe from the throttle to the superheater and another measurement of the steam pipe after the superheater going to the piston manifold. I see a better than 100 degree F temperature rise. 

I also believe that acceleration is greater, and my speed is greater, however due to the machining chips I cleared out of the throttle I have confounded this result - so I don't know for sure what contributed to the increase speed and pep. But I'm happy to be more "steam efficient" with the higher dryer steam which should translate into going further on a tank of water.

Happy Steaming :)