The 1899 Locomobile Steam Car Replica, known as the Lykamobile is a full scale live steam automobile manufactured in 24 kits. This kit is available from a company called "Steam Traction World" located in Daventry, United Kingdom. Each kit is to be manufactured and sent once a month for 24 months. However for cost considerations I have chosen to have my kits batched and dispatched in larger crates to the United States (Topsail Beach, NC).

Specifications:
• Length 7ft 2.6in • Height 5ft 3in • Width 4ft 7.1in • Weight 904 lbs.• Water Tank Capacity 12 Gallons • Fuel Tank Capacity 7.3 Gallons

Construction:

CHASSIS Tubular steel fabrication, combination weld, bolted and silver solder.
STEERING “Ackerman” design tiller steering.
DIFFERENTIAL & DRIVE Spur gear differential similar to the original Locomobile, drive shaft and bearings.
WHEELS & TYRES Single tube pneumatic, treaded.
BREAKING SYSTEM Disc brake system.
ENGINE 21/4" diameter, 3" stroke modified “Hackworth” valve gear.
WATER FEED Twin mechanical pump.
BURNER Fuelled by diesel.
BOILER Multi Fire Tube, fully constructed and complete with necessary paperwork and inspected by notified body.
BODYWORK & SEATS Wooden with steel frame, seating capacity of 2 persons, with turned decorative spindles with leather style upholstery.
Gears: forward and reverse.
Assemble with hand-tools only
Step-by-step instructions
Technical service and help-line backup
Designed on ‘Solidworks’ CAD
Manufactured on modern CNC machines for build accuracy and high quality


Saturday, January 9, 2021

More Shake Downs and Modifications

In my last post I wrote about how on one side of my engine one of the cylinders became loose and was moving up and down with each stroke. At the time I thought I could possibly fix it with the engine in the car ---WRONG! I had to take it out to access all of the bolts to get at the loose flat head screws. I fixed that side and put it all back together. Did another steam up - and LOW AND BEHOLD the other side became loose. What a dummy for me not to go ahead and proactively tighten everything up. Below is a movie of the cylinder moving up and down.

So once again I had to take the engine out, but this time it didn't take me as long -- getting good at taking this car apart! I believe the issue that is causing the flat head screws to become loose is because I painted the bracket without taping off the countersink holes. I believe the paint is degrading and becomes soft and then will ooze out causing a looseness of the fit to occur. Once this happens the screw will continue to loosen up. So next time I won't paint the screw holes (if there is a next time). Below you can see the paint is all chewed up and actually is like powder.
Below I sand blasted all the paint away so now I will have a metal to metal fit.
The engine is all put together again, and this time I took my time to realign the valve bushings/cross bar for a much smoother sliding action too. The following picture shows the cross bar I realigned - the picture is from the first time I aligned the bar.
While I had everything apart, I decided to change my stop light switch from a Hydraulic switch to a simple mechanical switch. I was finding that the hydraulic switch was not always working. I've had enough issues with bleeding the system, that I decided a good old mechanical switch would be most reliable. I found a normally closed switch at our local building supply and fashioned a bracket out of some flat stock steel. Below details what it looks like:

I have done a little modification of the Hackworth Valving System. I have not tested it yet, but if it works out that will be my next posting. Supposedly the modification was suggested during the Series 1 Lykamobile build or possibly the Modelworks build, however our engine design is slightly different from the earlier build, so a modification was necessary on our linkages. The modification is suppose to provide a stronger forward and possibly a bit smoother. It will be a couple of weeks before I can post it. I am going out of town on business.

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