Converting a Lawnmower IC engine to steam

Start by selecting a horizontal or vertical lawnmower type engine new or

used. Most lawnmower repair shops have junkers for a scrap price of about
$5. Make sure the crank turns smoothly. Many lawnmower engines are
thrown out because of bent crank shafts. Make sure to ground the spark plug
wire to the case somehow so the engine doesn't possibly kick or shock you.
If you buy a new engine there are many on line for less than you would think.
Look for 4 stroke engines in the range of 4 - 6.5 hp. These will have about 2"
stroke which is about right. Most of these engines have a bore of between 2 -
2.5.
Now dissasemble the engine completely. You should bag all components with
their fastners. Don't throw anything away at first. Once you get down to the
case, see how the crank and rod and piston work. They should turn smoothly.
Now you make a choice - single acting SA or dual acting DA.
A single acting engine gives you one power stroke and one exhaust stroke per
revolution and will use half the steam and yield half the power of the dual
acting engine. It is so much easier to make though. You can use the head,
the poppet valves, and the cam setup.
A dual acting engine will require more work, modifying the cam, and building
a cylinder head. It will give two power strokes and two exhaust strokes per
revolution. It will use twice as much steam and yield twice as much power as
the single acting engine.
After building these dual acting engines, I would say it is far far more difficult
than the single acting!
Single Acting Simple expansion engine
Instructions for a typical 3.5 - 4 hp Briggs & Straton engine
There are so many engine types out there, look for in head poppet valves,
avoid air compressors with eccentric driven pistons. Overhead valve engines
will work too.
Install a 1/2" pipe thread elbow Tee to flare in the exhaust port. This is now
your inlet. Take out the cam gear and grind the lobes off just til your tool
touches all around. Don't remove any more than the lobes. Polish the
resulting smooth circle. Drill through the cam and tap for your round head
screws. See diagram above. These screws will provide the lift for the poppet
valves. The timing will be accomplished when you reassemble and test. The
most important part of this operation is being symetrical. Don't drill for the
auxillary exhaust yet. The geometry isn't what you might think. The cam
peaks are not 90 degrees apart, they are closer to 60 degrees and you will
need to study the rotation of the cam which is counter to the crank rotation.
Reinstall the cam with the inlet poppet valve just starting to lift at TDC. You
can find TDC by leaving the head off and watching the valves open and close.
You will probably pull the cam out and try several times before you get this
right. Turn the engine by hand and watch the open and close of the valve. It
should just crack open 1 degree after TDC and close at about half the

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stroke. It can close earlier with higher pressure steam and later with lower
pressure. 50% cutoff is a good start.
Now drill 1/4" uni-flow exhaust ports through the cylinder wall so the ports
are just uncovered by the piston at BDC. Leave 1/2" between each drilling on
the inside of the cylinder. De-burr the inside of the cylinder wall with light
honing and re-install the piston. With careful planning you can port this
exhaust later into a condenser. You can port this exhaust by using the
cooling fins as a jacket if you can band these fins with sheet metal. I jammed
copper tubing in tight between the fins to form a jacket and used some JB
Weld to seal ends and form a port. Crude but maybe you can figure a better
way.
With the timing set, put the head back on with its gasket and spark plug and
try some steam or air into the inlet you made. Adjust your steam or air to 40
PSI or less. It should run.
Now comes the fun part. You can fine tune by adjusting the timing and
adding auxillary exhaust. A good starting point is 50% cutoff for the inlet with
no advance. Adjusting the lift of the inlet valve will require a larger head
screw or grinding the head down to a triangle shape. Later you can remove
the round head screw and weld a steel pin across the cam right where you
want the opening of the valve. The height of the pin will do two things. It will
give more port opening but also if it isn't very narrow give you longer cutoff.
A pin about 1/8" - 3/16" D will give a lot of port opening and about 50%
cutoff. If you want to reduce cutoff, grind the pin slightly at the sides tapering
to the top. It will be a triangle. Once you grind away you can't put it back.
Cut a new head gasket from a thin gasket material to reduce clearance. This
will make a more efficient engine. Change out the inlet valve spring for a
stiffer one of the same dimension for higher than 40 psi pressures - otherwise
the inlet valve will blow open. The spring has to be strong enough to hold the
valve closed.
The result of the cylinder exhaust ports will be better thermal efficiency due
to the cooler exhaust exiting away from the hotter inlet side - "uniflow". A
small coil of 3/8" - 5/16" copper cooled by the engines fan helps to recover a
lot of the steam as condensate.
Or think about using the exhausted steam to heat a room via a radiator of
some kind. This will return almost all of the steam as condensate.
Adding auxillary exhaust
Mark your cam and crank gear so you know where it was set. Do this with a
metal punch. Pull the cam out and mark very carefully where the exhaust
cam peaks will need to be. Think twice about the rotation of the cam. I mark
with a black sharpie an arrow showing rotation of the cam. The exhuast cam
peak will be about 60 degrees before the inlet cam peak. You don't want the
exhaust open when the inlet is open. Another way to say it is you want the
auxillary exhaust opening at 50% of the exhaust stroke and closing at a few
degrees before TDC. A little compression will serve as a soft bounce so rods
don't clatter.
Try your Cam with the cylinder head off watching the opening and closing of

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the valves. If you get overlap you can grind off the offending part of the
exhaust cam peak. Now try it with steam. It should run smoother. It all
depends on pressure. At higher pressure and shorter cutoff you may
dispense with the auxillary exhaust. At lower pressures and longer cutoffs
you probably need it. When you are happy with how it runs you can replace
the screw head with a metal pin welded across and smoothed with a grinder.
You'll need to make a flanged fitting to screw onto the old inlet port - now
your exhaust port. You didn't use this port as your steam admission because
the threaded port provides better security for the under pressure fitting. I
used brass plate cut and drilled to fit the screw holes on the cylinder and
soldered on a fitting to go to my condensor. You can leave the exhaust just
puff out too.
I get my engines running with almost no noticeable steam at exhaust, just a
little puff and water droplets.
You may get a fair amount of condensate in the crankcase. Use steam
cylinder oil and route the overflow to your condensate reservoir. Make sure to
leave intact whatever lubrication system there was in your engine. At the
cooler temperatures of a steam engine there wont be any appreciable wear.
The iron and steel components will rust a little but not as harmful as you
might think.
At 600 rpm and 100 psi you get a lot of power from this engine. The engine
idles smoothly at 15 psi. Depending on the flywheel (check out McMaster Carr
for large cast pulleys) you can get quick acceleration with the smaller or
smooth slow running with the larger.
Most generators/alternators like 1500 - 3000 rpm so you will need to use a
larger diameter flywheel pulley to get the 3:1 or 5:1 ratio. Check your
generating gear. Most don't like to be run without a load or without being
hooked up to a battery. Don't run an alternator without it being hooked up to
a battery.
Pasted from <http://www.lynxsteamengines.com/converting.cfm>

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