New Project Stuart Turner P6M + gearbox

Looking forward to hearing this run! Which wont be long by the look of it

Hmmm just the pipe work to sort out, that can be a right pain I've found so good luck with that. As for the cable and controller, in the past I've bought a cheap carb with cable etc included and used that and kept the carb as a spare.

Stu.

Good idea Stu. I was thinking about my local mower bloke, but I think I will check out eBay for the cables & levers.

The exhaust could be quite easy, but if I take the easy option it won't look very good. I can get an adaptor to fit the outlet & take it down to whatever size of copper I like. But I think 22mm copper will be too small, so might have to go for 35mm. I would prefer to do it in steel barrel though, I need to ask one of my dad's old motorbike friends, he used to be a plumber so might still have some of the thread cutting bits & bobs. Not sure weather to try for a silencer or not, might just see what it's like on a straight pipe.

The petrol plumbing could be an issue, but I have a tank & can take a tap off one of those little Villiers engines I just got. Might have to be flexi pipe though, rather than copper.

Just water plumbing to sort out then....

Nuts are you going to use the gearbox for anything or leave it as it is now.

Stu.

I will just leave it as it is now. I suppose if someone wanted to couple something up to it they could, & I even have the other half to that output flange sitting on the donor engine (not sure it'll come of very easily though).

What I would love is for someone to put it back into a boat. They could, it is certainly up to the standard, & at stationary engine prices that would be a very cheap reconditioned boat engine. But I doubt it'll ever see the water again.

As I mentioned on one of my other threads, I have ordered pretty much all the stuff now to do the control cables & levers, the exhaust plumbing & most of the petrol plumbing (I think). Today I ordered the last couple of bits for the Amal carb to make the air slide (choke) fully operational again. It's a good thing that a company is re-producing Amal carbs again & pretty much all bits can be got for them brand new, here's a link to their site....

http://amalcarb.co.uk/

If you ever need new floats or needles for any Amal carb they should be able to get them for you. I know you can still get the bits for the Lister D float chambers, as well as other bits, including the float bowl itself. They are sometimes a typically British small company, as I was saying on the Piston Rings thread, they can take a while to ship stuff, & occasionally you'll have to ring them up (probably best to ring rather than email), but it's good to know they are there & these bits can still be bought.

So I've really just got to mount the tank now, which I will mount to the trolley, & find something for the coolant water to go in. Once I have all the bits I've ordered, plus a mag coupling, I can go for a test fire.

The exhaust will be in 22mm copper (which may be a bit thin) & the coolant pipes are all in 15mm copper, so any pipe & stuff i need for those I will probably already have here, lying about.

I would not trust a Stuart out at sea, ever, cant see why they were so popular! Wouldn't have trusted the old Brit engines too much either, and I work where they used to make em, looking good though!

I wouldn't trust it either, not at sea. I think they were more popular on inland waterways & in small pleasure craft. The only sea use they got was as standby/axillary power in small sailing vessels.

Not a good idea to use a raw water cooled engine at sea anyway, & I don't think Stuart ever made a weed box for them.

If I had a small river boat I would happily put this engine in it though. It should be as reliable as it ever was after I'm finished with it. Especially with a decent carb on there. Personally I would convert it to something other than magneto ignition though, I think.

Ive had 2 stuarts, I had a P5LY which was no trouble at all, then a flywheel mag R2, which was a right pig! always playing up despite new coil etc..

I had most of a P5 with the marine clutch until last year, I obtained it in exchange for 2 litres of paint and flogged it for £25 so did make a little bit of profit haha! Since then it has changed hands a few times, getting less each time, and has furnished enough parts to get several other engine's operational again.

Pete.

Stuarts have a bit of a reputation for being pigs to start, usually because they are either set up wrong or they are just plain worn out after being in a little boat for years (flywheel mags suffer from main bearing wear, it upsets the timing as the points gap changes with the movement of the shaft).

This one's got a re-bored barrel (OK, so it's been used since it's re-bore, so it's not freshly done) & it's got a brand new piston. So hopefully will be a good starter. The compression is really good for a 2 stroke, you can even feel the crank case compression on the starting handle, which is very much like Ian's one after I rebuilt it. I put a compression tester on there & it was heading up to 80psi. I'm glad I put that extra support on for the starting shaft now.

I've always found, with Stuart Turner engines, you tend to get people who love them & have a few in their collection, or you get people who have owned one in the past & sold it on for some reason. I must admit, they are pretty engines, very nice looking indeed, that's why I always wanted one as a child. I doubt I will keep this one though, I really want one of the flywheel mag ones (glutton or punishment).

BTW, I've had the title of this thread wrong all this time, this engine is a P6R (the R standing for Reduction, as it has a reduction drive box). It should really be a P6RM (as the M stands for Marine & usually signifies it has a forward & reverse epicyclic gearbox, as this one does).

I've no idea what the LY stands for on Matth's P5LY, so you'll have to help me out there Matt.

Lighting yacht, so a marine genny set for use on yachts and gentlemans launches etc I would imagine

Gentlemen's Launches??? Sounds very posh.

Is that anything like "Gentlemen's Relish"??? :stick lol: :stick lol: :stick lol:
(think that comes out of gentlemen's lunchboxes).

Sorry, I will be serious in my next post, I promise. I think the sun has got to me today.

Thanks or clearing that up Matt.

Lol you guys!

I would love to have that engine Matt,

I am constantly messing with old launches and the like hoping to come up with the excact one I want, and I have a friend who has a nice early teens launch like that with an awning (roof) over it and a single cylinder hidden prop engine driving it, (don't know the make.)
He's costantly egging me on to build something similar to his.
I wish it was something I could afford to have shipped here, I would do it in a heartbeat if it wasn't for cost.

What do you figure it weighs? (I know, I'm scheming lol.)

Very good looking engine,

Cheers, John.

They are a heavy lump John. I can just about lift it with the flywheel on, if the flywheel is off I can just about carry it. I might be able to find out the weight though, as I have a couple of manuals.

I visited a small private museum today, & amongst many other things there were a couple of these old outboard engines (this pic is o the same one, but there was another one further down)....





They are apparently made by Evinrude & patented from around 1915-1916. Very heavy for an outboard, but I would've killed to be allowed to take one home with me.

Funny thing is, when my brother came over & saw the progress I'd made with the Stuart he said "I wish we had a boat for it to go in". My dad thinks much the same thing.

I've always had a liking or marine engines, especially the water cooled 2 strokes, they always seem to have that lovely domed/rounded barrel shape to them. very pleasing on the eye, especially with a little bit of polished bronze or brass.

Wooden boats are real money pits! & they really need a specialist craftsman. I would love to learn how to restore them, you could certainly make a lot of money doing it.

As I found when helping to build/fit out both of my mum & dad's boats (their first was a 60' steel narrow boat, the 2nd one was a 55' by 10'6" steel replica Luxemoteur Dutch barge, both were fitted out for living on full time) pretty much everything you need for a boat costs a grand or more! They really are an expensive hobby, & wooden ones are even worse.

Still if I had the space & one came along at the right price, I would have a go. How hard can it be???

When I was out at the small private museum (Morgan 3 wheeler collection) today, the owner informed me there is still a small fleet of wooden yachts somewhere in the country which have Stuart Turner engines in them as auxiliary power plants. They've probably got electric starters on them though.

Oh don't get me started on wooden boats lol.
I have a fortune gone in them!

The last one I did was a twin engined 1937 double planked Honduras mahogany hull @ 44 feet LOA.
That wasn't even finished until just in '05, got some pics on here somewhere I think.

It was my home, my buddy and my pride, I lived on it for three years, then sold it. I miss that boat and would love to have a steam narrow boat of which there is only one or two left in the UK as far as I know.
My oldest daughter wants me to go with her and her hubby and tour the Netherlands Canals in one lol. (hard not to say yes!)
I was practically born on the water as my Da and Gramp and all my relatives were and are Sailors, owners, Masters and Jacks of all trades and so on.

I want to put a stationary engine in a launch and have it both ways lol. The launch would only have to be about an 18 to 20 foot one though, and I'm looking for an old relic to spiffy up, single planking and a lot thinner than the 1x5" double stuff which was crisscrossed and a pain. (I sincerely hope I don't find one! I need to slow down. It's a hard and tasking job.)

The engines are a lot more feasable and me with the sore bones .
I suspect that the one you have will weigh in round 250-275 lbs, just right for what I want.
I may use the IHC as a powerplant as I can route a small pump driven fresh water pipe system in through the hopper to cool with, out through the hull, round the bottom and back in, it's a crazy idea, but it'd work.

I still think you do very nice work, and I truly like the looks of the SW! It's not that there are no old marine engines round here, but I'm tired of the Evinrudes, Chryslers and Mercury's, I like stuff that no one else has! and here you'd be hard pressed to find an old SW laying around.

Anyway, gotta get some sleep as I have to go to work in the morning, and a long one again.
Regards John.

Smitty wrote:
I may use the IHC as a powerplant as I can route a small pump driven fresh water pipe system in through the hopper to cool with, out through the hull, round the bottom and back in, it's a crazy idea, but it'd work.

My dad's barge had a similar system (he never went in for sea cocks & letting raw water on board). His steel hulled barge had what we call Keel Cooling, a large pipe going practically the length of the boat & back again, but under the water. You could do it on that boat though, as it has a shallow V shaped hull. the Narrow boats are pretty much all flat bottomed, so there would be no protection for the coolant pipes, they usually have skin tanks (no one likes raw water on canals, there's too much weed & rubbish to block the system).

So your plumbing idea isn't such a crazy idea after all.

Well well well, what do we have here???

nutty
looking nice ,
just it has a bad water leak into that bucket there mate :stick lol: :stick lol:
sounds nice too , good one
after the gearbox whats next then
kev

Nice job Matt,
Love the brass stuff!
Chalk up another one for the master rebuilder lol,

Regards, John.

It must be the loudest Stuart Turner in history! I watched a load of Stuart Marine engine videos on YouTube yesterday & they're all so quiet, when they're in boats you can hardly hear them running!

I was hoping the rest of the plumbing bits would arrive this morning, but as usual a couple of eBay sellers have let me down. The trouble is I shop around for the best price on everything, so every little part comes from a different seller. I'm missing a vital BSP connection piece & a copper reducer for the exhaust system, but I do have my new pipe bending spring (internal, 22mm), so I best have my Wetabix this morning, before attempting to bend any of my old, used copper pipe! (might have to re-anneal some of it).

Kev, that's it mate, apart from a tidy-up, a choke control & cable & the last few plumbing bits I won't be doing anything else with this one. It'll be up to the next owner I expect.
If I were to keep it I would probably install an alternator or dynamo driving off the flywheel. The ultimate load for this one, apart from going back into a boat, would be a centrifugal (impeller-type) pump, as that's the closest thing to a boat prop. But the reverse gear would be a bit useless then.

It lives again, great work Nuts another job to be proud of. It is a bit erratic does it just need a good run up then a bit of a tinker?
I was thinking just for show but it might look naff, you decide, how about fitting a plastic propeller to the gearbox output so people might guess it's out of a boat. :chin:

Stu.

Funny that Stu, I was thinking of a fan (which is basically a prop) but it would have to be caged off for my own protection. I will keep my eyes open on the autojumble stalls at the rally next weekend, see if there's any old knackered fans to cannibalise. I won't have much money to spend though, might take that little orange Villiers pump set, see if I can sell it there to raise some cash. I was going to take the Stuart & see if I could sell that there, but I don't think it will be completely finished with all the problems ironed out.

I think the erratic running is mainly due to the carb settings. Also, 2 strokes never run right without an exhaust, but I'm STILL waiting for the parts to arrive to finish that off, they should've all been here this morning. That's the trouble with penny pinching on eBay, you end up ordering every little part off a different seller & some will take ages to send stuff.

Nuts you might have to put a load on it to get it to run right, we all know what a 2 stroke likes before they run happily.

Shame your having to think about selling an engine already you've hardly had chance to play with them, but when needs must and bills are piled up....

I know what your talking about on ebay I've ended up with the wrong parts as they have been wrongly discribed or the wrong model quoted so it's not worth doing it as it costs me more in the long run and not worth the cost of the postage to return them. It's a surprise what some people call good condition!!!!

Stu.