Ruston hornsby 6ap

Hi all I have kept my latest acquisition very quiet but over the past three and a half weeks I have been very busy painting and re-assembling. The engine is a 1928 Ruston Hornsby Ap 6hp originally restored by Nigel Mcburney a fair few years ago and was stripped down by the chap I got it off. You can see in my album on flickr how it was when purchased. What is not shown is just how well everything was labelled and boxed up, due to this the reassembly was very easy.
I have sprayed the engine 2 coats of primer and 3 top coats. I used a whole litre of deep bronze green on the top coats!
I had the engine running today for around 5 mins (sorry no video) just to make sure all was well, I will wait now for a week or so for the paint to harden off before the next run.
I have always wanted to own one of Lincoln's finest and i'm so happy to have one as good as this.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61705435@N08/sets/72157634005471895/

Hi Dan,
You have a beauty there, I hope mine looks as good as this one when it's finished. Tis the same year and model, and lived in north devon all it's life. was in bits when I bought it, but is slowly coming together now. David.

Thats stunning mate , you should be proud of yourself .

I do have a soft spot for ruston open cranks , when i decide to treat myself to another engine i think i will have to think on a small Apr or bpr

matt

What a lovely job, a real show piece.

One day I will have a proper go at this paint spraying lark, when I've got the space & the facilities. I reckon Ruston Hornsby would've been proud of a finish like that. (traditionally their engines were always finished to a very high standard I believe).

Great job Dan and a job that not many would tackle and that's an already stripped down engine. You were lucky that the last owner labelled all the parts but it must still have been a headache and I think your being modest.

Stu.

Nice engine you have there

Thanks for the positive comments gents. I cant wait to give her a proper run.

Biggusdannus wrote:Thanks for the positive comments gents. I cant wait to give her a proper run.

Im waiting for the video of that ...

Do you know what is the smallest hp (size ) of a AP is ?

matt

The smallest was 2.5hp I believe and the largest 10.5hp. I have seen a few 10.5's before and they are big engines!

Biggusdannus wrote:The smallest was 2.5hp I believe and the largest 10.5hp. I have seen a few 10.5's before and they are big engines!

See im tempted to get one someday but if was anything bigger than 3 hp gets a bit akward for me due to the access around the back of my house , a IHC m 3hp will fit around easy enough ... but its all down to the trolley and how it steers .


matt

an APR would be nice but don't they go for a lot?

Lewis MacRae wrote:an APR would be nice but don't they go for a lot?

depends what you say alot is ? was a nice APR at enstone was asking £500

matt

APR's and BPR's tend to have a very wide crankshaft, I remember my mate having to remove the pulley on his bpr to get it down the side of his house. Hassle!

Biggusdannus wrote:APR's and BPR's tend to have a very wide crankshaft, I remember my mate having to remove the pulley on his bpr to get it down the side of his house. Hassle!

The IHC m has quite a wide cranshaft too , as long less than 1m im fine lol

matt

That is nice! Now I want one

I decided today was the day for the video.

In this video this is the third time I have started the engine and I had turned the engine over prior to starting to prime the cylinder with fuel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8W7UA-FgkE

The second video is of the engine running on paraffin around 45 mins later, I think I need to play around with the mixture a bit or just run it on straight petrol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwO-UuRP_I8
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Cheers Dan

Looking & sounding very good Dan.

Personally I wouldn't run any engine on paraffin/kero/TVO these days. I was reading up on it a week or so ago & generally they need to be running very hot (ideal coolant temp of around 99 degrees C, so almost boiling) & need to be running at least 75% of full load in order to burn off the paraffin properly. If it isn't burned off then it will just dilute the oil & cause engine wear. Even total loss oiling systems, such as this one, can still suffer from oil dilution.

I haven't done an exhaustive research into it though, what I was reading was mainly based on Lister engines, but the oil & fuels are the same for all makes. But Ruston may have done things differently or had different ideas.

Also, some of these TVO type blends can work out more expensive than petrol! I saw a 5 litre can of Paraffin in a hardware shop the other day & they wanted over a tenner for it!

nutgone wrote:Looking & sounding very good Dan.

Personally I wouldn't run any engine on paraffin/kero/TVO these days. I was reading up on it a week or so ago & generally they need to be running very hot (ideal coolant temp of around 99 degrees C, so almost boiling) & need to be running at least 75% of full load in order to burn off the paraffin properly. If it isn't burned off then it will just dilute the oil & cause engine wear. Even total loss oiling systems, such as this one, can still suffer from oil dilution.

I haven't done an exhaustive research into it though, what I was reading was mainly based on Lister engines, but the oil & fuels are the same for all makes. But Ruston may have done things differently or had different ideas.

Also, some of these TVO type blends can work out more expensive than petrol! I saw a 5 litre can of Paraffin in a hardware shop the other day & they wanted over a tenner for it!

I run all my paraffin engines on Kerosene in varying mixes with petrol. I did have access to my sisters central heating oil tank before she moved so had a fair bit stock piled free gratis. Both my wolseley and my Dk when I had it don't like running on petrol when hot mainly due to them having efficient vapourisers.(my dk would need the mixture needle opened up more on petrol than on kero due to it being vapourised so well) You can usually tell if the engine isn't combusting all the fuel correctly by white smoke from the exhaust and can adjust the mixture needle accordingly. For rallying purposes I think i'll run the AP on 1 litre of kero to 4 litres of petrol (or equivalent). If I had the engine driving something i'd increase the kero in the mix.

That's quite a weak mix, sounds pretty good. You can always play with it. I know Stuart Turner say about 70 degrees C coolant temp for their engines to run on parafin/kero. I guess the Lister A book I read stated 99 deg due to the inefficient vaporiser (can't remember what the A & B type vaproisers look like now). The D type has a very close coupled vaporiser, so makes sense that it wouldn't like straight petrol.

You can get bio-heating oil now, dunno what it's like though.

Looks and sounds spot on, even running it on kero mix it sounds just as good maybe running a tad faster that's all.

Stu.

nutgone wrote:That's quite a weak mix, sounds pretty good. You can always play with it. I know Stuart Turner say about 70 degrees C coolant temp for their engines to run on parafin/kero. I guess the Lister A book I read stated 99 deg due to the inefficient vaporiser (can't remember what the A & B type vaproisers look like now). The D type has a very close coupled vaporiser, so makes sense that it wouldn't like straight petrol.

You can get bio-heating oil now, dunno what it's like though.

The lister A and B types don't really have a vaporiser as such. They just have another chamber on the side of the carb for starting on petrol, if you've seen the previous advice from a lister A manual that's probably why.

Stu I had sped up the engine a bit in the second vid to around 300rpm in the first vid it was running at 250-70rpm. I'm still getting used to the engine so I was experimenting.

Hi I see you have a 6ap, I have an 8ap with the wico mag, and I am having trouble in getting it to spark by the mag lever operating it when the engine is turned by hand. when I click the lever with my finger the spark is big and healthy, having had it just checked over. the cam on the cam shaft just doesnt seem fast enough for the job. Have you any idea what my problem might be, Regards Simon.

[quote="ran020"]Hi I see you have a 6ap, I have an 8ap with the wico mag, and I am having trouble in getting it to spark by the mag lever operating it when the engine is turned by hand. when I click the lever with my finger the spark is big and healthy, having had  it just checked over. the cam on the cam shaft just doesnt seem fast enough for the job. Have you any idea what my problem might be, Regards Simon.[/quote]
There should be some spring steel on the lever that trips the mag, maybe your's is worn or broken?

Beautiful engine it runs as good as it looks, Ruston open cranks are lovely engines but yours is one of the nicest that I have seen.

blackvanman wrote:That is nice! Now I want one

You can buy one from me, half rebuilt at pres, and not much spare time to do, and health not good,  David.