New Project Stuart Turner P6M + gearbox

Well, I've managed to get hold of the bloke & I'm off down to the New Forest on Sunday to pick up my next project.

I know it's a fair distance to go, it'll probably cost in the region of £40 in Diesel there & back, but I've factored that in to the costs, this engine is very cheap, but has missing parts.

Now, I'm not going to say what it is yet, as I did the same with the Tarpen & that worked out well, so it's a new superstition of mine: "Don't say too much until you've got it in the workshop".

I'm also considering another project which has cropped up within the 50 mile radius, but that's not yet been decided. I've put my Vire marine engine on eBay as I'm never likely to get it going & the spares are worth good money. Hopefully that will sell & clear space for this 2nd "possible" project (which is a multi cylinder engine )

So, watch this space. Sunday there should be some pics of the new project number 1, & maybe an update on the number 2, multi-cylinder, "possible" project.

Now I'm getting excited! Need to get Ian's Stuart back together.....

(Will change the thread title when it arrives).

Nice one Nuts, I'm the same I never like to say anything till I've got the engine home just so if it all falls through at the last minute you don;t look like a plonker.
So roll on Sunday and you should have your next project, I'm sure it will be something interesting but don't forget you've still got stuff under the tarp at your sister's that needs saving.
You can tell us more about the multi cylinder engine once you get it, I take it that it's a petrol engine?

Stu.

stationary stu wrote:
You can tell us more about the multi cylinder engine once you get it, I take it that it's a petrol engine?

Stu.

It is indeed a petrol, but it's also a big maybe, & could end up being a joint venture between Ian & me.

There's only the Douglas & an old ATCO lawnmower left under the tarp at my sister's place now. The Douglas is rather special, so I'm keen to get it out, or at least bits of it. The old ATCO has pretty much had it, but it does contain a Villiers engine (commonly called the Villiers Midget, although I'm told Villiers only ever made that engine for ATCO to use on their mowers, so I don't know where the name "Midget" ever came from). I thought the little lawnmower engine would be a good one to teach my nephews how a 2-stroke works, but I'll let them get their heads round the Lister D first.

So yes, indeed, roll on Sunday! (It's all planned, but there's lots to go wrong, as usual).

OK, so I'm back & what a day of surprises it has been. At the last minute, last night, I discovered Abes was selling his Scott PAB (an engine I've wanted ever since I knew they existed). He was literally just down the road from where I was picking up this new project, so I arranged to meet up with him whilst I was down that way. I also wanted the Scott, but knew I would be a bit short on the asking price, so I put the little JAP model 3 in the car, to see if I could tempt him with it.

So I left this morning with one engine, expecting to come back with 2, but that didn't happen. Abes didn't want the JAP (can't blame him really, & an't blame me for trying), I actually ended up coming back with 3 engines! I still had the JAP, I also had Abes' Scott & I had my new project, & here she is (sorry about the pics, it was dark by the time we got unloaded)....









So, there she is. as I said, it was a day of surprises. All the way there I thought I was going to get a Stuart Turner P5M with gearbox (I saw the engine for sale at the Hassocks crank-up, but decided not to buy it then, a decision I regretted as soon as I made it), & all the way home (that's a 105mile journey, each way) I thought I had a Stuart Turner P5M, then when I got home, Ian turned up, & we unloaded the engine. Ian took a look at the engine plate & told me I was actually the proud owner of a Stuart Turner P6M! (not that it makes that much difference).

Anyway, my dinner's just turned up, so I'll carry on with this later....

OK, where was I....

Oh that's right, the Stuart P5 which turns out to be a P6 (so I'm one up on the deal already! ). It's missing a magneto & one of the water jacket cover plates, but I should be able to sort something for the plate, here's the hole....



It's still got all it's bronze/brass bits though, including the water circulation pump.

The Photobucket album is here....

http://photobucket.com/nutgonesstuartp6

Abes said the heads could be tricky to get off, so I made a start on it as soon as it landed, after releasing the nuts, a quick spray with some GT85 & a few taps with a copper & hide mallet I managed to get it off. I will continue dismantling it tomorrow.

Unfortunately it will have to live outside for now, as I've got the Scott in the workshop there's no more room for engines. It can come inside when I break it into smaller lumps. First I will try & get the exhaust manifold off & then the barrel, but the main thing to do is split the engine & gearbox, then I can probably store it in the dry. Oh yes, & once Ian's P5XC is out the way.

Anyway, I'm very happy with it. I paid peanuts for it (you wouldn't believe me if I told you) & as for fuel costs (around £40 ) well, I also got the Scott in the same journey (which I wasn't expecting) so it's like getting 2 for the price of one as far as that side of things goes.

Nice engine Nuts and not that many about. I looks to be bloody heavy if other Stuart's are to go by.
So what are your plans and when? LOL

Stu.

Yeah, don't know what the difference between the P5 & P6 is, but I guess I'll find out, it's certainly more powerful, I know that much.

Anyway, plans.... I had planned to get straight on with restoring it with a view to selling it on & spending the money on something else.

After the Tarpen I wanted to make my money work for me & work my way up to something special, but now I've got the Scott I think I have found that "something special" & I've always liked the looks of the Stuart marine engines, they can be made to look really nice, so I may restore it & keep it, as well as the Scott & keep them both as my main show engines, with the other Tarpen, & rotate the three of them with whatever else Ian has & whatever else we have between us, possibly still buying & restoring the odd project engine to sell on & keep the hobby alive (I really don't have much cash to spend on anything usually, & it's only going to get worse, so I need to make the hobby at least partly self funding if possible).

But immediate plans are changing all the time. I've been playing with the Scott today. Ian's Stuart P5XC is about as far as I can get. We've ordered the paint for it today, which arrives Wednesday, so I will get that painted & out the way before starting on this one. Hopefully I'll have the Scott back together by then & at least have it ready for starting, if not fully up & running.

The main problems with this engine are the missing plate off the water jacket (& the inner mounting piece for that plate) & the need for a magneto. I would have had the rest of the Tarpen money to pay for these parts but I spent that, plus a bit more, on the Scott. So to fund it all I've re-listed the Vire marine engine at a lower price & I've put the JAP Model 3 up for sale (shame really, I wanted to keep that one, but you can't keep 'em all. It's a pretty little engine, I've priced it high again (although it owes me more!) but it always gets plenty of interest, so should sell).

So, hopefully I will start dismantling this one by the end of the week. I'll split the engine from the box & start with the engine. Give it all a good clean up & get it back together. Then see about the gearbox (not really my thing, but how hard can it be?)

Well Nuts your doing them to fast but not a bad thing if your selling them on, I know it can be a bit of a pull to sell an engine you like but just try and think of what you'd like to replace it with. Your correct in what your saying the Stuart engines do like nice when there all painted up and polished, a few years ago I'd never have one now I've got 2
Maybe a case of restore then show for a few years then sell it on for something different.

Stu.

OK, been busy with this one today, but I'm a bit stuck, so I'm gona keep this brief....

Got the flywheel off (a massive struggle, but came off in the end)....



Got the engine & box apart....

Here's the box....



Here's the engine....



Had major troubles getting the barrel off, firstly due to a stuck stud, then it seemed to be the piston's turn, but eventually it came off....



Then I looked inside & it all looked very clean, but there was so much crap on the outside I decided I want to split the crank cases, this happened easy enough on the flywheel side, but I just can't get the damn cone clutch off the drive side!

here's the clutch (the crank shaft is in the vice (soft jaws)....



A bit closer, showing that there's a nut hidden in there....



Even closer, showing the mess I've made, trying to remove this nut with a hammer & screw driver, then a hammer & punch (it was the punch which really made a mess of it)....



Trouble is you can't get a socket on it, because of the shaft, & you can't get a spanner on it, because of the clutch, so how do I get it off??? If I continue with the punch I'm going to make a right mess of it (BTW, it's a centre punch, or it was before I bent it). Maybe I should continue & see if it will split the nut, then just get another nut once it's off???

Any ideas out there???

BTW, the internals are surprisingly clean, see the inside of the piston....



Now the guy I bought it off was very nice, but he did something completely unforgivable, he left this engine stored with no plug in the hole. Now forget red hermitite on a head joint & forget not putting water in when running water cooled engines (2 of the biggest no-no's in my book), storing an engine with no plug in the hole is sacrilege of the highest order, & anyone doing so should have all their engines taken off them & banned from keeping engines ever again! There is NEVER any excuse to do this to an engine. Even bung a piece of rag in the hole, but don't leave it open!

But, this one still turned over, although the piston was very tight in the barrel, especially at the bottom, for which an open plug hole was probably the cause.

Anyway, crank shaft nut inside cone clutch??? Any ideas???

I've always used a blunt chisel myself to move a nut in that position and try and get the chisel on the edge of one of the nut's flat sides. That could be a difficult nut to get hold of as it's large, thin and could be whitworth thread so I'd try to get a ring spanner or a box spanner, even try to make some kind of C spanner or something to jam into the recesses in the clutch. Try contacting the Stuart agents down your way they might have a special tool and you could maybe load the crank into your boot and take it to them.
It's a difficult on Nuts so hope you can get it off without to much damage.

Stu.

Well, I'm not sure I can get a chisel in there. I've had another go with proper punches, even tried it backwards (in case it's a left hand thread) but it won't budge either way.

I'm now thinking I will have to leave it in there & just wash everything out as best I can with some paraffin, then rinse with brake & clutch cleaner, it's going to cost me in paraffin & cleaner, but at least I won't be looking for a replacement nut. I think it needs a good flush out though, there's signs of water in the oil in the chain case, which means it may well have been in the gearbox oil as well, as they share oil but have separate sump traps (from what I can tell).

Some good news though, I've managed to get the barrel side of things apart. I got the exhaust outlet off & the end cap off the exhaust expansion chamber, I also got the side plate off the water jacket (had to destroy the 2 brass screws in the process, but I will need some for the other side anyway). Now I can get into the water jacket, & it's a good thing too, it's very badly encrusted in there, I can't see how water was circulating before & I wonder if the engine was giving problems before it came out of wherever it was, it must have been running hot. It seems to show signs of recent work, maybe even a new piston (when I say recent I mean recent to when it was taken out of service). But I think what it really needed was a damn good de-scale, which I will have to do painstakingly with a dremmel. The dust from which is choking! but it'll be worth it, & I can't yet see any reason why it shouldn't run again, I'm even beginning to look into sourcing a magneto for it, if only I knew what mag it's supposed to have???

So good news, I've finally got bits off that I never thought would come off, & a bloody good job too, as it must have been over heating or very close to it.

Pics to follow later.

Oh bollox! (& plenty more swear words)! I've hit a bit of a snag.

I decided to have another go at cleaning things up a bit, after chipping away at a very heavily scaled up water jacket I thought I would turn my attentions to the piston. I took the rings off & gave them a good clean. I also cleaned up the piston crown, it's a standard piston, but I don't think it's seen much work. I think this engine was suffering with over heating problems & someone's just de-coked it & put a new piston in, when really what it needed was a complete de-scale, as many of the smaller water ways were completely blocked, & in places these are all it has to circulate (It's quite a complicated system with small water ways in certain places to avoid over cooling & air-locking).

So, I was cleaning up the piston, cleaned the bottom ring, then thought I would test the ring end gap in the bore, but I couldn't get the piston in the bottom of the bore, it goes in the top fine, but not the bottom, it looks like the bore has gone, quite considerably, out of round at the bottom (which would make sense as it was tight on the flywheel at bottom of stroke, & I had a lot of trouble getting the piston out the further down it went).

So, I took a closer look & have found a crack....



BTW, all these pics are of the bottom of the barrel casting, the top (I think) is fine. So there was one crack, seemingly just an internal one, between stud hole sleeves. I then gave things a bit of a clean up & wire brush, a quick spray with GT85 to make things more visible & here's what became more visible, a real crack....



This one extends externally to the water jacket cover plate (the one which was missing) you might be able to see this in these pics....







So, it looks like it could be brazed up, none of them appear to have gone into the cylinder bore or the ports. But, if it were brazed or welded, the cylinder bore would still be out of round, so would need machining, which would probably require a re-bore & a plus size piston. I don't even know if these exist & the cost would be ridiculous, way more than the engine's worth.

So I'm after another barrel. Wanted ad already posted. A P5 one would do, they're exactly the same (well, pretty much), I think it needs to ba off a marine engine, not sure if a lighting plant or industrial one would do, I'm pretty sure the P5XC is slightly different. I will know more tomorrow, when I've had a good look in daylight.

Guess now I know why it was so cheap!

ouch

If you were really lucky, you could try welding it and the distortion could bring it back into line, but you're probably more likely to win the lottery

There are one or two people/companies who break and rebuild Stuart Turner engines so a replacement barrel might not be totally out of reach. I'll dig out some links tomorrow and you could fire off an email and hopefully get a price. Then all you need to do is save some pennies.

What a *******, unfornunately this is what sometimes happens in this hobby these old engines have been stuck in the corner of garages etc for years because of things like this, yes sometimes the non runner is an easy fix sometimes it a scrapper like this so we have to make the most of a bad thing and try and sort it. I don't think welding would work if the bore is already oval. I wonder with all the crud in the water ways if it's had sea water running threw it as coolant?

Stu.

If that barrel is just scrap, I see no harm in giving the welder a try. Maybe source a new barrel first and if they don't want to exchange it then we can give it a bash. It'll be good practise if nothing else. (Every cloud has a silver lining and all that )

Yes, unfortunately these engines, like most of the smaller old marine plants, are raw water cooling & some have been left with that system & used at sea. All there is to protect them is a strainer on the sea cock, which is more for protection of the pump valves than anything else.

I might get in touch with the guy I bought it from, not to complain or anything, but I remember he was a Stuart enthusiast so he may have a few spares lying about.
If I had access to the machinery I know what I would do, I would repair it & put a new liner in the barrel, but to have that done would be mega-pricey. I do have a friend (well, a friend of my dad's really) who has a lathe, but I'm not sure it's up to this kind of work.

But, as Ian says, if the barrel is going to be scrap anyway, we might as well have a bash with it. I think I will carry on cleaning & restoring the rest of the engine, as I can either wait & see what turns up or sell it on as a short engine (a very short engine) or even split it up & sell it for parts.

I don't think I'd try to weld it, I'd be more in favour of using plastic metal or similar. If the barrel is cast you'll need to heat it up before attempting to weld it and I think you'll need different welding rods not the normal ones for welding steel.

Stu

Bloody typical, isn't it? I've just spent the engine fund on fuel tank sealer, piston ring pliers & petrol proof lacquer, now I learn there may be a barrel for me, for this engine!

I'm not counting my chickens or anything, & this barrel will be from a P5, but as long as it's a 6 stud one it should fit. I don't think the bloke will have any trouble holding on to it while I get the fund back up again, but with my MOT due between now & christmas that could take some time.

Not a good time to be trying to raise extra cash so I hope the guy hangs onto it for you. The MOT on my van used to run out about the 20th of December so last year I parked it up till the weather improves abit and it's now due sometime in Feb or is it March but I messed up as only I could and found out that my 4x4 ran out of MOT at the same time as the van does now so that was bad planning, 2 MOT bills in one week but lucky enough I got the garage just to do the repairs and MOT them both and the total bill was only £150 so very happy with that.

Stu.

I'm thinking about leaving the car in the drive for a few weeks. I hardly use it anyway & I'm insured on my dad's Peugeot (hate driving the bloody thing though) so I could use that for my once a week trip into town.

It's not fun having to shuffle things about to get money, I was like that a few years ago when I was single and it's not much fun thinking what you can live without.

Stu.

nutgone wrote:Bloody typical, isn't it? I've just spent the engine fund on fuel tank sealer, piston ring pliers & petrol proof lacquer, now I learn there may be a barrel for me, for this engine!

I'm not counting my chickens or anything, & this barrel will be from a P5, but as long as it's a 6 stud one it should fit. I don't think the bloke will have any trouble holding on to it while I get the fund back up again, but with my MOT due between now & christmas that could take some time.

nutty matt
ask santa for it as a early chirmas present
or go and sell your self on street corners mate

that aways seams to be the way with stationary nothing then a every thing arrives on the same bus
kev

Don't think I'd earn much on street corners Kev, think I'd have to pay them!

It looks like I've found a suitable replacement barrel for this engine, it's from a P5 though, but they have the same bore & stroke measurements. I may need to do some work on the porting if I want it to be exactly the same as the P6 barrel, but it's not absolutely necessary, the main problem will be the engine nameplate, which also contains the engine number. this is riveted to the barrel, so I will have to try & change it over in order to keep the engine & gearbox numbers the same.

Anyway, it's all speculation right now, as this new barrel is priced at £50. Which is very reasonable (I think), but it's £50 I haven't got. There are 2 available, both from P5 engines. One is in A1 condition & comes with a piston, that's priced at £150, the other (the one I want) has been repaired in the past, but is in working condition. These prices don't include postage.

I'm going to see if I can secure the barrel with a deposit & hopefully have it in my hands within the next month or so.

Don't know if it will fit or not I'll let you check it out.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221166345478?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Stu.