I can’t believe its been a year since I’ve last updated the SVR build blog. In the year that’s passed I’ve been working slowly but steadily at some of the more tedious aspects of the build such as creating some required fixtures and roughing out blanks for the cylinders, heads, sleeves and gears. I took many photos along the way and will be posting those in the next few posts as I catch you up on the progress.
Two weeks ago in late April I traveled to Detroit where I spent the day at the NAMES model engineering show along with Lee Hodgson of Ageless Engines, Bruce Patterson and Mike Murphy who both assisted Lee in the model engine design and testing. We spent a large part of the day going over the porting design and port events on which I had done some work. Lee had seen some of the work I was doing and wanted to review it with Bruce and Mike. The outcome of that meeting is that I am moving to build a single cylinder rig as soon as possible to test some alternative port timing events which are different from those detailed in the construction drawings.
Another reason for wanting to construct the test rig is that later on I plan to run-in each cylinder/sleeve combination prior to installing on the engine and doing the first fully integrated run.
Its understandable that the scale model would have different events from the actual engine as the original was supercharged with a 6:1 rpm ratio impeller while the scale engine is normally aspirated and relies on piston cylinder vacuum for induction.
What an epic journey this has been for Lee who has spent over ten years designing and constructing this engine. While Lee does not have his engine running yet, he likes to quote Mike and say “We have the problem surrounded and are sure it will submit soon.”