Engine Hacks

166 Articles

Recycled Speed Boat Beats The Barnacles Out Of Your Average Rebuild

June 3, 2022 by 33 Comments

There’s an old saying that says “Anything is possible with enough Time, Money, or Brains. Pick two.” For [Mr HỒ Thánh Chế], the choice was obvious: Time, and Brains. This is evident by the impressive DIY boat build shown in the video below the break.

[Mr HỒ] starts with an Isuzu marine diesel engine that was apparently found on the beach, covered in barnacles and keel worms (and who knows what else). A complete teardown reveals that the crankcase was miraculously spared the ravages of the sea, and somehow even the turbo survived. After a good cleaning and reassembly, the engine rumbles to life. What’s notable is that the entire engine project was done with only basic tools, save for a lathe. Even generally disposable parts such as the head gasket are re-used.

Moving onto the hull, half of an old damaged boat is used and a new top is built. Car seats out of a Toyota sit behind a steering column also from a car, while the deck is built from scratch out of square tubing, foam board, and fiberglass.

What we liked about the project isn’t so much the end result, it has some build quality issues and it looks like the steering is far too slow, but what project of our own hasn’t been knocked together for fun with some obvious flaws? In fact, that’s very often the epitome of the Hacker spirit- doing it quick, dirty, having fun, and iterating as we go. For that, our hat is off to [Mr HỒ].

If boat recycling puts the wind in your sails, check out this boat-turned-sauna project.

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3D Printing A Carburetor Is Easier Than You Probably Think

May 11, 2022 by 27 Comments

We’ve all been there. You see a cool gadget on the Internet to 3D print and you can’t wait to fire up the old printer. Then you realize it will take 8 different prints over a span of 60 hours, chemical post-processing, drilling, exotic hardware, and paint to get the final result. [Peter Holderith’s] carburetor design, however, looks super easy.

If you have experience with real-world carbs, you might wonder how that would work, but as [Peter] points out, carburetors are very simple at the core — nothing more than a venturi. All the extra pieces you think of are for special cases and not necessary for basic operation. We doubt, though, that you could really use the thing in its current form in your car. There are no mounts and since he printed it in PLA, it seems like a hot engine would be a bad idea. However, it does work well with water and an electric blower.

[Peter] mentions that with some more work and the right material, he has no doubt he could create a working practical carb. We think he’s right. But even in this form, it is a great educational project for a budding car enthusiast — like the old transparent V8 engine models, maybe.

Speaking of transparent, we’ve seen — or maybe not seen is a better phrase — a see-through carburetor that is also a good demonstrator. If you could perfect a 3D printed carb, it would make conversion projects a lot easier.

the full charger with gas tank and engine

Charge Your Apple With Apples

April 19, 2022 by 16 Comments

When you think of ethanol, you might think of it as a type of alcohol, not alcohol itself. However, in reality, it is the primary ingredient in adult beverages. Which means humans have gotten quite good at making it, as we’ve been doing for a long time. With this in mind, [Sam Barker] decided to make ethanol out of apples to power a small engine to charge his phone.

The steps for making pure ethanol is quite similar to making alcoholic cider. A friend of [Sam’s] had an orchard and a surplus of apples, so [Sam] boiled them down and stored the mush in jugs. He added activated dry yeast to start the fermentation process. A dry lock allowed the CO2 gas that was being created to escape. Over a few weeks, the yeast converted all the sugar into ethanol and gas. In the meantime, [Sam] sourced a chainsaw and adapted the engine to run on ethanol, as ethanol needs to run richer than gasoline. The video below the break tells the story.

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Home Made Stirling Engines From Expedient Materials

April 13, 2022 by 28 Comments

Many of us have read about Stirling engines, engines which form mechanical heat pumps and derive motion from the expansion and contraction of a body of air. A very few readers may have built one, but for many they remain one of those projects we’d rather like to try but never quite have the inclination. The YouTube channel of [Geral Na Prática] should provide plenty of vicarious enjoyment then, with the construction of a range of Stirling engines from commonly available materials. We have Coke cans, PVC pipe, and nebuliser cartridges forming pistons and cylinders, with wire wool serving as a regenerative heat store. The latest video is below the break, an amazing 10-cylinder rotary device.

The Stirling engine is perhaps the quintessential example of a device whose time never came, never able to compete in power and efficiency with first steam engines and then internal combustion engines, it has over the years been subject to a variety of attempted revivals. Today it has appeared variously in solar power projects and in NASA’s hypothetical off-world power plants, and will no doubt continue to be promoted as an alternative energy conversion mechanism. We’ve featured many working model Stirling engines in our time and even done a longer investigation of them, but sadly we’ve yet to see a story involving a practical version.

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A V2 Rocket Inspired Steam Turbine Skateboard Is Just Around The Corner

April 12, 2022 by 19 Comments

[Integza] never fails to amuse with his numerous (and sometimes really sketchy) attempts to create usable thrust, by pretty much all means possible and the latest video (embedded below) attempting to run a reaction turbine from decomposing hydrogen peroxide, doesn’t fail to disappoint. The inspiration came from the WWII V2 rocket, which used Sodium Permanganate to breakdown Hydrogen Peroxide. This produced high pressure steam, which spun a turbine, which in turn drove the turbopumps that delivered the needed huge quantity of alcohol and liquid oxygen into the combustion chamber.

After an initial test of this permanganate-peroxide reaction proved somewhat disappointing (and messy) he moved on to a more controllable approach — using a catalytic converter from a petrol scooter in place of the messy permanganate. This worked, so the next task was to build the turbine. Naturally, this was 3D printed, and the resulting design appeared to work pretty well with compressed air as the power source. After scaling up the design, and shifting to CNC-machined aluminium, it was starting to look a bit more serious. The final test shows the turbine being put through its paces, running from the new precious metal catalyst setup, but as can be seen from the video, there is work to be done.

There appears to be a fair amount of liquid peroxide passing through into the turbine, which is obviously not desirable. Perhaps the next changes should be the mount the catalyser vertically, to prevent the liquid from leaving so easily, as well as adding some baffling to control the flow of the liquid, in order to force it to recycle inside the reaction vessel? We can’t wait to see where this goes, hopefully the steam-turbine powered skateboard idea could actually be doable? Who knows? But we’re sure [Integza] will find a way!

With steam power, there’s more than one way to get usable rotational work, like using a reciprocating engine, which can be expanded to a whole machine shop, and whilst boiling water (or catalytically decomposing Hydrogen Peroxide)  provides high pressure gas, how about just using boiling liquid nitrogen? Possibly not.

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the water gravity air powered engine running

Gravity-Water-Air Powered Engine

March 28, 2022 by 19 Comments

Air engines are a common occurrence here on Hackaday. They’re relatively novel and reasonably easy to 3D print without requiring any fluids or supporting machinery. For example, [Tom Stanton] took a previous air engine design, did away with the air compressor, and instead used gravity and water to create just a few PSI to run the engine.

The basic setup is to have a large jug of water up somewhere high. Flexible tubing runs down to [Tom’s] custom acrylic pressure chamber. A little CNC-ing and some epoxy made a solid chamber, and we’re happy to report that [Tom] did some initial simulation before construction to make sure he wasn’t accidentally building a bomb. Some back of the napkin math showed that he could expect around 0.6 bar (around eight psi) with his setup. His first test showed almost precisely that. Unfortunately, [Tom] ran into some issues despite the early success. His engine would stop as it drew air and the pressure dropped, and the replenishing rate of the pressure was limited by the relatively small inlet hole he had drilled.

To fix this, he printed a larger diaphragm for the engine, so the lower air pressure had more to push against. This allowed the engine to run for a good while before the tank filled up. Additionally, he smoothed and polished everything, so it was as low friction as possible. We know we often state it here, but it is incredible what can be achieved with 3D printed parts these days.

We love seeing the iteration evident in this video. The various engine versions splayed across the table offer a powerful story about [Tom’s] persistence. Powering an engine is a small step to powering your whole home.

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DIY Prony Dyno Properly Displays Power Production

March 25, 2022 by 13 Comments

When hackers in the US think of a retailer called Harbor Freight, we usually think of cheap tools, workable but terrible DVM’s, zip ties, and tarps. [Jimbo] over at [Robot Cantina] looked at the 212cc “Predator” engine that they sell and thought “I bet I could power my Honda Insight with that.” And he did, successfully! How much power did the heavily modified engine make? In the video below the break, [Jimbo] takes us through the process of measuring its output using a home built dyno.

The dyno that [Jimbo] has built is a Prony Dyno, and it’s among the oldest and simplest designs available. A torque arm is extended from a disk brake caliper and connects to a force gauge. The engine is ran up to its highest speed, and then he brake is applied to the crankshaft until the engine almost stalls. A tachometer keep track of the RPM, and the force gauge measures the force on the torque arm. Torque is multiplied by RPM and the result is divided by a constant of 5252, and voilà: Horsepower. A computer plots the results across the entire range, and the dyno test is complete.

That only tells part of the story, and the real hack comes when you realize that the dyno stand, the force gauge setup and pretty much everything that can be built at home has been built at home. You’ll also enjoy seeing the results of some driving tests between the 212cc engine and its bigger 420cc brother, how even minor changes to the engine affect the horsepower and torque curves, and how that affects the Honda that he calls his “Street legal go cart.”

Speaking of unusual power plants, how about plant some hobby sized jet turbines on the back of your Tesla for fun?

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