The Stanley 'dry' engine as I see it has no significant lubrication to its differential. How well (or badly) does the assembly wear and is it noisy? especially when the car is jacked up for feed water pumping. There is always some slack in the gears of a i.c car diff. but on a Stanley the rear wheels are effectively the flywheel of the engine so slack in the gears is like having a loose flywheel and that effect can be very noisy.

Jack.

You are right there is very little lubrication to the drive and differential gear. It is usual to take off the rear axle cover and oil the diff by oilcan at the start of a day's steaming - there is a hole in the diff spider into which oil goes to lubricate the inner ends of the half shafts. There is also a lift-up flap on the top of the engine case which allows you to pour oil onto the crankshaft gear and the eccentrics.

The weakness of the dry engine is poor oiling of the wrist pins (liitle ends) and no amount of squirting of chain grease helps with this. I have put a small brass tank at the front of the engine into which I pour an eggcup full of oil each time I water the car. This is accessed through the front engine cover flap and is connected with 4 pipes which drip oil onto the wrist pins. I also have four more pipes with nipples through which I can inject oil into the main bearings and the eccentrics. Finally, below the engine, clipped to the frame rods is an aluminium tray which catches the dripping oil and channels it back to the crank gear by which it is then thrown all over the links and valve gear and onto the axle gear. It all works really well and the only bits which are out of range are the diff itself, the bigends and the pump link all of which get the oilcan now and again.

Going back to your diff question the drive gear is surprisingly quiet - just about detectable when driving and better than many normal old cars. It does not seem to wear - my gears are induction hardened EN24 and I set it up with backlash between teeth of about 5-6 thou. You can only do this if the gears run true and are not eccentric. It is important to get the perch rods and diagonal braces square on as they can pull the engine out of line (by bending the axle!) and cause noise in the gears.

Stanley used unusually large sun wheels on their halfshafts - this is because any gear needs a few thou clearance and the large sun wheels cause less magnification of this clearance by the time the motion gets out to the o/d of the tyre. If everything is right there is no more than 1/2inch backlash at the tyre o/d.

There is naturally more clatter when the wheel is jacked up to pump and runs with no load but it is no worse on a dry engine than a wet one. The effect of bad adjustment is far greater

Mike

Thanks for the info. Mike. Sounds like you have made your engine into a pseudo wet engine! Your point about having a large gear on the half shaft is significant I think in reducing back-lash. 1/2" at the wheel rim is impresive.

Jack.

I have a CX which had surprisingly little wear on the original bronze gear ring. However, this had to be replaced when I had the crown wheel turned into a disc for a brake. The new ring was made of EN24 but began to wear very badly. In an attempt to solve the problem by lubrication, I sealed the housing with hermetite so that I could maintain a sump for the final drive. To little effect. The gear train acted as a pump and transfered all the oil into the engine case.

Finally, after a vigourous tour of the mendips the new gear ring had virtually disappeared in less than 800 miles from new and is now being replaced with a new ring with induction hardened EN24, as used by mike. I have also fitted a manual oil pump which can be used to add a squirt or two of oil directly to the drive as one travels!

The early Stanleys had no 'hunting tooth' on the final drive and, depending upon the ratio, can create a situation where all the wear takes place at the same places. My crown wheel gear was worn at 120 deg. intervals. The new one will be one tooth smaller.

Peter

Peter - good point about tooth number - mine has 48/58 for about 1.2 to one gearing which suits my car just fine in a hilly area - orignal was 49:54. I've done about 2500 miles and there is no detectable wear on the gears.

The good thing about my oiling system is that the oil does escape from the engine as it eventually overflows the drain in the catch tray - I find this total loss system keeps the engine brilliantly clean - even quite quickly clears any salad dressing if by chance I get a leaking gland.

Mike