Thank's I have been on all sorts of sites and studied every photo available and did come across the chain drive car you mentioned, but was unable to find refrance to the axle pattern of the race cars, the thomas gear I know to be the same, or like nature to the production cas equipment. but your right about most race vehicals of the day having striped down or chaied axles to alow for easy " Quick change type " use of gearing swap, by means of cog or rims swap, as all that was then required was to swap a chain per side and speed off in new gear. There is a laidy in the states that had a very nice private Web site Dedicated to White steam car's but I have lost the book mark, Her family and the company where some how Related or linked you should se if you can further refferance your build by use of thier information. I'll see if I can find that site and give you the link.

Do Try to contact Donald And Carolyne Hoke
To date they have the best records in the USA I have come across.

Their web site is,
[www.vintagesteamproducts.com]
Hope they will have some good info for you. Like I said I studied the Whites, back in high school, it's been some number of years, and I never was good at names and specifics.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09/23/10 12:30PM by Fire-Drop_Technologies.

Let me just put the correct detail here
1)All Whites had monotube steam generators. Whites were very proud of getting this working well with constant temperature and pressure under almost all conditions if the cars are kept well serviced. The steam temperature is 750deg F (395 deg C).
1)The steam generator on my Whistling Billy seen in the piture is an original 30hp monotube steam generator made by Whites which I purchased it America to copy exactly on Billy. It is infact still sound although over one hundred years old but I would not want to use it on the racer. It has some typical left hand and right hand thread junctions made in the White factory. The generator case is an exact copy except I have used stainless steel instead of galvanised steel. The new steam generator will fit down into the case with just the top tube showing. At present one pipe of the original coils is catching and stopping it dropping down.
2)The rear axle I made myself. The central casing casting was made copying the original 2 speed White axle but leaving out the bottom gear for lightness- as with Billy. The bulge usually found in the top of the gearbox was removed off the pattern to get it correct-as with Billy. The gearing used is 2 to 1 (as with Billy) instead of 6 to one in standard cars.The half shafts and casings are all made by me as whites standard axle but 3inches longer giving Billy's correct track size. You can still see on the top of these the mounts for the rubber bumps on the standard cars.The brake drums I had cast off my 1908 White(plus a bit of metal) as it and my 1906 White needed new drums. The hubs I machined from solid copying the 1906 White and the Wheels are copying Billy's (14 spoke rear wheels,12 for front -standard cars have 10 front and 12 rear).
3) The chassis is an inverted standard White chassis of American oak modified especially at the front and with a flitch plate either side(as with Billy) instead of just on the outside.
Although I am working from just about a dozen pictures, it was very useful that Whites tell us in their advertising literature that most of the car was made from stock parts. This is what I use where ever I can and a large percentage of the parts are original -if not they are copies often because a racer needs new metal to avoid metal fatigue.
Bob Dyke

Bob,

Brilliant looking car! That will sure be a handful when you get her finished.

Have you found any data on the orifice sizes in the thermostat, flow motor, water regulator and fuel nozzle?

I have heard that they used multiple fuel nozzles on Billy, something like 5 of them, one in the middle and the four others making a plus sign +. Is this true or was this a later modification during one of the many repairs of the car or am I completely off base?

Using the same fuel and water/steam pressure for the system I would think that there would be some empirical formula for the relationship between the various orifice areas at wide open, something that would get one close at least.

I am asking this because I am curious if you are going to be hot-rodding the boiler with the large fuel nozzle like Billy had.

I can't help but imagine your Billy and a Stanley Vanderbilt cup replica going head to head on a 1 mile dirt track!

Racing sure does improve the breed doesn't it?

Caleb Ramsby

Named ,Snail,Turtle, 'Whistling Billy' And "Flier" Spelled that way in the San fransisco Call Dec.7th 1908
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[cablecarguy.blogspot.com]

Caleb,
You bring up some very interesting points. I would love to get the details of the sizes of burner jets used and even the size of the venturi- was it the same as the 30 hp cars.
I have been told that Billy was fitted with a door that the driver could open at about 70mph to allow the draft from the nose cone over the front right part of the axle to pressure air feed the burner. This would of course allow for much more fuel to be burnt and partly explain why Billy got its "Whistling" prefix as it would howl away with the excess fuel.
I have just not been able to get any precise information on the jets and by-passes - Does anybody out there have it?

Otherwise when I have the car finished and ready to go much experimentation will go on. That is probably two years away. The thermostat is in the car with a standard 20hp type bypass at present. This may well be enough but it will be easy to modify it if I need to do so. If I have to enlarge the water pumps I will probably do this at the same time.

I am using the later type regulation which almost certainly was developed on Billy but not used on the first one.
That will pose a bit of a setting up job but initially it will be set up bypassing as a 30hp model. I will probably have to make this from scratch.
Has anyone out there a spare flowmotor to save me some work?

Hi Bob,

This is rather fascinating stuff!

From Jim Cranks information with 45 psi on the flowmotor of a 20 hp it will flow one gallon in one minute 45 seconds and for the 40 hp it will flow one gallon in one minute flat, I would assume the 30 hp to be somewhere in the middle.

If it is possible I believe the thing to do would be to measure the flows of a really well running White of whatever horsepower and then figure out the proportions.

Say, operate the flow motor with a given water feed pressure, measure the water flow per minute, then at the same time use a set fuel pressure and measure the fuel flow in the same time through the valve of the flowmotor. That would give the flowmotor proportions of water to fuel that one could work off of. Then with a set pressure on the water supply measure the flow past the thermostat with it at a given temperature.

From what I gather the fuel valve and seat in the flowmotor are both removable, as is the water bypass valve and its seat in the thermostat. The water past the flowmotor piston is fixed by the groove made in its wall, so that is much more difficult to adjust if one goes to far.

So if you had all of the flows recorded from a well running White, then say you wanted to increase the boilers firing rate by 50%, then just "simply" (haha) file the groove down until you have the flow increased by 50% using the same water supply pressure as before. Then modify the fuel valve in the flowmotor and the water valve in the thermostat until they increased their flows by 50% also, then in theory at least, it should work just as well as before.

Getting the flow rate of the thermostat could be an issue, that is, one would almost have to have it hooked up to a supply of steam at a constant temperature with the steam flowing through it. So you would almost have to have a whole other system to run it off of to test it, so it wouldn't have to be used by a system and one could much more easily measure its flow. If you used an inline flow meter in the outlet of the thermostat for the water flow I can't see how that wouldn't effect the flow rate of said water because of the added resistance.

Ironically maybe someone has a Stanley type boiler that you could use to give the thermostat a steady supply of superheated steam to test it on, maybe put a cap on the outlet of the thermostat with a very small hole in it then throttle the steam into it, that way the thermostat would be given a continous flow of hot steam to test the water flow with.

That is very interesting that they had a ram air door on Billy! Neat stuff, that makes all the sense in the world for a racer like that.

With the fuel nozzle at the boiler being such a significant aspect of the fuel flow formula I wonder if when the fuel flow past the flowmotor is being tested it would be better to have the fuel just dump into a bucket as a liquid or go to a burner that is actually vaporizing the fuel and using it to make a fire, say in the open outside of the boiler?

The ability of the gaseous fuel to draw air into the boiler is dependent on the surface area of the fuel spray cone pattern to the mass of fuel being supplied, so using multiple smaller nozzles flowing the same amount of fuel as one massive nozzle would be able to draw in more air for the fire. When did they go to an enclosed burner? Early on they were atmospheric right? I believe the Stanley Rockets boiler used something like 5 nozzles and 5 venturis for their 30" boiler. I have never heard of a White using more then one venturi, just really massive ones!

Caleb Ramsby

Bob,

I found a patent assigned to Rollin White describing a multinozzle burner for a boiler. Patent number 1,054,066. filed on September 7, 1907, would that have been around the time of one of the rebuilds of Billy?

Here is the link:

[www.google.com]

I was wrong about one being in the center of the venturi, he just basically made a coil of vaporizing tubing and drilled 6 holes in it facing the venturi. A very simple yet effective design.

Caleb Ramsby

Hello Caleb
Getting the thermostat bypass correct should not be too difficult. It must pass enough water to stop the flowmotor piston form staying down and keeping the fire on - a small fire is quite acceptable but no more. Of course it must be set bypassing at 750 deg F (395 deg C) The temperature is quite easily set with a modern electric prod in the thermostat hole but this incidentally will read slower than the original pyrometer which has its sensor right in the steam.

I adjust my flowmotor flow using a connection onto the garden hose -I keep a bayonet fittng connected to a White flowmotor sized nut ready for the job. You connect the hose and let the needle go down until the bypas is just openning at the top end of the flowmotor which should be 15/16 of an inch.
Now measure how long it takes to pass one AMERICAN gallon of water. Scrape out a little soft older from the groove(and you must have a good fitting piston) until you get the flow correct. It is a fiddle as you have to take the end off the flowmotor each time for adjustment but it doen't seem to take long when you have done it a few times. I expect that Billy will need to pass the gallon in about one minute to start with. Of course the size of the flowmotor needle os also critical. The 30/40 hp had an extra 0.005inch off the side of the needle.