Please can one of our American friends post a full update on the American attempt to regain the Steam Car Land Speed Record from Great Britain.

Thank you. John

Until some more writing is available, you can get a sense for what's going on by visiting this thread on the Steam Automobile Club of America's forum - [steamautomobile.com] . Three years' worth of conversation.

They plan to be at Bonneville in October for the attempt.

Kelly

Kelly,

Thank you for the link, of which the following is a sumary.

Unfortunately in March 2012 Chuk Williams withdrew his collaboration with Cyclone Technologies because their time span and objectives for the development of the LSR Cyclone engine did not fit in with his.
Chuk has decided to use the steam plant from his 90 mph Dragster for the record attempt.

The engine is a converted 3 cylinder Chrysler outboard, with a bore of 3.125, and a stroke of 2.8 inches. The bearings are all rollers; it has poppet valves with dual overhead cams. It has a design rpm limit of 2400 rpm- though it has been past that considerably when it was in the Dragster! The working pressure is 800 psi and steam temp is 800F.

In the Dragster the boiler uses 16 -17 US galls per hour but it has been calculated that by increasing this to 20 -24 US galls should provide a speed of 190mph. The increase has been achieved by fitting a larger blower, opening out the fuel jets and some fine tuning of the draughting inside the boiler casing.

Unfortunately I can't find any more info or photos of the engine but I suspect that it was originally a 2 stroke unit which has been fitted with valved cylinder heads, cams and drives. I guess the boiler is a steam car style monotube; again no info or photos.

The British Land Speed Record Car was, to my mind, too complex and too heavy, so, will light and simple beat complex and heavy; I wonder -------

Chuk's American Land Speed Record attempt will be at Bonneville Salt Flats Race Week -- 1st to 4th October 2013

John

ps; I hope I have got this right,please correct me if I am wrong.



Edited 2 times. Last edit at 09/21/13 04:11PM by John Barnard.

John,

Here is a photo of the dragster engine at one of the SACA steam meets.
I saw it in operation once but there was problems with the sliding camshaft mechanism.

Brian

More information and a sectional drawing at [kimmelsteam.com]




Edited 1 times. Last edit at 09/28/13 04:37PM by Brian McMorran.

Hi Everyone-Happy New Year!

Finally, I am able to post to the Forum! My Thanks to everyone who helped work out the difficulties-could it be my accent that caused the problems?

Everyone involved with our STEAMSPEEDAMERICA Project was hugely disappointed that the World Finals 2013 was cancelled because of rain. We had a crew and a vehicle that were very willing-and had worked very hard to be ready to make an attempt on the Land Steam Record....but it was not to be.

This coming August will be the next opportunity for an Attempt, and we are already working on the further development of the vehicle. The problems we encountered last summer with our dyno tests have been resolved, and so now we're working on automating more of the start-up and running operations in order to take a bit of the load off the driver(me!). I realize that it would be quite a trip to make, but we will make very welcome any of the Club members who might wish to join us for the fun at Bonneville Speed Week 2014!

I am very humbled by the interest and support from the SCCGB members-Thank You! I welcome any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Cheers

WWW.STEAMSPEEDAMERICA.COM