GEORGE COURT PROTOTYPE DIESEL ENGINE

This is our nostalgia styled engine built on the Court engine borrowed from our good friend Adrian Duncan in canada. The engine on the left is the original engine and on the right is our replica styled engine. Both engine's are 10cc displacement.

Here is the engine as we received it from Adrian. 

This engine was not sent in for any restoration work but only to be stripped down and cleaned so we could measure it up for the purpose of building our own rendition of this very unique engine.

Here's the original stripped down and ready for cleaning.

 

PROJECT SUMMERY

We are extremely grateful to Adrian for allowing us to retain this very special engine for the amount of time it took to carry out this project. Having run both of these engine's it has confirmed our initial thoughts concerning the inadequacy of the cooling head fin/fins which, as suspected, produced quite significant overheating issues and limited running time to only about 60 seconds before excessive cylinder liner heat would lead to the engine needing to be shut down quickly to avoid piston liner damage.

While our engine has some slight modifications to the design to improve running performance and power output the very limiting factor of engine cooling has rendered the engine an unwise choice for actual use but has given us an insight into the past and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to inspect and run this exquisite piece of history.

Here is a summery of the design changes we made in our example of this historic engine design.

ORIGINAL                                                                    REPLICA

1/ Crankshaft is plain bearing                                    Crankshaft is twin ball raced

2/ Crankshaft diameter is 3/8"                                   Crankshaft is 1/2" diameter

3/ Cylinder wall thickness is 1.45mm                         Cylinder wall thickness is 1.90mm

4/ Intake port in crankshaft is 7/32"                          Intake port in crankshaft is 3/8"

5/ Transfer ports are smaller than small                      Transfer ports are 6x12mm half circles

6/ Crankshaft is unbalanced and B.E pin is 1/4"        Balanced crank with 5/16"  B.E. pin

7/ Contra piston and housing are separate to           Cylinder liner extended to house 

   cylinder liner                                                           contra piston.

8/ Cylinder head is small and has only one fin.         Cylinder head enlarged slightly and                                                                                           has an extra fin to increase cooling.

 

ORIGINAL ENGINE TEST RUN.

REPLICA ENGINE FIRST POP TEST RUN

HOT RESTART TEST RUN

FINAL THOUGHTS.

While this engine was a joy to build it did present its fair share of trials and tribulations but I am glad to have built it. I think if we were to ever build another engine like this or similar to this we would incorporate a few modifications to the design to allow for the practical use of the power plant in a flying model.

These mods would be along the lines of a proper full aluminium cylinder head to give adequate cooling to allow for continuous running, changing the up draft intake to a more conventional downdraft style and the use of a full needle valve jet to give better fuel disbursement into the venturi.