Dear Mark Bailey,
I enjoyed reading your article on the 1926 Witte engine. Therein you mentioned that the Stengel brothers kept notes and photos of their restoration effort on this engine. I wonder if those notes and photos have been published or otherwise accessible to the public. I would like to see them, if possible. Of particular interest to me is what tooling they used to perform the rebuild on such a large displacement engine.
Your article was very interesting and entertaining. Keep up the great stuff!
By the way-what is the “back-kick method” of starting this engine by yourself?
Ben Clark, via email
Ben,
Thank you for your kind remarks. Here is what I do with my engine in order to get it started.
I prime the cylinder with fuel, then I roll the engine backwards until it comes up on compression and, as soon as the mag trips, it should take off. You may choose not to roll it by holding onto the spokes but instead grab a hold of the outer edge of the flywheel.
This does not always work so I have to spin the flywheel by hand enough to get things going. I have to grab the flywheel and use my foot to turn the crank over.
The instruction manual actually explains how to position yourself and what to do in order to get the large engine started. More often than not, I add fuel while rotating the flywheel which creates a suction to help get it into the cylinder. My engine needs a lot to get going, especially when cold.
Some engines were designed to use the back-kick method, others are not set up to do it easily. When starting an engine by back-kick, or, “bouncing it back against compression” as some call it, you need to advance the spark. Otherwise it trips too close to T.D.C. With the spark advanced, it trips the magneto when the piston is a little past T.D.C. and when it fires, it is on the way down on the power stroke. If you are not sure about how to do this, I would check with some other guys who are more familiar with your engine to see if it can be done safely.
As for the tooling and equipment used during the rebuilding, most of the work was done by hand, except for the head. This work was completed on a large vintage milling machine (I do not have the name of that unit). I did not include all of the photos for the article in order to keep it simple. Industrial-sized hydraulic rams (or porta-power devices), large pullers, and handmade tools were used to extract other stuck parts.
In one of the article photos, you will see the use of an industrial-sized electric drill and hone. A hoist in the shop provided the much-needed heavy lifting required at various stages of the rebuild process. Outside of the basics used in most shops, there was nothing out of the ordinary used in the process.
Mark Bailey
