Half and half engine air compressor

[Frank S]

I have a 40 to 50 year old White 4 cyl gas engine that I am going to convert to a half and half engine compressor.
the Hp arrangement on it was 64 BHP governed to 1800 RPM 226 CI displacement
I bought the engine at an auction a couple of years back whit this in mind or to scrap it out for parts
it was locked up when I bought it so I managed to get it for $30.00. At the time it would have scrapped for weight for more than that.
This build will be as a time and budget allows so it may take awhile I thought that I'd tear into it just to see if the configuration was even reasonably feasible it turns out that #1 & 4 and 2 & 3 are the matted pair configuration which makes the conversion more reasonable instead of a 1 & 3 2 & 4 arrangement
I can either go with the 1 & 4 cylinders as the engine or the 2 & 3 cylinders either way has its good and bad points.
the combustion chambers are in the pistons leaving the cylinder side of the head flat with only the valves protruding this makes it and even more reasonable build to allow me to reduce the compressor head area. All I will have to do is either make new pistons or make flat crowns to attach to the existing pistons.
For the head I will remove the valve springs from the intake and exhaust valves in the 2 cylinders which will become the compressor and replace them with very low tension springs and stop collars making both the intake and exhaust valves become the intake valves so the valves can be pulled open by the vacuum of the pistons on the down stroke. the rockers and push rods will also be deleted this will allow the compressor to compress air on every up stroke.
I will also drill out the spark plug holes to as large as I can to accept a larger nipple for the poppet or exhaust valves that will hold the compressed air from returning to the cylinders
for the engine part I haven't decided if I will make a new single carb intake manifold that will only serve which ever 2 cylinders I deside will be the engine or in the case I might decide to use #1 & #4 as the engine I may use 2 small engine carbs like those found on the 24 HP V twin engines.
Experience shows me that in the past I could expect a 40 to 50 % efficiency sometimes as much as 60% from a compressor such as this or 47 to 54 CFM @ 100 PSI possibly 70 CFM and 33 to 36 CFM @ 150 PSi I have seen the Ford 289 ci engines develop as much as 100 CFM @ 150 PSI more if they are revved up higher
but I'll be satisfied with 45 @100 PSI
I could add a turbocharger to the exhaust of the engine to feed the compressor to up the output of the compressor if I wanted to I have a nice little one off of a 4 cyl Volvo engine

[Frank S]

A small amount of progress today using a 5 ft long pipe as a slap hammer the flywheel moved 1/2" back and forth.
If I have time to make a tool tomorrow that will allow me to use my 2000 ft. lb 1" impact to assist me I will try to make it move more.

[C-Bag]

Thanks for breaking this down to what you are thinking and the process involved. Being around engines most of my life I've heard of these split engine/compressors but never seen a functional one. My curiosity is about parts availability and cost as most industrial engines and thier parts are staggeringly expensive.

So

[Frank S]

C-Bag if it came right down to it I could machine out a new set of pistons from solid stock it gets quite involved to do this but I have a source located for just about every part in this engine.
Manufacturers
Allis Chalmers,Baker,Caterpillar,Cletrac,Cleveland,Cockshutt,Daewoo, John Deere ,Minneapolis Moline,Oliver
and Other Equipment manufactures such as Plymouth,Silver King, and obviously White Tractors have all used these or similar engines.
For instance the Caterpillar 1404 diesel is the same as a Hercules 1404
Many Brand diesel manufactures over the years have used industrial gas engine blocks heads, cranks and camshafts
Another advantage of using this engine for a split half & half is it has 3 compression rings and the oil ring Large rod and main journals and very heavy connecting rods.
Today I made a tool to assist in getting the engine to break loose
I also blew out the diesel / naphtha solution's and poured in some KBS Rust Blast RustBlast
This stuff will eat rust with a vengeance right down to new metal. One thing I have to watch is some aluminum alloys can't take it for extended periods of time My long time friend Eddy is a distributor for these products and is very knowledgeable of the uses.
I tried the tool with my 1" drive impact and my 4 to 1 torque multiplier a few times. with very little but promising results
I will make another attempt tomorrow

[C-Bag]

I love it when you find someone who knows the crossovers for stuff like this. I cant remember running across any gas engines that had three compression rings.

I often seem to get into something and find out there was a reason it was cheap. Like they don't make the parts anymore.

Keep up the good work and good luck.

[Frank S]

C-Bag i used to have a rather extensive library that completely filled a 14 by 16 bed room over 1000 books on engineering and mechanical principals 2000 books of literature ranging from history, non fiction, fiction, educational and science-fiction plus countless repair manuals I would estimate over 5000 from the thinnest supplemental pamphlets to 3 inch thick manufactures repair manual in multiple volumes it took me 30 years to build this library and I had read or studied almost every single book.fire claimed much of it water damaged more than the fire the remaining nearly 2000 books are forever lost in Kuwait where I was working as the senior engineer in a multi divisional corporation.
much of what I know or remember from my years of research and work I now have to rely on my knowledge to know where to look for long lost information on the infernal world wide web of misinformation and know how to weed through the garbage to find what I need.

[C-Bag]

Frank that's as heart breaking as the burning of the library at Alexandria

The net definitely is a double edged sword. I can find stuff and people there is no way I would have been in contact with otherwise. But there is a ton of misinformation too. You compound that with corp's taking over other corp's then deep sixing their products and if not, certainly their parts catalogs and numbering systems. There is also just a lot of stuff that was never on the net and never will be.

It's staggering the loss of information when you consider most of what was in your books and catalogs is at best going to be hard to find again and at worst gone forever. And relying on grey matter that keeps getting greyer everyday is dubious

But this kind of archiving of experience is what I hope places like HMT can be a part of as often it takes something like this thread to give you a starting point. Often that's the hardest part for when I do a search. And the configuration of the net and my browser are constantly changing. There have been searches I've done over and over, not coming up with anything. Then one day I take a run at it again and bingo!

Thanks for the tip on RustBlast, I'll have to get me some.

[Frank S]

I got the engine to bar over by making another tool to assist me
This morning I went out and hit it with my big impact There was more movement but I didn't want to waste the whole day and a lot of gasoline running my compressor so after cutting out a crude hammer wrench a few swings of a 12 lb'er and I had it moving somewhat freely. One down side to this build though is probably the reason I got the engine for $30.00 only 3 of the pistons go up and down #3 is up on TDC and does not move, indicating a sepperation between connecting rod and crankshaft. OH!WELL! that's life.
I was thinking I might use the connecting rods from a diesel anyway for the compressor part the ones I have located are .500" longer which will bring the pistons to within .100" of the head then it will be a matter of filling the cavity in the crown of the piston no valve relief will be required. I know I will have to do extensive reconfiguration of the balancing of the engine anyway since the compressor will compress on each stroke.
At any rate the engine is free enough to turn by hand now so since we are trying to move our stuff this was 1 of those projects that I wanted to ascertain the general condition of it before loading it for the move.
Had it already been bored to .040 or more over it would have gone to the scrap yard.
nI checked the cylinder bores and it has not been previously bored which is a good sign

[C-Bag]

One down side to this build though is probably the reason I got the engine for $30.00 only 3 of the pistons go up and down #3 is up on TDC and does not move, indicating a sepperation between connecting rod and crankshaft. OH!WELL! that's life.

The bets here in the peanut gallery are the top of the piston broke off right at the oil ring relief slots, not a connecting rod.

Glad you got it broke loose. Was that new bar tool you made so long you were in another zip code when you used it?

[Frank S]

Yepers 36" with a 12 lb'er slamming down on it as hard as a 200 lb old guy could swing it, come bleed or blister somethings going to give. Actually I didn't hit it all that hard just one handed the hammer the first little love tap and it moved about an inch on the flywheel. The impact could rock it back and forth but just couldn't quite overcome the bond. the KBS Rust blast sure did it's job as almost all of the rust deposit was gone and nothing left of it but some black goo.
I couldn't make a complete 360° revolution just about 320° due to the # 3 piston issue
You could be correct about the piston being separated.
I have an 85 Toyota SR5 that I drove for over 2 years on 3 cylinders, it never knocked or had much of a vibration just 1 totally dead chamber last August I built up an replacement 22 RE for it .020" bore .010/.010 on the crank .008" off the head, decked .004" squared and trued the rods. re-balanced the crank rods and pistons assembly to 6000 RPM . what machining that I didn't have tooling set up for was farmed out to a friend of mine who now owns much of the equipment I sold before my overseas move. all and all just over $2000 spent on parts and machining for the engine, which now has a little over 40 K miles on it in under a year most of the time having to pull loaded trailer.
I finally got around to scraping out the old engine the dead cylinder had popped its crown much like you said. The top of the piston was hammered against the valves and the lower part had been happily riding up and down for years before I had even got the little truck