Cole's Large Hit and Miss Engine

[Terrywerm]

I recently obtained a partially completed Cole's Large Hit and Miss engine (photos coming soon) from an estate sale. It is complete to the point of piston, rod, crank, flywheels, cylinder, base, and valves, although the one flywheel still needs to be machined for the governor. The carburetor casting is missing, as are all of the rest of the small parts that make up the timing, ignition, and exhaust valve train. The saving grace is that I believe I have a full set of drawings for the engine, five sheets in total. Thus, all of the remaining parts can be made.

It obviously sat for a very long time, but I took a few minutes and cleaned it up a bit and oiled the usual places. It spins over very nicely and makes very good compression when one plugs the spark plug hole. The engine does have a number of sins which I will go into when I post photos, but none of them are showstoppers from what I can see. The original builder used a grinder for a lot of things, and as near as I can tell he was attempting to build this engine with only a lathe.

I doubt that anyone here is familiar with this engine or has one, but I will post progress here for everyone's enjoyment.

I hope to get photos and more details posted here over the next few evenings.

[kvt85]

Please keep it coming on this.

[Terrywerm]

My apologies on things taking time. As I may have mentioned before, my son Alan is dealing with cancer and things have been pretty crazy from time to time. But, this thread is about a hit-n-miss engine, so we will stick to that. I can talk about Alan's cancer in a separate thread as there is plenty to tell there as well.


Anyway, I have figured out a few things about this engine and its history. I spent some time with it the other evening and found a number of sins and errors, some of which I was able to correct very easily. But, they also provided some clues to its history.


One of the flywheels was loose on the shaft and could slide side to side about a half an inch, but would not come off because of a gouge on the outboard end of the shaft, which also pushed up a burr. Easily fixed with a needle file and an allen hex key.


The spring for the exhaust valve was weak and would allow the exhaust valve to remain slightly open. Removed it and stretched it out a bit to the length called out in the prints. This resolved the leaky exhaust valve.


The two tapped holes for attaching the carburetor have not even been drilled yet, but the mating surface has been machined smooth.


The bottom of the base was originally machined nicely, but bears no tooling marks, which stumped me at first, but I think that the person who did the work on this may have disliked the tooling marks that were there and thus chose to sand the bottom on a piece of sandpaper placed on a flat surface. This is, of course, just a guess, but it is a reasonable explanation.


The two attached pics show an overview of the engine, and the bottom of the base.  More pics coming up in a moment.

[Terrywerm]

The two holes for attaching the muffler were drilled and tapped, but I believe that a tap was broken off in the bottom one at one point. There was some grinding done at the bottom which will be mostly out of sight when the engine is complete, but may have allowed access to the broken tap or drill so that it could be removed. Ground off spot is visible in one of the photos.


I believe that this engine was being constructed by someone that did not possess a milling machine, only a lathe and maybe a drill press. This became evident because areas that were easy to access with an end mill in a lathe were nicely machined, yet other areas such as the back end of the engine base were done with a grinder. These areas would have been difficult to access with an end mill in a lathe.

[Terrywerm]

The side of the engine base where the timing gears will be attached has been nicely machined with an end mill in three passes, easily set up and run on a lathe.


That is all I have so far. Sorry about the quality of the photos, I guess my phone doesn't focus well on closeup stuff. I'll try harder to avoid that going forward.

[Carpenter84]

This looks really interesting. I hope you'll post a video when you get it running.
These types of old motors are really interesting. I've never seen or ran one, but I'd like to.
Ie. There's a couple old Case farm tractors on the farm, I reaaaally want to spend time getting one running. For no other purpose than it would be fun to just drive it around for an hour. Take the boy for a ride. But after 3 years I still haven't found the time.

[Terrywerm]

This looks really interesting. I hope you'll post a video when you get it running.

You can count on it, Shawn. It is going to take a while with everything else that is going on, but I am looking forward to first correcting the existing errors if possible, then beginning on the remaining parts. Photos will be provided along the way, too.


 

[34_40]

A very interesting find, and really a good size.  Looks like a real good start to the project too.  Thanks for bringing us along for the ride. 

[kvt85]

That looks like fun,  I wish i could fine one.

[mdlbldrmatt135]

not to hijack the thread but,   If you're looking for projects like these, There's a company near me that does the kits.  (we toured the faculty in College, as they did casting in house)

link:  https://www.pmmodelengines.com/catalog/