Homebrew two-stroke diesel/kerosene engine.

[mael]

No! I haven't actually made one.

But I wondered if it would be feasible?

I would dearly love to get a weedwhacker-type of piston engine to run off something incredibly cheap like kerosene - or heated oil etc... .

I remembered years back when I was messing with small radoi-controlled planes, and the engines available included two-stroke diesels.

I am not sure, but I think the detonation was determined by a screw in the top of the cylinder which (I presume) varied the compression ratio.

Is it possible to do the same to a motor designed to be run off two-stroke gasoline + oil?

Oiling the crankshaft etc is a problem I want to consider secondary to actually getting the thing to run off kero etc... . (I'll stand there next to it with an oilcan).

And still on the subject of weedwhacker modifications:- Can the thing be set to run at very low RPM - perhaps in the order of 100 RPM - by (perhaps) fixing a substantial flywheel on it? (This would be on its own bearings of course).

Rid me of this disease I've got to break every rule I find with motors and engines etc... .

[mael]

I was playing with a weedwhacker motor last night as I was trying to pretend I wasn't bored.

It had been sitting in a veritable swamp and was rather fun to get to bits as it was solidly seized everywhere it could have been.

But now the main part (crankshaft, housing and flywheel) is sitting in my vice and makes lovely noises through the bearings - which I would imagine are now smooth rust running on some oil I thought might help a bit.

So (of course) I won't be firing it up without changing the bearings.

The crankshaft,housing seems to be a rather neat part to fit a modest-sized prop for a wind gennny.

I thought the piston might be used to pump air of a suitable pressure to a holding tank and then to some kind of air-powered device which can turn an electric motor (like a 200Watt 12Volt motor I have in my drawer).

* And would you think that a 20cc weedwhacker motor would be strong enough to couple to a 200W 12Volt motor if it were used with gasoline? I ask as I have another tiny 2-stroke that can be fixed to work without replacing the bearings, and 12Volt would be handy in my mountain retreat.

* Can I muffle the sound by coupling the present exhaust to something much larger? I thought about using the present exhaust and either welding a pipe to its outlet, or maybe trying to configure something from scratch whilst attempting to keep the back-pressure adequate.