Restoring the Rosebery Oil Engine

My little Rosebery is getting a full rebuild here in the shop.

The engine as it first came off a farm in northern New South Wales.  Stuck, cracked flywheels, bent crank, not a pretty sight..

Here is what I took charge of at Heyfield, Victoria in March 2003.  Freed up with new flywheels and crank, it ran pretty good. 

After a journey logging over 14000 miles the fun begins!

Here the block is getting setup to have its bottom milled flat.  This is so I can line bore the main bearing square to the bore.

And here it is all finished.  About .100 was removed to get it all even.

My babbitting jig with gear spacer.  The mandrel is 1/8 undersize, I will bore the bearings to exact size later on.

The flywheel rims had some pitting where they sat near the ground so I decided to turn them.  At 16.5" they are about all my Hendy can handle!

Here the block has been sandblasted and governor side flywheel finished.

The main bearing mould with end caps, spacers and separation shims.

The bearing ready to pour.

The head is tilted 30° and a fly cutter used to clean up top of bearings.

Here I've taken a skim cut to clean up cam gear boss, and milled the bearings to width.  Bearings were then bored and reamed to size.

The new crankshaft gear being cut.

And the new magneto gear all finished.

The area where mag bracket mounts is very uneven causing the gears to not mesh properly.

.050 later it's cleaned up enough for the bracket to sit properly.

But the gear clearance was still off quite a bit.  Here the bracket gets .105 whacked off the back.

Now correctly aligned and with the proper clearance, my gears run quiet and smooth. 

The new intake and exhaust valves made from a single piece of stainless steel.

Drilling the red cedar skids.

Making sure it's all going to fit, looks good!

Here it is all done.  Well it looks nice, but does it run?

Yup, sure does! :)