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True to the inbred code of German Engineering, Helmut Eberspacher couldn't help himself from fiddling, modifying, tinkering and tweaking the Bn2 to the extent of such diverse and complicated 'operating systems' that he's held in high esteem by ESOKE (Exalted Society of Kraut Engineers)

 

Now all Bn2's carry a riveted plate with identifying numbers after "Ausfuhrung" and again after "Fabrik-Nr."

 

Isn't this a clue as to the evolving operating systems?...and isn't there documentation/diagrams/parts lists under those numbers that detail how they work?

 

Bob, I hope you weren't trying to use the early encabulator with your 2110 motor.

 

The Marzell vanes on the early model were never designed to handle the torque of a stroker - leading to the common misconception that strokers are somehow 'less reliable'.

 

As Danny's video clearly shows, the later model incorporated omnidirectional oscillation dampers, which made all the difference.

 

 

Last edited by Sacto Mitch

I made a promise to myself early on that my retro encabulator would never be incorporated into my Speedster. Being a purist, I want to keep my replica unadulterated and free from harmful radiation and without any original Porsche parts (not that the encabulator bears the Porsche name).

 

I myself have been called a stroker and accept that title/insult/classification wholeheartedly. I however. am reasonably reliable.

 

Have you seen the price of omnidirectional oscillation dampers lately? Bordering on unobtainium!

Originally Posted by Carl Berry CT.:

BobG & Sacto Mitch....Helmut Eberspacher would be proud of you both

 

It's for people like you that he made the difficult adjustment from a Luftwaffe Oberst and fighter pilot ace to a leading captain of postwar German industry.

 

"Warm their Fannies" was more than a mere battle cry to him.  

Perhaps a new endeavour: Helmut's Helmets - For the protection of the discriminating Retro Encabulator Operator!

Originally Posted by BobG / 2110cc '57 VS:

Sacto Mitch:

 

I actually have an early version of the Rockwell Retro Encabulator but I've set it aside in my garage until I can find a new reversible ferangulator hub. These early Encabulators burned through the hubs and the decapacitating kretschmer bearings like they were made of trasturian alomentium!

 

Last time I had it up and running it was attached to a Hungarian made Salad Shooter and unfortunately it was so powerful that it drove the carrots it sliced through the drywall behind the kitchen counter and they are still imbedded in the insulation.

 

Well that was when my wife insisted the the whole 700 lb., solid state Encabulator be moved to the garage and out of the center of the kitchen.

 

I think the next application will be either to the pump on our well, (If I can find the right hub replacement) or to my children's pencil sharpener if the particulator housing can be matched to the oscillating distortion modulator arm.

 

Wish me luck! 

This made me laugh pretty hard. 

 

I needed it,
Ted

Holy Shite!

 

I have actually found (through my old engineering contacts) of a company right here in old New England that can, potentially, built me complete, turn-key regulator and fuel pulp diaphragms!!  

 

I'll be traveling there in the next couple of days to drop off the old, tired and petrified ones that I have and then get a quote from them to see if the new ones will be anywhere near feasible, cost-wise.  

 

Thinking into the 21'st century, I've also asked them to deviate from the old BUMA rubber formulation for these things and go, instead, for something more impervious to E85 type fuels that we seem to be heading toward, pell-mell.

 

Stay tuned, BN2 fans, and soon I'll have more news, along with (just for Bob) a layman's description of how a hard disk drive works (no....Really!    I used to do this for a living!  For example....did you know that the "flying head" of a disk drive is shaped like a wing and "flies" at less than 7 microns above the surface of the rotating disk?)

 

Great stuff awaits!

Gordon-

 

I  traded a set of 1-5/8" heater boxes for a NOS BN2. When I pulled it out of the box, I was crestfallen-- every rubber bit I can see is hard as a rock.

 

I'd like to use this thing in my bus, and I care not about temperature regulation. On/off is good, but metering the fuel is the magical part. I'll pull my box down to see what I've got, but I'm not expecting much.

 

FWIW, my speedster has a modern Epar heater, and it is way, way, way (did I mention WAY) over-controlled. The redundancy of the safeties makes it less useful than you might imagine, as it seems to default to "blowing a whisper of coolish air" after the initial set-point is satisfied. It will eventually tuen back onm, but only after the cabin gets down to about 40*.

 

Blasting hot air sounds pretty good.

As Stan observes "blasting hot air sounds good"

An uncomplicated on/off toggle switch like Danny's Spyder simplifies warming a cold butt....but as Lane cautions...it's a potentially "explosive" situation.

 

Now, since the core mechanics are simply squirting juice on a glow plug why couldn't that juice be less volatile diesel fuel?

 

Why couldn't a separate, dedicated, one gallon diesel fuel tank be the fuel supply? 

 

OK Let's see.....Stan first:

 

Somewhere on your Espar heater there should be a glow plug control switch.  It should have a bi-metallic probe inserted into the combustion chamber (on the downwind side of the chamber air flow) with a set of contacts that change state when the chamber gets to a set temperature, that which will support combustion of the fuel without added heat from the glow plug.  That temperature range is adjustable and it really only cares about the low end (the high end is set by the rate of fuel flow and there is also an over-temp limit switch that kills the fuel pump).  Find that switch assy and you can adjust the bottom end up so that the glow plug comes on at a higher temp than 40F.  Espar must show how to do this in their manuals, and they are all posted on the Samba. 

 

ALL of these heaters that I've seen do not regulate the outlet air temp by any means other than turning the flame on and off, just like a hot air furnace in your home.  Some of them have variable speed, output fans, but those units generally cost over $1,500.  The way you vary the temp in the car cabin is to cycle the heater flame on and off at varying rates (this is often done by the driver simply pulling the dash switch on and off).  Cycle it faster and the cabin gets hotter.

 

This should give you something to think about, and remember, there are Espar manuals on the Samba.

 

Carl:  Very sophisticated Diesel versions of these heaters are very common in tractor-trailer sleeper cabs, but you cannot convert a gasoline version to a diesel.

 

Bob and Carl:  Lane is talking about data loss from a hard disk drive "head crash", not a gas heater. When a disk head crashes, you lose data - sometimes irretrievably. That is why all modern storage systems (we're talking commercial here, not a home PC) keep a "shadow copy" of your data in more than one place, and they even break the data up into little bits and store those bits semi-randomly all over the place.  When you request to read that data the system reconstructs it as it was first put in.  

 

I used to "educate" customers in my old company's "Executive Briefing Center" about how a lot of our stuff worked, taking the info from the designers and translating it into English for non-technical people to understand.  Many of our guests were company executives or financial types who were trying to understand why they were signing contracts for $10 Million or $20 million (often even more) and 'How would our stuff make them more profitable??'

 

The one that impressed me the most was the surprisingly non-technical CEO of AOL (I think he had come from Pepsico) who wanted to know how a disk drive could reconstruct data after a catastrophic head crash and partial data loss.  This is where the disk read/write  head touches the disk, thereby scraping the magnetic coating off and rendering it un-readable in that small spot of the disk).  

 

I said:  "Let's say I give you a photograph of your kid's face but it has a small spot or stripe missing.  You know the rest of the face, so if I gave you some decent photoshop tools you would be able to fill in the correct colors by seeing what was around those missing spots and filling them in.  You accuracy, because your eye is pretty discerning, would be very good - approaching 100% and after you finish, no one would be able to tell that those spots were ever there.  

 

That is what we do, but on a much deeper scale with far better tools AND, we do it constantly on all data going through the system to insure that we don't lose any part of that picture anywhere that it goes."

 

The CEO sits there for a second, then gets up, walks over to me and gives me a "Man Hug" and says, "FINALLY!!  I understand what the hell these friggin' network guys have been saying!!"

 

BTW:  If you've never heard of EMC Corporation, dig out your wallet and pull out a credit card.  Chances are, the bank issuing that card stores some or all of it's data for your card on EMC Storage.

Last edited by Gordon Nichols

Bob:  you should have been with me earlier today when I visited a company in southern New Hampshire which is quoting me on making the diaphragms talked about above.  

 

This is a company that makes all types of diaphragms for thousands of different applications but they don't necessarily know how those products are used after they deliver them.  I had a fuel regulator with me and showed the two engineers how it worked with a verbal theory of operation, then went on to explain how a car gasoline heater works and uses their diaphragms.  They were impressed....

 

Just the opposite of taking a designer's ideas and turning them into English for those who don't speak technical jargons!

 

Nice ride through Nashua, NH, and stopped at "Joey's '50's Diner" for lunch!!

 

http://www.joeysdiner.com

Last edited by Gordon Nichols

I know you've all been stuck inside due to the weather - especially Lane and the folks in the Southeast recovering from a couple of ice storms - and maybe my BN2 endeavors haven't been at the top of your collective hit parade, but here's the latest on what I've been up to:

 

I dissected both my early BN2 fuel regulator (an elegant design if I ever saw one) and my early, "Hardi" fuel pump, removed all three diaphragms (they're all different) and requested a quote from Diacom, a company in Southern New Hampshire whose sole purpose in the world is to make diaphragms.  They quoted me direct replacements, excluding the unique metal bits used as center hardware (and arguably the most important parts) leaving me to second-source those parts locally from two other sources.

 

Bottom line, due to the very low volume I projected (I never expected to ever sell more than 100 sets of these things so I asked them to quote me on build lots of 100 and 200) and even though they could use prototype and/or pre-production tooling for them, the set of three, delivered to me as part of a build lot of 100, would have cost me about $185 US per set.

 

Needless to say, even though they would have been terrific and impervious to alcohol mixed gas, that's a hell of a lot of money and way beyond the go, no-go projection I had of about $60 per set sell price, so I abandoned that course and am now looking at other fuel delivery techniques that might be adaptable.  Still, it was fascinating walking through the Diacom build facility and talking with their application engineers - felt like my old days in High Tech!

 

Never one to give up, I still see light at the end of the tunnel, it's just gonna take a bit longer to actually get through that tunnel.......  My shop bench looks like a chemistry lab and when the outside temps get a bit warmer I'll be back in there looking for alternatives.

 

Stay tuned, but check in a little less frequently.  This might take a while.

Last edited by Gordon Nichols

Hi Gordon. I too have been working on and off, but it isn't easy when you can't paint stuff outside!

 

I bought a late BN-2 from Mango(Paul) and it was sitting for years. I just dismantled it and am in the process of restoring it. When it is done, it is going in the Spyder and the one that is in there is coming out as sometimes it shuts off due to lack of fuel. Either the pump or the regulator(diaphragms!) are going.

 

I couldn't get the chrome locknut off that locks the temp switch down so a little heat and got it loose. Upon testing the fan motor, it turned very slow. Also, I hooked up a meter to the points and got nothing. So I took the whole thing apart, cleaned it up, filed the points, regreased the gears and bearings, and especially cleaned the brushes and commutator. Now it spins as normal and I adjusted the points. I alo verified the fuel pump works, it is an on/off solenoid type pump. So once it warms I will repaint the sheet metal and assemble.

 

This is where you come in, Gordon. You have a late style pump also, correct? If not, get one, they are available used and only have one small o-ring inside that is very replaceable. How do you control it, you say? Well, on mine, there are gears and points, which make the points close for about a 20% duty cycle on 80% off. This happens about 170 times a minute so not quite 3 times a second. Modern electronics could easily make a device that would do this for you. No Hardi pump, no regulator, and NO DIAPHRAGMS!

 

Anyway, the late pumps are very adjustable(threaded fitting and a locknut on the output) and reliable. I'm sure the electronics wouldn't cost more than $20 to put together.

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