J.A.P. 2A Stationary Engine Restoration - it's twins!

[TessierAshpool]

Hopefully this will interest someone. 

A week before the big lockdown of 2020, I was getting the impression that I was going to be spending a lot more time at home, so had better find something to do. Luckily, up popped these two J.A. Prestwich 2A stationary engines near me. They had apparently come from a farm clear-out. Neither ran, but at £30 for the pair it had to be worth a look. So they were duly acquired...

Now, I know nothing about stationary engines, so this will be a learning experience for you and me both. First impressions? Both spin over, and they seem to be complete, apart from both are missing a silencer. They appear almost identical, other than one has a very slightly different exhaust design, oh and one has a red HT lead and the other is black. One seems in better condition than the other, but I'll go into that more in a bit.

Specs on these are roughly: Manufactured 1940s-60s, 1.2HP, 98cc four-stroke sidevalve single cylinder

To make this easier, I shall name them Engine A and Engine B

[TessierAshpool]

So a quick initial lookover reveals a few issues:

Engine A
- Fuel tank partially filled with very old petrol, some light rust inside. Cap was sealed tight so minimal contaminants
- Has no spark, but does give you a decent shock if you hold the wire while turning it over.
- Carb has badly oxidised on the outside, possibly weakened?
- Has compression.
- Air filter housing has a rust hole in the side.

Engine B
- Petrol tank has wibblepoo itself out of the tap and turned to tar
- Petrol tank filled with some unknown substance, a mixture of rust, soil and fuel maybe?
- No spark or sign of life
- No real compression. Peeking at the sidevalves through the plug hole it appears one valve is stuck (or clearances are way off)


So, I decided that engine A has the most potential, as it has compression and some spark, and a fuel tank that might hold liquid. I may need to steal some parts from engine B as time goes on. For now, I am going to just concentrate on getting engine A working before I look at engine B at all.

Fuel from Engine A


Bottom of tank Engine A


Bottom of tank, Engine B




Engine B, what even is this?

[Frankenhealey]

Booky McBookmarked

[Sweetpea]

Yep, bring it on...

We had Lister D's and Petter A's years ago. They went to my uncle when my dad died 'cos I had nowhere to keep them. I did keep the last engine he worked on which is a little Stuart engine. Probably from a small boat but who knows really. It's in the garage looking dusty!

James

[TessierAshpool]

Jumping ahead a little in time here, so I can explain the title of the thread.

Some cleaning and removing of bits hunting for date evidence revealed this on Engine A:




...which it turns out tells me absolutely nothing. Apparently there is a way to decode this to a year, but the format didn't match what I had. So I looked deeper, and behind the exhaust cover found this:



Success, so Engine A is a 1954 built engine. Obviously, I then needed to check the same place on Engine B. And found:




So they are identical twins, both made 1954. 

This does mean that I'll have to restore both now, as I can't separate them can I?

[hopeso]

What would these have been used for originally?

I always check out the stationary engines at shows bug have yet to find a use for one here.

[TessierAshpool]

Various jobs around farms. Quite common to find these mated to water pumps. These two have a belt drive pulley on the end, not sure what they would have driven, but judging by what's coming out of the nooks and crannies I'd say something related to wheat etc.

Edit: quick bit of googling and corn grinders, water pumps and pillar drills all seem to be popular.

[Sweetpea]

Grain elevators, all sorts. You'd likely use an electric motor these days for a lot of the applications they used an engine for in the 40's and 50's.
Little engines like JAPs and Villiers were frequently found on things like Allen Scythes. I remember lapping the valves of an Allen Scythe with JIF once upon a time. Didn't have any lapping compound to hand and we wanted to get it going.

When I was on the scene we had a Lister D hooked to a milking machine vacuum pump. I made a wooden cow out of some plywood. There was a bucket on the back with watered down white emulsion in it and a clear tube in the cluster so you could actually see the wooden cow being milked.
Every half hour you emptied the milking machine back into the bucket and went again. Poor cow pro'lly 'ad sore bags by't end at day.



Here's the milking machine and Lister. Cow must have being having the day off!

James

[TessierAshpool]

I bet that was a sight 😂 that Lister looks like it would weigh a ton

[Sweetpea]

Mar 27, 2020 23:33:52 GMT TessierAshpool said:

That Lister looks like it would weigh a ton

It wasn't a light weight bit of machinery. It fell over once while I was unloading it from the trailer in the photo. I got the wheels on the trolley crossed up or something and it tripped it up. Anyway, once it was falling there was no way of stopping it. All I could do was try and slow down the landing.

The other side of that was that they were so strong they would run forever. There were often stories of D's and similar engines found under tarpaulins after 40 years. You'd change the oil, put new petrol in and just start them up. Not always, but frequently.

[winchman]

Nice project I think Winchboy has one? Just too busy with other stuff to do much with it

[crockpot]

Allen Milyard stylee V twin?

[TessierAshpool]

Haha, parallel twin might be a bit easier!

[TessierAshpool]

So, the first real job on these is going to be cleaning them - it's no use having things apart and dropping dirt and grass seeds into everything.

After a couple of sessions with some petrol, picks and toothbrushes, Engine A has gone from:







...to this:








Starting to look a lot smarter now. The carb and cooling fan/flywheel have been removed and set aside as you can see, but I'll cover those parts soon enough....

Still more cleaning to be done before it's ready to be painted (will probably use a simple DTM paint), and the head will be coming off at some point for a proper clean and to see what lurks beneath.

[norfolkshire]

Regarding the use of this style of engines, if you think back to the early 1950's (metaphorically speaking), many farms, being out in the wilds did not have an electricity supply, and even if they did it would be generally overhead supply. This could result in sporadic supply at best.

The 'milk-maid' was of a bygone era, and machine milking had arrived, thus making life somewhat less onerous, but regular electricity supply was a must.

The milking machines were driven by a vacuum system, and such engines were ideal to run this type of equipment.

So add power for milking purposes to the list of tasks garnered to date.

[TessierAshpool]

OK on to carbs. Engine A's carb has seem some severe corrosion to the aluminium, like so:






After trying to see how it would clean up, it's basically full of holes. Some of the worst corrosion I've seen on aluminium. So Engine B has it's carb nicked for the project:



That one looks much better. After a good clean up, it all looks like it should work. The insides of both carbs were lovely and clean, I guess they must have been run dry before they were stored. The float in these is a brass sphere, which is cool:



The fuel taps also needed looking at, they are a very simple design. A brass T piece, with a plunger which seals with a cork band and is held in place with a screw. Cleaned up and reinstalled on the tank. I've filled the tank of Engine A with vinegar and leaving it to marinade for a few days, and the tap is keeping it in



After lots of cleaning of the carb and the copper and brass fittings, we have something looking repectable and awaiting fitting once the block is finished

[gtviva]

Its looking good, wont be long before the 1st start?!!

[TessierAshpool]

Mar 30, 2020 15:33:54 GMT gtviva said:

Its looking good, wont be long before the 1st start?!!

Perhaps perhaps. I have fuel and compression now, just lacking spark. Pretty sure I know why, just need to rummage for some parts...

[TessierAshpool]

Not much to update today, suprisingly I've got a lot on even though I'm stuck at home!

Did get some bits through the mail though, including an old manual for these engines. Everyone loves an exploded diagram so here you go:







And next time on RR:

[Frankenhealey]

Mar 31, 2020 10:05:18 GMT TessierAshpool said:

Everyone loves an exploded diagram so here you go:

Modern CAD just doesn't cut it. This is art! However the pedant in me must point out they can't spell carburettor.