John Wetz Steam Bicycle скачать в хорошем качестве

John Wetz Steam Bicycle

The John Wetz bicycle is one of my great prizes, it is a three-dimensional blueprint for how to make a steam vehicle. Wetz was an old guy who never had any money and only could afford an old farm house with a garage with a dirt floor to work in, and no or few machine tools. He spent a lot of time thinking. His specialty was the control system for a wood fired monotube steam generator. To give some perspective, Abner Doble spent a lifetime attempting to control a monotube—with a normalizer and a compensator and never achieved complete satisfaction. Wetz analyzed the three input factors into what was happening in a monotube. There was a fire that was controlled by the pressure transducer. When the pressure began to lower, the pressure transducer called for more fuel. And this was because steam pressure is what produces the necessary power to drive the car. And so when the fire was on the water pump should come on, with the trick being to pump water without flooding the coils, which ends up putting water into the cylinders causing a lock that would break about everything. Also, just before the water got into the cylinders, it cooled the steam so that there was very little power generated by the engine. So, the issue was how to sense when the cool water was nearing the end of the coil stack ready to flood the boiler. Wetz solved that problem by putting in a delay by adding some hysteresis to the system such that the new slug of water was self-limiting so that it never flooded the boiler. There is no way that a person can read the steam outlet temperature and use that to make the right temperature steam. The tube is several hundred feet long; one end does not know that is going on at the other end. The shot of cold water cools off the sensor so that after a short period of time the water pumps stops. Immediately the fire heats things up so that the water pump comes on again and this starts all over again. A Bourdon tube senses pressure and two iron pipes in the fire and one with incoming water cooling it and the other with hot output steam heating it expand and contract actuating microswitches. The fire is bio-fuel—walnuts and corn cobs and wads of newspaper—the fire is downdraft, much like a rocket stove. It sits above the tube stack and thus does not melt things when one stops. Draft is from a squirrel cage fan pulling combustion gases through the coil stack. Wetz had a clever spring loaded needle valve to prevent water from flooding the monotube coil stack. The weakest part of this design is the engine which is a worn out weed whacker small two cycle engine with the spark plug replaced by a ball bearing acting as a bash valve. Once the rings wear out there is little compression. On the other hand there is everything here needed. John Wetz put all of his inventive skills into a garden tractor conversion that had all things needed plus a water jet condenser naturally circulating system. That is also in my collection. These things were elaborate, complex with homemade solenoids and Bourdon tubes, expanding and contracting tubes with micro-switches, and all complete and well designed. Not everyone is going to look at this and get past the coffee can on the front fender for the water tank, nylon rope with a square knot in it that is sprayed with belt dressing to substitute for a store-bought Vee belt, and a few left-over spring door springs mounted here and there. To a person who has spent half their life trying to design and invent something in steam, this is an example of pure genius. All one needs to do is to keep the original as is and then to make a replica by replacing every component with a well fabricated piece of good metal, or a store-bought micro-switch. Even the water pump was hand made. The hand wound solenoids made from a large nail and a lot of copper wire show to me how much John Wetz wanted to make something out of steam. His thought process was excellent—his capital for doing this inventing was a little bit in short supply. I appreciate the family for donating his life’s work to me to preserve, keep on display, and to publicize.