Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. (fka CYPW)

[BuddyWhazhizname]

Oh man, the How It's Made video as proof. For those who haven't seen it, have a look:

We start with the unproven claim that steam engines produce less pollution than I/C engines (there's another promo video out there where Cyclone claims their engines will literally clean the air they operate in). Then a shot of the fake Mark 6 engine in the truck chassis with the fake waste heat engine attached to it.

Then they show the assembly of an early WHE engine design. Yes, it does show ball bearings on the bottom ends of the connecting rods. Proof that you can fit ball bearings on the pins of a Schoell "spider bearing". But then we have to ask what kind of loads they were designing for. Well, the shots of the pressure gauge during "testing" give the answer. About 100 psi. The WHE was described as a low temperature, low pressure engine that would make little power.

If we compare to the Mark 5 engine with 2" bore and stroke, this WHE engine appeared to be about the same size. The Mark 5 is supposed to run on steam at 3200 psi. Bearing loads would be 32x as great.

And how did the ball bearings in the low pressure WHE engine hold up? Well, we know that Cyclone contracted with Topline Automotive, a "global manufacturer" as Frankie put it, to design a new WHE, which they called the WHE-25. So the design in the How It's Made video was put to pasture. Then Cyclone contracted with Ohio State University to totally redesign the WHE, and that model was called the WHE-DR (which is in the photo Cyclone has at the top of their Facebook page). Q2Power, the WHE spin-off company, then redesigned it again, selling one unit which they never completed. They gave up and returned the license to Cyclone, who make no more mention of the WHE. You know a design is bad when even Harry Schoell gives up on it.

Incidentally, the engine in the video is probably the one that was installed at Bent Glass Designs, Cyclone's first customer installation, and was quietly removed after less than a week and never replaced.

Back to the video, they then show building the heat exchanger (boiler), even though the WHE engine shown didn't use it. A shot of the burner, again not part of the WHE engine they showed, a shot of steam being pointed at the floor, then the red cover put on the heat exchanger coil (without an engine under it) and a cut to Frankie's expensive speedboat with the fake Mark 5 in it. Finally another shot of the fake Mark 6 in the truck chassis.

Yeah, Harry and Frankie have never tried to mislead investors into thinking they had working steam engines that actually powered things like boats and vehicles.

I keep saying that Cyclone would convince a lot of skeptics if they would just launch Frankie's boat and show videos of it circling Biscayne Bay under the power of a Cyclone engine. The only reason they wouldn't do this is because they can't. They don't have an engine that could power this small boat.

OK, now here's a challenge for all those readers whose forte is engineering.

BMEP on a Cyclone engine is meaningless for two reasons. One is that nobody outside Cyclone has ever admitted to seeing a Cyclone engine actually producing it's claimed brake horsepower. Secondly, it's the peak pressure the bearings have to be designed for, not the mean. On a Mark 5 with 2" bore and 3200 psi steam pressure, the bearings on the connecting rod have peak pressure loads of 10,053 pounds.

The challenge is to find hybrid ball bearings that are rated for this peak load (we'll be generous and just consider the static load rating), then sketch up the "spider bearing", piston and connecting rod for an engine with 2" bore and stroke that use the bearings you found.

And your "so it appears that bearings on the outside of the crank double up the bearing area to handle the large P." isn't relevant since we're not talking about the crank main bearings.

So, please help me with my engineering knowledge. Show us how it's possible to fit bearings in a Cyclone engine that have any chance of surviving.