Hey Tom, you're asking a lot of Cyclone there. Not an unreasonable request by any means, but Harry Schoell has always refused to answer any questions about the measured 108 hp or 30% thermal efficiency he used to brag about getting. Publicly demonstrating an engine actually powering something is a heck of a tall order for this engine company.
Making a working steam engine shouldn't be that great of a challenge. James Watt built an engine in 1779 that's still running.
After all these years of unadulterated failure, Harry has finally started taking his 'innovations' off the engine. Unfortunately, he seems to be doing so one piece at a time and only when forced to by necessity.
Looking at what's there now, most of the plumbing is for a very complex fuel and burner system that should have been replaced with an off-the-shelf oil burner. There are even kits to convert those to burning waste oil and biofuel. Those would burn his algae and orange peel oil. But, his complex burner is probably the only thing Harry got to work over all these years.
The engine is still venting exhaust steam into the crankcase. He actually pumps water in to condense the steam there. This means the engine has to be lubricated with water, which has been a total and continuous failure. When they hired Ohio State University to redesign the WHE engine for "commercialization", Ohio State's focus turned to making bearings that would survive running in water. There was talk of a plan to build a bearing testing machine for bearing research, but that never seemed to have gotten done. (Remember Harry's theory that bearings are in reality small electrical generators? Who knew?)
Then there's that "spider bearing" that flops around and beats the connecting rods to pieces. It's the first thing Ohio State eliminated, along with three cylinders.
Why a six-cylinder radial layout still? Gasoline engines of this power are all one cylinder. Lots of expensive parts with lots of failure modes seems to be so the engine will self-start. It looks like that little electric motor beside the pressure washer pump is being used as a generator. Years ago smaller engines sometimes had dynamo-starters. All it was was putting electricity to the generator which makes it run as a motor and turn the engine over. Unload the pressure pump and use a starter solenoid to energize this generator.
It has always seemed that Cyclone's focus was on making the parts that could be bought off-the-shelf like the burner, pumps and condenser, while ignoring the key piece nobody else had: a working steam engine.
By the way, see the fuel tank? It's actually a race car fuel cell. Wanna bet the land speed car is being stripped for parts?
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