The Power Tool Drag Races. May 7th 2006
Ace Auto Dismantlers aka (ACE International Speedway)
2255 Mc Kinnion San Francisco, California.

Funny Car Racers

The Runabout.

Kimrick Smythe and Liam McNamara built a very unique entry in the Funny Car class.
They built a machine that runs on Steam.

Kimrick adding a little go juice (Water) the the boiler storage tank....

Theres something organic about steam powered engines.
They groan, hiss, chugg and breath both fire and vapor.

Kinda like the Judges at a Chili cook off.

The rear chassis of the Runabout comes from a Real turn of the (last century) Wooden Wagon. I was told it was found in an antique store.

The Old wagon chassis was extended with a steel tubing frame. The frame exstension supports the boiler, the water resivoir, the hand built steam engine and the drive wheel.
 

The boiler comes from a pressure washer and the coils inside of it are heated with a propane fire. An electric pressure regulator controls the gas flow and maintains the system pressure to around 150 PSI for safety. At theese pressures the water or steam tempature can reach about 370 deg F. It is very important to control the system pressure in a steam engine since boiler exsplosions tend to over cook things and people placed too close to them.

The pressurized steam is fed through a sliding valve into the custom made cylinder. (Originally the cylinder was used for Hydraulics)
The piston inside of the cylinder is attached to a connecting rod and crank shaft. These parts started life as the bottom half of an air compressor. A flywheel is attached to the crankshaft to provide a steady motion between power strokes. The crankshaft drives a chain that turns a motor cycle wheel to pull the machine forward.
 

The machine is accented with modern safety devices it has a flugal horn, a kerosene lamp for night driving and even a fire exstiguisher.

A Large Tiller bar provides the Arm Strong Steering system.

The Racer would tear down the 75 ft speedway in about 12 seconds (at about 4-5 MPH)
And it did it, with a lot of style.
It is a great machine to watch in operation.
 

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Smythe's Accordian Center

Liam McNamara