Month: September 2023

Getting the fuel strainer fixed (again) was the last thing to do to get the Kahlenberg ready to run. Here are pictures of the finished engine. Yeah, there are a few more things to do (such as machining main bearing drain plugs) but these are cosmetic and/or minor.

It’s been nearly seven years since I started this project. Time to see if it runs!

first run video

There you have it.

Here is a better, less chaotic video of the third run for the gang at BoatArt:

third run video

In preparation for running, each of the systems needed to be checked – air, fuel, oil and water. I started with fuel and quickly ran into a problem. I used a small gas tank for fuel. The system is gravity fed to a fuel strainer and from there to the fuel injector pumps and the torch tank. The fuel strainer had been split from water and freezing. This was covered in a prior post a few years ago. The first shop that did repairs unfortunately did a poor job. The fuel strainer was brazed but the body was badly warped. I had to do a lot of fine hand grinding to get the bronze cap to fit as the body was oblong. When fuel was added from the tank, the strainer leaked badly from many places.

Luckily I now have Crow Custom Cast Welding available to me to make proper repairs. Buck cut out all the brazing and properly repaired the cracked areas. I did not have high expectations of the strainer being repairable but Buck does amazing work. I don’t have a good picture of the finished product but it looks literally as good as new. The shape sprung back to round so the bronze cap fit again.

With fuel now in the system the injector lines were primed, which took a bit of time. I was able to verify that my injector calibrations were correct and performing as expected. It was then time to fire up the torches. The #1 torch had to be disassembled and recalibrated (and will need to be done again).

I check and calibrated all the oil pumps. I also still needed to overhaul the two oilers. I had purchased new ones but these turned out to not be satisfactory so I ordered some new material to make new site glass. The old oilers have some issues but they should work good enough.

Next up was the air starting system. The original air tank from the boat was mounted on the trailer and plumbed in with new hoses and fittings. It quickly became obvious that there was a problem with the air distributor. I tore it apart and discovered I had not sealed the lower shaft properly. This was kind of a head slapper. Once it was correctly packed, it worked as good as new.

But then the next problem reared up. I was told that 150psi of air would be needed but I had not given it a lot of thought. None of my compressors, including my big shop compressor, go above 135psi. The engine would painfully pull through two compressions but not fast enough to start. I bit the bullet and bought gas powered compressor with a cutout of 175psi. The engine wasn’t going to start without it. I mounted this onto the trailer as well and tied it into the big airtank for a total of about 170 gallons. Now I could get a few good revolutions at a speed good enough to start.

I used a 55 gallon plastic drum as a water reservoir. I’ll need to come up with some kind of cooling system for continuous running but this will work for now.

Time to see if it runs!

At some point in early August I realized there weren’t a lot of parts left to put on the engine and that it was actually going to get done. I kicked into overdrive and worked most every spare minute. I created a final punch list, which was a little bit of reality hit as the list was still pretty long. But I could smell it.

It was time to get the engine on a trailer. I didn’t want to add any more weight because my lifting mechanism wasn’t suitable for the completed engine (about 7200 pounds).

Once on the trailer, we installed the transmission. I don’t know what it weighs but it is heavy.

Next up was the flywheel. I had not got around to painting it prior to now. It needed a good cleaning and a light sanding. It came out looking good.

The engine came to me with some missing pieces on the throttle so there was still some machining to do. A conspicuous piece is the throttle handle. I was told this broke off a long time ago. There was a large bolt in its place but I wanted it to look original. A few years ago, I dimensioned one in the Gills Rock maritime museum so I had something to work from. Although lacking patina and wear, it came out looking good.

I had to make the metal stop behind the throttle lock. Again, I had dimensions from one in the maritime museum.

I’m not very artistic but I wanted to set off the cylinder cleanout port covers. There are very few parts which have the Kahlenberg name on them but these are prominent on the engine so I took the time to highlight the lettering.

Throughout this entire project, which included a house move and having the Kahlenberg parts in storage for two years, I’ve done a good job keeping parts organized, labeled and together. But I’ve known for quite a few weeks that I was missing two connecting rod nuts. I hadn’t misplaced anything else but I picked a heck of an item to lose. Each rod bearing is double nutted on each side. There are six short and six tall nuts. Two of the tall ones were not with the others. I spent a lot of hours scouring the shop but no luck. Regardless of what happened, I needed to replace them. Since they are hidden in the engine, I was going to buy new ones even if they didn’t exactly match the originals. But at that point I discovered the nuts have a bastard thread. They are 13/16″ thread with 11 threads per inch. Even Victor Machine, which in their catalog has 13 different thread sizes for a 13/16″ tap, doesn’t have one for 11tpi. I have no idea why Kahlenberg would have used such an odd thread (there might be a German engineering joke in there somewhere). I had no choice but to make my own. Please excuse the chatter in the threads. My boring bar was too small for this job but I didn’t feel like waiting to order a new one