"MikeMandaville" wrote in
message
ups.com...
Last year I bought a diesel truck, an '83
half-ton Volkswagen Rabbit,
with the idea of rebuilding the engine, and then
running it on recycled
cooking oil. Now I am giving serious thought to
converting it to
steam.

The idea of being able to power my truck with
solid fuel is one which I
find to be greatly appealing. At the time I
decided to convert to
diesel, I was looking for an economical means of
moving foundry coke
from Alabama to Texas. With a gasoline powered
vehicle, the cost of
the gasoline would exceed the cost of the coke
by one full magnitude.
Interestingly, for about the first century of
their existence, most
steam powered road vehicles which I have read
about seem to have run on
coke.

In the nineteen-fifties, the Sentinel truck
company sold several
hundred steam trucks to the government of
Argentina. These trucks were
used for hauling coal. Of course, these trucks
burned part of their
load to power their boilers. I see no reason
why the Argentinian
solution should not work for me also.

Any comments?

Well, we actually have a Sentinel truck at the
Science Museum where I volunteer, and I would
suggest that you plan on making a few improvements
on the Sentinel design ,if you are going to do
this. The damned thing needs two people to operate
it. One steers it and controls throttle, while the
other one shovels coal at a hell of a rate. I'd
plan on a mechanical stoker for starters.
The Argentineans also used them for hauling
timber and used a lot of off cuts. The boiler is
cast steel and uses a steel coil as a superheater.
Ours is off the road at the moment as the feed
water pump suffered a terminal accident
recently,breaking the casting that is part of the
engine/gearbox assembly. The rear wheels are
driven by 1 1/4 pitch chains , so we just pulled
off the chains and towed it back to the shed. we
will probably start work on it again next month
when the new financial year starts. There is no
consensus yet as the best way to repair it. We may
weld it up with nickel rod or get Metal Stitch to
quote on "cold welding" it

I guess your plan is possible but I'd spend a lot
of time thinking about it before I committed too
much time or money on it.

Tom