"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:10:55 -0800, "Steve B"
wrote:


"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:22:57 -0800 (PST), Jim Wilkins
wrote:

On Nov 24, 1:44 am, "Steve B" wrote:
...but said that no one who had ever ridden it anywhere
would take it anywhere near that high speed.

Steve

I've heard that about Stanley Steamers, too. They had the suspension
of a horse-drawn wagon.

The Stanley Steamer was about 50 years ahead of it's time, then the
auto industry took a left turn to internal combustion and never looked
back.

If they could mass-produce the boilers so they were an easy swap-out
when they had problems, they would be the answer to lots of our energy
problems.

Because you can run a boiler on practically anything that will burn,
as long as you can come up with a burner for a liquid or a stoker to
feed it in. Used vegetable oil, wood pellets, ground corncobs...

And with computers it could start and run itself safely, and only
need a few minutes warmup before you could drive.

We know how to build a suspension system now.

-- Bruce --

Hmmmmmmmmmm. That would be an interesting metalworking project. You'd
get
to be in ALL the parades, get on Good Morning America, get to have lunch
with liberal political photo ops. That would be good. Except for the
liberal political photo ops part.

The boiler section is long proven nsafe and efficient, just dust off
the Stanley design, scale it up and down in fixed steps for future
backwards replacement compatibility (16" 20" and 24" sizes at a stated
output...) because they do wear out, and start building.

The burner and stoker (for solid fuels) and the control systems are
the big bugaboo that will take some serious work. Triple expansion
motors and Condensers are easy, but getting the cylinder oil out of
the water before you feed it back to the boiler it is always a
challenge.

Modernizing the controls and sensors so it can run automatically and
unattended isn't bad, they have continued building steam boilers - you
just have to miniaturize control gear built for a 100MW power plant
down to the proper size to work on a car.

To modernize the handling of solid fuel, you'll need a little robot with a
shovel, who sings "16 Tons" while he's stoking the boiler.

--
Ed Huntress