[SEL] Novo

[Allen Home]

Hi Dave

    Good job on your Novo. Looks very much like my Novo.  Have a look at 
my 1915? Novo on my home page. I have it running between 180 to 200 rpm, 
firing only 6 times a minute. It does load up with oil and carbon that 
has to be burnt out with some high speed running every once in a while. 
I was fortunate with my engine which was given to me free by a friend of 
my sister in Petrolia, Ontario, Canada. I had to drive it back across 
Canada 2,800 miles between Christmas and New Years in 1995 in the back 
of my camper van. The exterior was rusty and pitted from rat poop;  but 
the engine was not stuck. There were no frost breaks because the top had 
been covered. The piston was at TDC and the valves were closed 
thankfully. With such an engine there is no way for water to get in with 
things in this position. It had no mixer which turned out to be 
significant. The engine had sat outdoors in the same sheep paddock for 
at least 60 years and later was put inside a pig pen building, attached 
to a grain chopper but  with no final alignment for running,  for about 
10 to 20  years When I finally started rebuilding this gem, I found the 
impossible had happened! It was brand new! No wear on anything; valves 
still had lapping marks; babbit was still dull, not shined up with wear; 
no cylinder wear; NADA! No rust inside at all. I refinished the 
exterior, put in gas and oil, sealed all the interior fittings of 
inspection panels and bearing blocks with silicone sealer (must do this 
to stop leakage of much oil because manufacturer's machining was always 
very poor for such fittings in this vintage) ; built a special crankcase 
breather to equalize pressures in the oil sump; attached a 6 volt buzz 
box ignition ; flipped the flywheels twice and she started running 
great. Many fine adjustments later; particularly mixer check valve; 
restricting the intake size on mixer; piping changes; and tweeking the 
spring tensions of latch and flywheel weight allows the slow running. I 
have now run this beauty for about 60 hours and it is just starting to 
break-in. The reason we have determined the engine was new is because 
Charlie Fairbanks, the son of the original buyer of the engine in 
Petrolia, figured that it was due to the fact that Petrolia is the site 
of the first working oil well in North America ( yes, check it out 
Pennsylvania and Texas). They never found a suitable mixer to run the 
engine on the raw crude they were bringing up from shallow oil wells in 
the area. They just abandoned the engine through disinterest until I 
came along and heard Charlie talking in a restaurant dinner we were 
having with some Industrial Archeologists from Canada and United States. 
He was telling someone about this old engine and I leaped up and said he 
should not waste the engine and that I could do something about it. He 
gave it to me that night, sight unseen. Sometimes you get lucky with 
engines and even with women!  BTW, Petrolia or nearby Oil Springs  is 
the place where most of the leather valves for oil and water pumps for 
most old equipment in the world are made by a small back alley company 
that Charlie's dad started in the beginning of the 1900's and still is 
in operation.

Jeff Allen, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada  

http://webspace.oanet.com/jeff/


>
>
>> From: "Dave Ernst" <shop at cccomm.net>
>> Reply-To: The SEL email discussion list 
>> <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
>> To: "The SEL email discussion list" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
>> Subject: [SEL] Novo
>> Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:16:28 -0800
>>
>> Finished up the Novo I started earlier this year. When I first 
>> cranked it up
>> after purchasing it smoked terribly. After tearing it down, I didn't 
>> find
>> anything terribly wrong, so I cleaned it up, gave it a ring and valve 
>> job
>> and now it runs fine. I have the RPM down to less than 300, and when 
>> I have
>> run it some to break in the rings a little better I will see how slow 
>> I can
>> make it run. I'm looking for 150 to 200 RPM if that's possible.
>> Pics of the project are at
>> http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=3009545&a=31525987&vt=vp
>> I bought a couple of engines at the Turlock swap meet this last 
>> weekend, a
>> Monitor and an Ottawa. Their pics are at the bottom.
>> Dave
>
>
>
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