superheater

After much steaming here in florida, I found that  water consumption is greater then predicted. What the problem seems to be is there is no superheat on our boilers. A friend here has a stanley and confirmed the problem. He also showed me a superheater design for our derr boilers. It uses 10' 0f  3/4"" by sch 80  pipe and will be mounted at the bottom of the tube nest closest to the burner. This will give the required superheat. I will be building it this spring and posting photos.

does anyone know the series of steel used in our boilers. Need to know for superheater. dean can have the info.

Got around to making a super heater for the Derr boiler that's in our cars. It is made from sch 80 pipe and sch 80 weldable 90 des and 180 degs fittings. not quite finished yet. When finished it will 8 feet long and will be mounted below the tube nest so the burner flame will strike it. It is TIG welded using 7018 filler rod. The pipe used is 1/2".
             

this is a good discussion on the building of super heater

https://steamautomobile.com:8443/ForuM/read.php?1,27985

almost done

New photos of super heater. also new SS boiler housing. The old one was badly rusted ,distorted and burnt. The boiler is upside down to show the super heater. When in the car, the super heater will be next to the burner flame.
The super heater is clamped to the tubes to prevent it from moving around when its hot. It was TIG welded with 7018 wire. The boiler housing was redesign so the  access covers can be removed from the bottom without removal from the car, to service and clean boiler The boiler housing is bolted together with 1/4"-20 hex heads bolts. No sheet metal screws.This was done because the boiler housing carries the weight of the boiler.  

 

cleaning the boiler  you can see the super heater mounted    

The boiler rework is going well, a bit slower then I would like. The new SS housing is finished, it is bolted together using 1/4"-20 machine screws with lock washers, the super heater is installed, 1" thick insulation board is installed using SS 1/4" wire mesh to hold it in place. A new deflecting 1/4" SS baffle was installed and bolted to the welded one. The old sheet metal one was very badly burnt. Haven't cut the exhaust opening in the housing yet, the boiler will be placed in the car then the location will be determined at that time as to where the best place will be for it so it will not interfere with anything below. All the valves, both check and shutoff are going to be replaced  with SS ones found   that are good for 1000 psi. the problem with the old ones is that there were only rated for 125 psi and would not shut off  easy. all pipe and valves before the shut off valves and check should be sch 80 after the valve some guys use sch 40. 

Hi, Looks very interesting! I am building a mk2 Lykamobile and no provision has ben provided by STW to shut the burner off in the event of  (an un-noticed) low boiler water level arising! I understand that you have already designed such a circuit that I can build and install which would take care of this situation. Please could you let me have a copy of that circuit diagram (I assume it is good for 'go' and works!)? I will be happy to pay you for the information if required!?
Many thanks
Kind regards
Greg Powell (Goliewogs)

yes, I could send you the info to build it. but it may be easier if I build it for you since I have the etched  board and all the components. it up to you. The board fits into the same housing. I haven't seen the new lika yet is it the same control as the old one.

Hi jjtjr, Sorry,I don't know your name yet! Anyway, many thanks for responding to my query and, if I may, I would like to take you up on your kind offer of building a circuit board for me please! From what I have read, the board will provide other functions as well (?) other than just boiler low water level. However, all I need is just burner shutoff in the event of boiler water low. The new mk2 Lykamobile is a Firetube boiler and also the electrics have been radically simplified since the mk1 For example, there is now no nice little Brass 'console' with a key in it - it is now just a plastic affair which sits under the floor but at least it does tell you the state of the batteries (Only!). There is now provision for tank water levels - there will only be a simple clear tube running up the side of the tanks to give a visual state of remaining water. But, there is going to be a sight glass to give a visual indication on the state of the boiler level - to me this is insufficient!! As yet I am not sure if there will be a steam "manifold" as such as there was in the mk1 - in any case there must be something that can be modified to have a "probe" inserted for your electronics! So, and I dont mind doing this, your electronics will have to be installed in a separate little box all of its own I think - no problem!

So, yes I would be grateful if you could produce this for me, with circuit diagram and installation guide - also please could you give me some idea of the cost! Lookforward to hearing from you
Many thanks and kindest regards

Greg

Hi Greg, My name is Jim trotta, I'm a B.S. E.E   retired. I designed the  new board because the original one was not the best.  The new one has some extra circuits that will shut off the burner in the event of low water and also has a automatic bypass for high water to prevent from over filling the boiler. You can use the manual bypass if you like but I found that I never used it, I just let the circuit control the water level. As in the original board the new one has a battery level indicator which is four LED's  that reads voltage  and displays it as  
Full, ( green )
3/4  ( green )
1/2  ( yellow )
1/4  ( red )

In total there are three vertical  rows of LEDS indicators  
Battery
water tank level
boiler level
also a red led light flashes when you are low on fuel.

They  measure the same levels as above

I  also redesign the boiler manifold  I can send you a photo.

The price for the board is $120.00  USD   plus shipping. I also include the drawings and extra chips and detail instruction on the set up. I will need to see the wiring of your car. The board was made as a direct replacement for the model 1 lika. I've been using it since  2010, also there are quite of other guys using the new board. If you look at  link below

If you go to this link you will what all of us did to our lika over the years

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Likamobile/info  

I posted changes that I made and still making. Look in the photo section

Its best if you e mail me directly at jjtjr@yahoo.com   it would be faster.
I have more photos will send from my home computer
I've learned a lot over the years driving the car and made changes to improve the design.

Here are some photos of a new manifold that I made from sch 80 pipe welded with 7018 rod to replace the old type
The sensors are now vertical.

The boiler is going back into car. Had to relocate a few items to make everything fit

Update on superheater, been driving the car for a month now with superheater. Two things that are most noticeable is water usage is down and power is much greater then before.

Another item is a adjustment on the wayne oil burner. I am using a 2.0 gph nozzle and the wayne burner comes preset with a 140 psi pump setting. But with that nozzle and pressure the oil delivery is 2.5 gph and the fire box of the boiler is a bit small which seems to cause smoke, what I did was to reduce the pump pressure to 100 psi smoke seems to be gone,the nozzle specs are using 100 psi to determine gph.

The new boiler sensing setup works well. The upper level sensor automatically bypass water back to tanks when boiler is full, as you drive the led indicator on the dash showing when in the bypass mode, will go on and off so as to keep the boiler above the 3/4 mark. I still have the manual lever on the side to use if anything fails. But don't need it as of yet. One of the advantage of this setup is you can adjust the length of the sensors by just cutting them off at the end. When i first installed it I made them longer then needed and cut them off as required to get the correct water level using the glass gauge on the side of the car. This type of system does not give you any false boiler water level readings

Been driving with the superheater for some time now it makes a difference as said on my other posts. With water use down from when there was no superheater. Power was a big gain. I had a discussion on superheaters on another site. They said that bending the pipe was a better way to do it. My problem was the tight space that it had to fit into, so tig welding was used, they said that the superheater will move around when heated like a snake on a hot plate. To over come this the adjacent tubes that touched were welded together and the complete superheater was clamped in three locations to prevent movement so far this is working. For those who don't have one i highly recommend one. I installed a pyrometer to check exhaust temp the sensor is at the output stack on the bottom of the car. The temp reading is from 400* F to 900*F depending on run time of the burner. Its like driving a car with a turbocharger.

Since i've been driving the car every few days, I find that the displacement lubricator does not seem to injecting enough steam oil into the cylinders with the superheater. I decided to install a mechanical oiler that runs off the crosshead. This will inject oil into the steam pipe at the engine. The oiler that I purchased is from Locoparts and is the largest one that they make. I will take photos when the installation is done.

jjtjr I see you say your exhaust is between 400F to 900F with the superheater. Do you have a handle on what range the steam is actually superheated too? I'm just wondering if you need to go that high in steam temperature and possibly a superheater with less than the 8 feet would give you comparable performance while reducing your engine's needs for more steam oil.
Grier

Not too sure how to measure steam temp at the engine. May be a thermocouple on the pipe where it goes into the engine ?

This is how I'm planning to measure the temp of superheat going to the engine. As of now the temp being measured with a probe and pyrometer is at the exhaust of the boiler, Which is not the temp of the steam. Another thermocouple probe will be placed into the cover of the steam chest, since I already have a tapped hole in the cheat with a plug. The probe will be mounted there. The same pyrometer that is used for exhaust temp will now have a switch so it can be switched from exhaust to steam chest. This setup will show steam temp vs. exhaust temp. This setup to the engine is possible because there is a 1901 mason engine in the car.

Just installed a thermocouple on steam chest, I will now be able to measure superheat temp at the engine.

Since there is a superheater the engine paint burnt so it was repainted with Hi temp paint and the displacement oiler was replaced with a mechanical oiler and using superheater steam oil

Have you made any temperature measurements of the steam chest probe with your new setup? Curious to see how different the temperature measurements are from the exhaust readings and the steam chest readings.