I took advantage of the break in the weather to take it outside and set fire to it.
(If you don’t want to watch the video, keep reading below)
It runs!
I was absolutely made-up. It started up pretty much straight away (no doubt helped by me leaving the gas canister on its side, so there was an ‘ample sufficiency’ of gas for starting. I’m just using propane at the moment to see if it will actually work – for it to develop any real power, it’ll need to go on to liquid fuel (kerosene, etc.).
I was stunned by how smoothly it runs.
There are issues with the oil supply in the video – The pressure in the casing should have pushed a steady supply of lubricant (a mixture of 2 stroke oil and white spirit) through the injector pipe on the front of the engine and into the bearings. However, I took the tapping from wrong place – I thought I could get away with using the starting gas injector connection instead of tee-ing into the pressure gauge line, but this ends up being at a lower pressure than the bearings once the speed picks up, so the flow goes the wrong way (I have since realised!) Luckily, the bearings seem to have survived. This arrangement is only a temporary one for running on gaseous fuel. It will be ditched once I go onto liquid fuel (the liquid fuel will have some oil in it and there will be a bleed from the main fuel supply to the bearings).
I’m waiting on a few bits for the kerosene supply, but I can’t wait to get it set up!
