1906 “Bill” 4-Cycle Gas Engine Plans
Plans to build the 1906 “Bill” 4-Cycle Gas Engine Advertised by the Downing Engine Works of Des Plains, Illinois in 1906 for $125.00, the 3 horsepower “Bill” engine is somewhat of an enigma. A patent was issued to William A. Downing for the design but it is not known how many were actually produced, if any. The very simple and attractive engine was probably intended for light duty work such as pumping water, powering a grinding wheel or a small dynamo, etc. A listing for the “Bill” can be found on page 141 of American Gasoline Engines Since 1872 by C.H. Wendel. This is an approximate 1/3 scale model of the 1906 “Bill” engine. It runs on propane gas. On liquid fuel, due to the remoteness from the engine, the mixer soon gets cold from liquid fuel vaporization and after that the fuel doesn’t vaporize very well which results in ragged operation. A propane demand valve was made for it and running on propane solves that problem. I have to presume that the prototype engine encountered the same problems (it may have ran on illuminating gas), but there was no propane to the rescue back in those days! Engine operation on propane is a big plus. Valves and spark plug stay very clean and there is no smelly exhaust! I have been changing the crankcase oil every 10 running hours since break-in but it still looks new, so I am going to extend it to 20 hours. This wouldn’t be the case using a liquid fuel. “Bill” is machined and fabricated primarily of brass bar stock. The only castings used are the pipe elbows. The crankshaft runs on ball bearings, the cylinder has a cast iron liner and the piston is aluminum alloy. The plans set consists of 18 pages of drawings plus a page of construction notes. Included in the plans are a propane demand valve, radiator/water pump/fan and details on mounting a Hall sensor and magnet so that electronic ignition can be used without contact points. Specifications: Flywheel Dia.: 3.125″, Cylinder Bore: 1″, Piston Stroke: 1.250″, Engine Height: 6.85″ All of our plans projects are machined from metal bar stock (supplied by you, the builder) and no castings are required. This is the lowest cost way for you to build as the metals can usually be purchased from metal salvage yards for around $2.00 or so per pound for aluminum, brass and stainless steel. But as can be seen, most of the model engines are designed to look like they were in fact made from castings instead of rectangular blocks and round bars of metal. High precision machining is required. Experience building other types of engines from scratch is suggested.You will need a lathe and a milling machine with the usual tooling items. You will need a horizontal/vertical rotary table for your mill if you want to duplicate the visual design aspects of some of the projects – spoked flywheels, fluted columns etc., but the engines will operate just as well without those features. Please note – we do not have any ready to run engines or bolt together engine kits for sale. The plans are for model engines – the engines can be scaled to any size, but no claims of suitability for practical power generation are made. The Plans Set drawings are high quality computer generated drawings using a professional CAD (Computer Aided Design) program and printed on 8-1/2″ x 11″ sheets with a laser printer. This permits you to insert them in plastic sheet protectors so they won’t get soiled as you use them in the shop. Dimensions are in U.S. inch decimals – no fractions – which makes it easy for you to change the scale of your model to suit your machine tool capacity or the materials you have on hand or have access to. Multiply dimensions by 25.4 to obtain millimeter dimensions. NOTE: If you want your plans right away, send us a message with your email address and we will email you a link to download a PDF of the plans. If you are successful in downloading, we will cancel mailing of the hard copy and refund 80% of the eBay shipping cost. We are the owners of this copyrighted material. Sale or giving away our plans is strictly prohibited!
