Good video on Hit and Miss engines

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We have a customer that has 2 of them. One is a 3hp model that is approximately 500lbs! He also has a 3rd that runs every revolution. He fired up the big one for me one day- very neat! The carb is just an adjustable poppet valve that opens under suction. You can adjust the amount of fuel that is sucked through. Also spark is provided via an electric fence battery- no spark plug at all! He said they used a different type back in the day, but a six volt fencer battery does fine now. He grew up helping his father on the farm, using it to run an elevator.
 
I wonder how much fuel those use in a hour. I've seen an ice cream vendor using a hit and miss engine to drive an ice cream churn at fairs.
 
I never saw one until I came to North America, I wonder why?

The engine only 'Misses' when it's not really doing anything.
I imagine the temptation is to leave the engine idling, rather than re-start it.
 
Originally Posted By: Bluestream
My friends older brother making a Hit and Miss engine



Tell him I'd rather hear the engine than the music.
 
Originally Posted By: expat
I never saw one until I came to North America, I wonder why?

The engine only 'Misses' when it's not really doing anything.
I imagine the temptation is to leave the engine idling, rather than re-start it.


No, it "misses" to maintain speed- put a real load to it and it will "hit" every time. An early form of a governor.
 
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Originally Posted By: spasm3
I wonder how much fuel those use in a hour. I've seen an ice cream vendor using a hit and miss engine to drive an ice cream churn at fairs.


They're very easy on fuel. I work with a guy who's very mechanical. Recently he's been going to auctions and picking up all sorts of interesting stuff. He's brought to work a couple of carburetors that are ~100 years old that he's rebuilding. He also recently got a vertical hit & miss engine that he's refurbishing (he got a vertical engine because they are a bit unusual).

Anyway, he used a hit & miss engine in the past to run a cement mixer all day. I think he said it used less than a tank of gas. A modern small engine would have been hammering away all day and gone through several tanks of gas. We talked about it a bit. The modern small engine runs way hotter that an old hit & miss, so we figured a lot of the wasted energy was in the form of heat coming off the engine.
 
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