Building the Feeney 15cc Four-stroke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  THIS PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

 

In these pages, we'll look at the construction of a replica of the first four-stroke model engine to be sold commercially in the United States; the Leeja designed "Feeney". The Feeney is not an especially attractive engine, nor was it a great success commercially, possibly due to some of its questionable design features. I obtained the casting kit for this engine from Art DeKalb (see Model Engine News, October 2003) in trade for some work I'd done on a steam engine. So why not put it under the bench with all the other bits and pieces? The answer lies in a part that was missing from the kit. The Feeney valve cams use skew gears to place cam shaft and crankshaft at 90 degrees to each other. These are not gears you're going to find in anybody's catalogue. They are left-hand, 40DP, 20PA, cut at 60 and 30 degrees respectively for driver and driven (see Model Engine News, December 2003 for why this is so). Art supplied the drive gear, but had run out of the "driven" gears. When I saw this, I though to myself ho-hum, here's one that will never get built. But the more I thought about it, the more I began obsessing over that missing gear. One thing led to another and before I actually realized it, I'd started building the engine so I could make and test the skew gear!

The links below give the history of the engine, and the construction by component group, beginning with that pesky skew gear.

  1. History
  2. Cutting the Skew Gear
  3. Crankshaft
  4. Crankcase
  5. Cylinder and Liner
  6. Valves and Rockers
  7. Cams and Camshaft
  8. Piston, Rod and Rings
  9. Fuel and Ignition Systems
  10. Assembly and Testing

 

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