Snip ------

If you continue to heat the water the pressure will continue
to build eventually bottoming out the piston and cause a major
failure somewhere else. Steam boilers are known for blowing
up from time to time.

If you have steam coming out of your cowl in a simple pressure can
system with a pressure relief cap you can back off on the power and find
a place to land while you still have some coolant left in the engine.
If you are lucky the engine temp will drop low enough at reduced power
to stop generating steam. In other words you have a warning.

With an accumulator system the first warning is a burst radiator
with all the coolant departing overboard shortly through the hole.

Just like a steam locomotive engineer you need to keep your
eye on the temp pressure gage.

Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.

----------------------------------------------------------
Paul, sorry I'm really boring about this but

I'm sure I said that, you still have to have a pressure relief valve.
I just called it a blow-off valve. No matter what you must have a relief
valve otherwise the if something does go wrong,  then the scenario you
mentioned would happen.

Cooling systems are always a balance between temperature and pressure,
always have been. :)
Doesn't matter what the type engine it is or used for. Even air cooled
only engines have the same sort of balance!

Steam coming out from the cowl, you will still get that even with a
floating piston system.
You must still have a pressure relief system (old style radiator cap) at
the highest point on the engine.
The older type ones do fine with this canister as only once things have
started to go really wrong do they start
to release steam due to really bad excess pressure. They are excess
pressure relief only caps. They will only do
this if something horrible has gone wrong such as a broken water pump
belt. You still get the steam thing
anyway under the "Houston we have problem" scenario.

I will call this a must, install an air pressure gauge either electric
or tube type and at least
low and high pressure warning indicators. Call this the early warning
before you get steam or if
a hose burst it has been known to happen then you will get a pressure
loss warning Between pressure gauges,
pressure warning lights, temperature gauge & temperature warning light.
One would expect to be able
to take applicable action having been warned.

Pressure will only build to an excessive level if things have already
gone badly wrong otherwise
the canister will maintain the typical balance you expect of any cooling
system.


BTW the piston cannot bottom out it is just not possible to put that
much pressure into the canister.

You can run the pressure relief slightly higher than you otherwise might
under a regular atmospheric coolant can,
not too high though, excessive pressure will do bad things in the end.

When things are working properly.....
which is all the time one hopes :) ..... you have cooling system that is
always in balance.


Regards David Gaze


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