The Mobile Steam Society of Oak Ridge, Tennessee produced this kerosene fired monotube boiler VW steam car.  It has many miles of running.  The engine is a Hirth three cylinder snow mobile two cycle engine modified with new cylinders and smaller pistons than the original.  It is a bash valve uniflow with a mushroom shaped bash or bump valve.  This valve design is much better than a ball bearing

Bob Edwards and Tom Kimmel

because the part of the valve that seats is not hit by the actuating pin.  It is also lighter than a spherical shape and thus has a much larger steam flow area.  The boiler produces 500 pounds of steam per hour.  It is the same boiler asthe shop boiler.  The car has many pumps to purge and separate the water from the oil and assist the condenser.  It is a completelycondensing vehicle.  Everything that is

needed for a steam car is present in this vehicle and it is a good example of what is needed.  It would probably be better with a larger platform to install the steam power plant in, but the fact that it works is the miracle and that is even more of a miracle because it was made and designed by a committee of nuclear engineers in their spare time.

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After having good chemically treated water with morphiline and other good chemicals it sat for years and the chemicals oxidized or otherwise disappeared and then the engine seized up. 

We had to bang on it with a large hammer to break it free.  The really clever design here is the uniflow exhaust manifold.  Instead of fabricating one to go around the ports, a larger cylinder was placed over the working cylinder and the steam went into this space.  It is a much easier fabrication system.  Bob Edwards guaranteed the car to run and he has made a number of trips to my shop from Tennessee to work on it.  The car is not a neat package and the reason is because every time some new issue came up another jack shaft was installed and a few more pumps were added. 

What it is is a very good schematic diagram.  It would have been much better and easier if the whole thing had been bread boarded first and perfected and then crammed into the space available.  The main problem is that it was painted University of Tennessee Orange.