This is a Mamod SP5 MKI. It is very much a beloved present I received back as a child in the mid 1980s. I’m not quite sure which year or whether it was a birthday or Christmas, but I do know this particular model was discontinued in 1985.
Having a bit of a declutter around the workshop the last few weeks and was able to pull this out of the back of storage, and at that point it was looking a little “tired”, with the brass ad copper heavily tarnished and some signs of mineral deposits around the filling cap and whistle. what followed was several hours stripping down the fittings as best I could before a lot of gentle and not so gentle polishing with the help of a Dremel.
Firing up today, I found that the solid fuel tablets I had were not as effective as the more traditional Mamod branded ones, and as a result you are seeing a lot more condensed steam as seen in the video as it struggled to build up enough heat and pressure to run the engine cleanly.
Looking online, it seems harder to purchase verifiable hexamine tablets (I’m wary of the “drop shipping specials” on Amazon), and where it is available, it’s quite expensive by the time you include shipping.
In an impulsive purchase, now am waiting for a Butane gas conversion kit to arrive, which should be much cheaper and easier to run as I have butane gas already, and it is also cheap and easy to get. I’ll post an update when all that arrives and hopefully we’ll see the engine with less sputtering!