With a few simple parts and tools, you could change a regular gasoline car engine into a steam engine. Or, you could design an engine to change itsself on the fly.
You would first replace the camshaft(s) to elliminate the combustion and compression strokes. Then take out the whole cooling system and replace it with insulation for the engine block. Finally, replace the intake manifold with a more robust and insulated model with tubes and valves leading to a boiler, and route the exhaust up into the smokestack.
I'm not sure why someone would change their car into a steam locomotive, but this is how you would do it.-- discontinuuity, Jul 15 2005 Oh yes, I know their were steam powered cars. I was just reminded of an episode of Junkyard Wars (Scrapheap Challenge in the UK) where teams put boilers and steam engines in cars and raced them. It seemed a shame to use those tiny little steam engines the show provided instead of rigging something up with duct tape and welding rod.-- discontinuuity, Jul 15 2005 I'm imagining Formula Steam, and the fun at pit stops.-- Ling, Jul 15 2005 Light weight boilers weren't too difficult - you need to get away from the idea of storing large amounts of high pressure steam. The best steam cars just had a long pipe with water entering at one end and steam leaving at the other. This meant that there was little steam in the system at any one time, which was obviously safer than a boiler in an accident.-- david_scothern, Jul 15 2005 I don't want to have to fill the back seat of my car with coal, but a dashboard firebox would be neat, and would allow me to make fried egg sandwiches whilst stuck in M25 jams. OTOH, I don't want to have to get up at four in the morning to light it.-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Jul 15 2005 //but this is how you would do it.//No, that isn't how you would do it.-- ldischler, Dec 08 2005 How would you do it, [ldischler]? I was trying to find a way to turn a regular 4-stroke engine into a 2-stroke steam engine. Did you mean that it would be easiest to adapt a 2-stroke gasoline engine?
I know that there are currently some small commuter cars being developed that can run on either compressed air or gasoline, so it wouldn't be that hard to do something similar with steam.
I agree that having a boiler on a moving car would be difficult, but I don't really see how a "steam tube" is any different from a very long boiler.-- discontinuuity, Dec 09 2005 you are forgetting stationary use-- supershnitzel, Sep 28 2006 You want to burn pencils?-- Ling, Sep 29 2006 random, halfbakery