While relating a need to faculty for a power plant to make use of a new dish design, I was informed that there was an old stirling engine donated to Cal Poly from Nasa boxed up in a crate somewhere on campus, and that if I wanted to open it up and work on it,  it would save them the expense of having to hire someone to haul it off. So I found the engine, uncrated it and hauled it off to the garage where it was disassembled and inspected. It appears to be in excellent condition, except that it is missing the power pistons and the displacers. It appears to be a United Stirling 4-95. This machine, or a derivative of it has been used in solar assemblies for several years. Unfortunately United Stirling no longer exists, and the company who took them over, some Swedish conglomerate, has not returned my calls. So the plan is for this project to take measurements of all part's dimensions and record them in a CAD file. Then see if we can figure out what parts can be remanufactured to get it running again. The only part of it that I can't be sure of until I can put a pressure tester on it, are the heater coils. They look fairly well used and I can't tell if some of the brazing joints have separated.

    This project will remain low priority until I can find material to replace the missing parts.