Iconic Aircraft Aviation Forum

Is it still tight when clap cold? Curious as to you saying the pressure shot up to 100psi and lifting the safety. When heating you would have differential expansion of different components, but if it is tight when cold it might point to something being bent. Could be some muck in the regulator. I don't know what your local water is like, but if it is hard I would only run it on demineralised water. Just a few night shift ramblings.

RLN wrote:Is it still tight when clap cold? Curious as to you saying the pressure shot up to 100psi and lifting the safety. When heating you would have differential expansion of different components, but if it is tight when cold it might point to something being bent. Could be some muck in the regulator. I don't know what your local water is like, but if it is hard I would only run it on demineralised water. Just a few night shift ramblings.

Thanks RLN you could well be on to something,
Yes it is tight when cold,
The pressure shot up so fast mainly because I was loosing loads of pressure and water into the cab until I sealed it up so nothing to unusual going on at that point,
Some thing bent could be possible, I was reading an article last night about a guy who was rebuilding a simplex loco due to the whole frame being out of true so the axles were basically in a parallelogram.
One thing I have to remember is although its very old it is also very unused having only ever seen steam once before so I would rule out any muck in the system as its supper clean inside
The local water is not too hard but I ran up on rain water anyway just in case.
My plan is to split he motion by removing he con rods and see if the wheels are free if not then split the wheel sets down until it is, from what I understand of 0.6.0 loco's the center axel should be firm and the outer two should have some play in them but I will know more when I start stripping it

A case of 'a process of elimination'. Sounds straightforward but (as I know only too well) can be very frustrating and time consuming. However Dougs, it appears to me that you do indeed have a lot of patience and commitment to see this through. It's good news for us though - more detailed 'Progress Reports' and pics to look forward to

PW

Ok a quick update
The investigation,
To find the tight bit I started to remove the motion one axel at a time, first off tho I too the con rod's off to check the pistons, they are a little "sticky" but nothing bad that would cause the issues I am seeing so I looked at the axel drive cranks and found one of them is not in line ( I will explane about this later and why it's important) so I took the rear axel off and it was very free once off the loco I found some packers that were causing the axel boxes to twist I checked again and it was still too stiff so off came the front connection and the front (whie still in the frames was very free running) the middle axel, not so much it's definitely got issues. So it's a full strip down then and I do mean full


A nice box of parts to play with later

Here 'we' go then Dougs! Keep sending the pics
Looking forward to the next 'Update'.

PW

So, it's the Full Monty, eh ?

Danf.

Just caught up on this after a busy few days.... Looks like your well into fault finding mode...,hope you don't have anything left over when it's all back together . Thanks for the update

Mackrick wrote:Just caught up on this after a busy few days.... Looks like your well into fault finding mode...,hope you don't have anything left over when it's all back together . Thanks for the update

Hope fully not in fact I hope to be adding some bits (more of that later) I have found a few more bits that require some looking at and I am going to put the fault finding in to the 21st century once stripped down, I am going to get the frame checked on our CMM ( coordinate measuring machine) I will then have the data I want to check the squareness and how level it all is. This will give me a plan on how to shim the running gear and what I need to do to true everything up. The wheels will need to be checked so I am going to have to make a quartering jig, this is to check the cranks are set 90 deg to each other on the axels they don't need to be exactly 90deg but all three do need to be the same. Unfortunately I can see that at least one set is out of true.
Been busy,
It all comes apart a lot quicker now I know how to strip it down

Boiler off

Removed some bits and glass polished them,

I will post an update soon on the refurb of the reversing lever it's looking. Awesome

Thanks Dougs. This looks as though it's going to get really interesting

PW

just a small update
one of the best looking and functional things on the loco IMO is the reversing lever I have always been keen on it and for some reason its always been the first thing i would play with when 'fiddling' with the train as a kid seems to be a family thing as my son is odly drawn to fiddle with it too (he almost squashed my fingers last week moving it forward and back while my digits were fixing the valve gear )so here is how it looked when i got the loco

and after i had 'cleaned it up a bit' and oiled the begeesus out of it

as i am taking the loco completely to bits i removed it and decided it was going to get the 'premuim package makeover' so i put it in the glass bead polish machine and volia one set of very clean and de corroded parts.

and then a coat of paint and a loose reasemble to check nothing was fouling

Finished article needs freeing up and some small touch up's

i have now enamaled the lever and ratchet in red leaving the very tops bare metal however i could not reasemble untill the paint was totaly dry so i will pop the parts together tonight and post a pic up of the result. i am looking forward to seeing it i think it going to be pretty cool although it may mean i end up having to do the same to all the other cab controls i wouldnt want it looking out of place

A remarkable 'before' and 'after' transformation Yes, I too am fascinated by the 'Reverser/Cut-Off' Levers on Steam Locomotives. However, those on the 'Bulleid Pacifics' ('original' and 'rebuilt') are not levers, as such, at all

PW

34053 wrote:A remarkable 'before' and 'after' transformation Yes, I too am fascinated by the 'Reverser/Cut-Off' Levers on Steam Locomotives. However, those on the 'Bulleid Pacifics' ('original' and 'rebuilt') are not levers, as such, at all

PW

you may want to have a look at this then one of the best examples of modeling I have ever seen
http://www.bulleidlocos.org.uk/%28S%28ekn40rk1wmooynsoj1udxi0t%29%29/_wc/wcBernard.aspx

Absolutely amazing What a fantastic model; I would just love to have one of those Thanks for that Dougs; very much appreciated.

PW

Now that's what I call shiny........

While we have " posh loco's" up this one is a bit good too
http://britanniabuilder.com/Steaming180911.jpg

What a magnificent working Live Steam model of 'Oliver Cromwell'. Wouldn't you just love that running round your garden (if your garden was big enough - which mine certainly isn't ).

PW

34053 wrote:What a magnificent working Live Steam model of 'Oliver Cromwell'. Wouldn't you just love that running round your garden (if your garden was big enough - which mine certainly isn't ).

PW

the big model loco's a awsome i could spend a day just looking round them picking out details unfortunately the cost of building them goes up as well as the skill required to machine the parts, For instance building a "small" loco like mine would cost around 2.5K upwards to build a 4,6,0 or bigger would cost at least double, everything is soo expensive on these things the castings all cost hundreds and the boilers well that can be anything from £150 for materials only to 6k plus for a tig welded boiler, that level of comitment requires very deep pockets and more importantly a very understanding wife so for me its only ever going to be a distant dream of owning one of those monsters however i am still having loads of fun working on the little one's. its like engineering time travel lol

I have a devious and cunning plan how to fix the running problem I will detail it in my next this post, and is going to involve a whole load of measurement and computer work

update,the stripdown is going well,
removed the reversing bar

ash pan and running boards removed

all the brakes and linkages removed

staring to remove the pumps 1off oil and 1off water also found another shim in the axel block obviously an effort to get rid of the problem outlined below



ok onto my big plan;
first off remove all the chassis and wheels (underway)
then have the wheels checked on the CMM (to find the position of the crank pins) the reason for this is obvious later when you see by diagram below.
then check the chassis for twist and make sure all the wheels are going to sit level (hornblock position) is not going to be much good if the center wheel set is 1mm above the rails!
the diagram shows a side view and explanes what is required to allow the wheels to do there job


to fix the problem of distance or angle errors the rods need to be very slightly adjusted to suit any errors (unless i want to make the whole lot again to areospace tolerances) the play in the system has to be more than the errors else it will lock up so the more the error the more sloppy i would have to make the motion to suit, to get round this i have come up with a plan, after i get all the measurements back from the cmm i can build a cad model and draw the errors up if they are not massive (shouldnt be or else it would not have worked at all) then the following fix should work,

i can rotate the outside bushes to lenghten or shorten the coupling rods to set it up then I can then fix the outside bushes and every thing should rotate nicely
TBC i am going to lie down now all this thinking is making my pea brain hurt

Mmmmmm. You have obviously given this a lot of thought, Dougs. Seems feasible enough. The 'proof of the pudding....' and all that- I'll be very interested to know how you get on.

PW

The geometry makes sense to me ...even if I did check the diagrams and text 3 times.
Have you got the necessary bushes or are you going to have to modify existing ones?
Hope it works

I'm so glad that I may have mentioned something could be bent.

Good GOD, Dougs

Does this mean you are (Gasp!)

A PERFECTIONIST??????



Heaven Help Us ALL!!!!!!!

Danf.

Dougs wrote:
i can rotate the outside bushes to lenghten or shorten the coupling rods to set it up then I can then fix the outside bushes and every thing should rotate nicely
TBC i am going to lie down now all this thinking is making my pea brain hurt

Unless the required adjustment is the same at both ends, the line through the three centres won't be straight after the adjustment. Unless the opposite side coupling rod has an identical error, you may still have binding after assembly.

Would it be possible to bush and redrill the coupling rods as a pair, and adjust for any remaining length errors by shimming the axle bearing boxes?

Mackrick i will have to make new bushes as the current ones are concentric so wont allow adjustment i have loads of barstock so not really a very big job
RLN yes thanks for that lol all the bits are as far as i can see pretty tuff and are WAY over engineered as in the full size versions only more so because of the scale reduction i would bet if you were to do a stress analysis you could "loose" 95% of the metal and still do the job.
Dan4th "A PERFECTIONIST??" most definately not sir!!! rough ar$e with delusions of grandeur may be, but never a per-thingy-me-bob
Sooty the rods are near as darn it spot on, its the 90 deg cranking that i am woried about there is alot of play in the horn blocks already as it should be, so the axel boxes can move up down, side to side etc. the ecentric bushes will only be required to give a little of extra slack to the system, so the two sides will 'play nice' together afterall the amount of binding is fairly small. After my measure up session i will know exactly where the faults lie and will hopefully come up with a more exacting plan. I should have enough data to know exactly where and how much i need to fix, something i am sure would have been very usefull to my great grandfather, if he had the technology in the 60's.

edit " I have looked up ecentric bushes and odly enough its an already tried and tested trick used by locobuilders to fix this type of issue so i am more hopefull that it may work now, but untill i am all measured up i wont know for sure"

Sounds promising ......

I'm impressed.

PW