Update Winter 04
Carrying on from the summer up-date where the last view was of our technical officer Mr Steve madge and the rest of the gang looking into the engine plotting what to do next, the following week the power unit was moved down to the gantry and the decision made by Steve was to remove the pistons and liners from A bank, one of the first things to remove to allow us to climb all over the top were these push rod assemblies which had to be unbolted and lifted. On removal we inspected the roller bearings of which each assembly has three in the big brass casting seen at the bottom of this view. Surface corrosion was found on them but not too bad. Since this view was taken these assemblies have been dismantled overhauled and where necessary painted and now await re-assembly. The long rods attached to the rockers, which have also just started to be overhauled.
This view shows one of the liners just having been removed from the power unit. The pistons were all removed first and then the liners were removed mainly so that we can inspect the condition of the liner seal, which you cannot see in this view but is like a large rubber 'o' ring. Although the engine had only 3000 hours it had stood idle for 17 years and we wanted to be sure that the said 'o' ring had not perished. We also found once all the liners were removed that the water jacket (this is the large casting that the liners sit in) was full of debris and one of our helpers (benefactors) Mr Steve Benniston picked out a large piece of cardboard - god knows where that came from! and the damage it could have caused. This made the whole exercise even more worth while. Once the 6 liners had their bores cleaned we came back down to earth when we found one liner with a deep score and two liners with severe corrosion marks, in the new year we will have these machined to remove the scores. I measured the bores and we have sufficient material to remove the marks from the bores and, for the record, all of the liners measured perfectly round with no tapering in them and for the engineering minded people were all within .005 thou (imperial).
The pistons and liners were removed to our container and placed in piston stands, we only have enough stands to hold 6 pistons, which is another reason why we are only working on one engine bank at a time (our loco has 12 pistons). this view shows one of the removed pistons and shell bearing removed from the crank arm showing to the experts amongst you the damage to the while metal bearing surface. This is one of two damaged shell bearings which the group have got to replace. The pistons themselves and the rings are all in good condition and we will shortly be removing the rings from the pistons. This is the story of the power unit so far, the new year will see a lot more activity as we already have 9 overhauled piston heads and 12 overhauled fuel pumps waiting in the wings. Hopefully during the spring reassembly of one bank will begin and the dismantling of the other bank will take place.
So, what else have we been up to? Well number 1 cab is now on the home straight and hopefully during the April 2005 gala the cab will be open for inspection, the loco will be placed in the bay platform at Todd (provisionally). This view shows the second mans side and should be compared to a photo in our first up-date in winter 2002. this view shows our newly installed second mans desk, the ETH controls of which the two switches in this view were ceased solid and were thoroughly overhauled with new labels added to the panel all made by one of our members. The hand brake assembly on the left hand of the photo was removed and overhauled with a new handle on the handle made form stainless steel. Originally the hand brake was powder coated but this just all fell off so we decided to emanel it and replace the large steel washer with a non corrosive alternative in brass. Also a new label was made with the hand brake on/off instructions as these were no longer available we replicated it in aluminium.
