Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Welcome to the club.

  I'm going to presume you are looking to buy a new 20G.  Wow!

  Regarding all your questions....I would refer you to Jensen.
The folks there have always been friendly and helpful and
they 'wrote the book' on how to handle their engines.

Have fun steaming,
Wayne

I'll chime in as an "expert", if you'll accept the definition of an expert as follows:

An "Ex" is a has been, while a "spert" is a drip under pressure!

Okay now, with that resolved, let me say that to break in a new steam engine, I would simply run it with moderation for the first couple of runs. Don't try to drive it to its highest possible RPMs and don't lug it down with any too much load from accessories, all while being sure that it is in fact well oiled, including proper steam oil in the cylinder and valve chest.

Yes, certainly, you can use your compressor with a rubber tipped airgun to blow out your steam line and cylinder, but only do so with low to moderate air pressure, and not the 125 PSI that many compressors are capable of providing. Just 10 to 20 PSI is more than enough to do the job of running your engine on air in order to dry it out after a steam-up.

Spring belts can be had from most of the commercial steam engine sources, but you may also want to look into various forms of "plastic" belting that can be cut and glued to whatever lengths you desire. Evilbay is generally a good source for this material, which for some reason seems to come mostly colored in green, though I have seen black that is supposedly about the same stuff on occasion. Beyond that, record player and tape deck belts can be made to work also, though they tend to be rather short.

Hope any of that helps.

This is how I dry my boilers and lines -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhJ0nr33mcg

I bought my first Jensen engine nearly 30 years ago and now I have well over 100 of them. I treat them all the same and they are all in as good of shape or better than they were when I got them.

Always use distilled water in your engines. Hard water mineral deposits will ruin an engine in short order.

Always keep your engine well oiled when running it. It may make a mess, but you can wipe it down before you put it away.

Always drain the boiler when it’s still hot after a run. The remaining heat will dry the boiler thoroughly within a very short time. Any distilled water remaining in the pipes or cylinder will eventually dry out and cause no harm. Tap water that remains can cause harm in the form of mineral deposits and also corrosion depending on the PH and alkalinity of it.

Try to keep your engine in its original box. The box will do a fantastic job of keeping it clean and preserving it. I have some engines that are almost 90 years old and look new because they were always kept in their original box.

Jensen engines are probably the most robust toy engines made and you have made a great choice in the 20G.