Hi All,
I won a nice Stuart Beam engine on Ebay the other day, it looked shabby and quite rusty but it ran on steam, knocked badly and leaked water and steam everywhere, but on the whole not bad.
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I decided to smarten it up a bit and stripped it down for a check. Whoever made this did a nice job, old school mostly hand filed parts but accurate.
First job was to strip all the old paint, mask, prime, base coat and clear coat. While clear coat was in the gun i made a new base from oak and lacquered that too.
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Next the mechanical parts, i spent way too much on parts for the Victoria and was determined not to do the same with this one, however the crankshaft was grooved and the crank loose and not drilled true so i ordered a new one from Stuart. While waiting for the parts i set about cleaning the rust from the bare metal parts and all the nuts and bolts, that was a long fiddly job. The hole in the piston where the rod attaches was not central and the piston rod had been bent to stop it all binding, so i turned a new piston and straightend the rod and fitted a new O ring. Also used O rings on the gland seals as i didn't have any packing to hand. One of the valve operating links was pinned and loose, a slightly large pin fixed that.
After the paint was cured i trimmed the flywheel and pully on the lathe to clean them up.
Then the best bit, putting it all together, originally the central column had some bits of brass under it which went in the bin, so there was a lot of 'fettling' required to get everything lined up. Eventually it was all done.
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Next job was to try it on steam, it ran fine, still has a bit of a knock but this may be timing issue, i'm guessing because if i put downward pressure on the valve linkage the knock stops and if i lift up on the valve linkage it get worse (any advice from you steam addicts would be most welcome).
Kind regards
Ade