Is it only me that does stupid things? like buying a Stuart Beam engine without testing and hardly looking at it, there was a reason as i had just purchased the buy of the century a stuart 504 boiler and S50 steam plant for very little money...this deflected me somewhat and the door stop was purchased also cheaply.
The beam engine on examination later was covered in crud and fitted with many non standard parts,an example was small copper tube used as watts motion spacers, the watts motion itself was all different sizes..the valve links both different and crudely made...all nuts and bolts different sizes and types ie allen bolts on the piston cylinder in fact the whole thing was a mess and obviously did not run.....I had bought a door stop.
First i tried to get craftsmen to rebuild it for me without success they wisely declined...So back to me then if i wanted the beam engine running i would have to do this myself.... it was stripped down and all non standard parts dumped and new parts purchased ..made by Kevin and myself ..or scrounged until i had all the parts required.... eventually it was time to put all this stuff together.
The engine parts were prepared degreased and undercoated and primed then sprayed in my team colours of Industrial grey Halfords enamel, 2 coats undercoat and 3 top coats, some details were lined freehand with Humbrol enamel Red... the pile of bits before me was then put back together using all new nuts and bolts of the correct sizes...the piston rings which were broken and metal as standard on this machine were removed and a viton 75 O ring fitted 19.5mm ID x 2mm C/S I knew this would run as my Stuart No8 has a similar piston and that has an o ring piston ring as standard, i made a complete set of gaskets the machine was now assembled.
The test was on air to start with ..the valve was a bit troublesome to set, the problem being the gasket was to thick on the valve body keeping the valve away from the face so permanently letting by, this was resolved using a thinner gasket...the engine then burst into life ..what joy seeing something i thought would never run... running...the only problem was the crank klunks which is something that i can get replaced at any time, i do not mind the klunk as it sounds like an old ships engine...it sounds much worse in the video than in real life ...the engine ticks over on 10 psi the real test will be on steam.
Here are some before and after pictures and a couple of videos..the first video is of its first ever run on steam no practices followed by its first test run on air....Steve
VIDEO LIVE STEAM
VIDEO TEST RUN ON AIR
DOORSTOP AS PURCHASED
(The steam plant purchased at the same time is pictured in the back ground)
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