Steam Locomotive Cylinder Head Repair

hello Keith rocky ridge machinery org each year in August out here at the Georgia Museum agriculture they actually shut down the historic village site part of the museum for the month partly because it's just so dang hot that we just don't get a lot of visitors this time of year but one thing that it does allow us to do is to get into some maintenance and upkeep and just be able to go in and work on things on the site without having visitors out here and in the case of the steam locomotive there's always maintenance issues and things that need to be done and during August we can basically have a whole month so if we need to tear into something and it'd be apart for a couple of weeks and may not be able to run the train in between it's not an issue for us so right now it's the very first part of August and we're just getting ready to start doing train maintenance work and we've got a checklist of things that need to be done most of its fairly minor but one thing that we're just not sure about one thing I think you guys will enjoy seeing is we've noticed over the last yes several months actually we've been seeing some steam leaking around the cylinder on the left side on the front side of cylinder we think that it's just the gasket where the cylinder head comes in and covers at the front of cylinder we think that gaskets leaking but just don't know so we got to get in here and tear into it and see what needs to be done and then go about doing a repair to it which again hopefully just going to be making a new gasket and put it on there but we're going to tear into here and see this so I thought you guys might enjoy that so I brought the camera out and we'll be seeing what's wrong with well we got a steam leak and figure out how we're going to fix it let's get going so we've already come in here and taking the drain off the bottom which is down here and there's just one big nut here that holds this cover on and now we got to come in here and get this cover off so and it's on there kind of tight so we're going to just hit it with this yeah it's on there good we're gonna have to wrangle with this thing I remember one time for this thing coming off yeah that's for the board under just in case it's all up so won't hit that concrete I hang a second here feels like it might come on out go ahead and hit it again on the bottom just like your father proper foot how we know you know let it learn about all right go ahead and quit and tap the bottom again alright I think we're off the screw hold the hold the front here coming right off yeah yeah there's a hole there sure is you know it seems like I remember us doing that before thank you kidding me but oh yeah and I think the problem is it's even the threads away we may have to actually pull that cover off and redo that that that hole hole all right so how much you guys can see it but this is the pipe coming out to the drain and there's a hole through the steams just eaten away right back on the back side of it I get a camera around here that's where you can see that let's see all right so hopefully you can see that hole right there in the that piece of pipe and that's where our steam leaks coming from so now that figure out what to do with it all right so let's get in here and talk about what's going on and why this hole is down here in the bottom and all that so again you know we had this nipple coming out from there and on that is this drain and this is designed where basically you can open and close it from the cab of the locomotive and it gives a place for the water that condenses in the cylinders when the train is sitting still at the engine out station or something like that you get kind of condensation and cylinders the cylinders will fill up with water if you take off that water won't compress so it's got to go somewhere and you sell you open these drain costs and it gives the water a place to go anytime you start to stop the engine or start the engine after being stopped you'll open the drain let the water drain out blow them out with steam and then usually the first little bit that the cylinders are pumping you leave these open until they gets all the water out then you close them up and what has happened is the steam has just eroded a hole through this little nipple some schedule 80 pipe and steam is bad about doing that over time if it gets a little leak or something in there it will just eat it away and I've seen it cut through steel cut through cast iron brass whatever and that's where our leak is coming from so we're fortunate here it's a fairly easy fix you know we're going to replace the nipple will probably take a tap and just run up in there and make sure that we've got a good clean threads in there I'm gonna probably try to get in there and inspect to make sure the threads aren't cut as well I think it's just cut through the through the nipple itself though so we'll make a new nipple because it's in this little recess here it really makes for a difficult part to work on and a awkward place to put to be able to cut threads or what-have-you because the threads are not are interrupted on up in there so because of that if the threads go pretty deep to really be able to do what they need to do so anyway next step we're going to make a new nipple and we'll get over and get those threaded up here in a few minutes guys we took a tap cleaned it out put it in there feels like it's tight but you guys can probably see what I can see now it's not straight it's pointing uphill now I'm not sure it didn't really pay attention before if the OL was like that if the pipe tap hole is just crooked or whether there's other problems so at this point in time I think what we decided we're going to do is we're going to we're not going to do it today because we've got some other work we want to do to the locomotive but before we pull it out of the shop we're going to fire it up after we get it fired up we'll we'll drain the cylinders then we're going to put a cap on that and just stop it up and just look at it and see if we've still got a steam leak on there well we went to lunch thought about this David King who's the director of maintenance and restoration art museum we got talking about this thing and bottom line guys is that it's just not right but it is and we want to make it right so what we're going to do is we're going to pull that head off and get it over here and take a look at it look at a little bit better I've got an idea of how we can go about fixing it but I want to get it off first and just kind of check things out real good and then confirm my plans but we're going to go ahead and pull that thing off so let's get busy pulling some some bolts off this thing all right let's see if we can get those things off the way it's supposed to work oh well I'll be alright I hope not listen I think is I think it came out I think it was threaded in there Hey hmm yeah why don't you uh I'll see what we need to do that was easy so we got this off the locomotive now I've gone over and cleaned it up where you can handle it and see what's going on but again this is the drain plug in the bottom and you know our pipe thread goes in here the problem is is that I mean look at this play in here this thing even when you get it down in there and you start getting it tight it's because there's no support on this back side it's just leaning forward and this thing just never seals up it is and I think what is part of the problem is is that we've had some steam escaping around this and that steam is cut some of the threads in there and it's just it's just a sloppy fit this isn't going to work so all right guys here's the game plan I have talked to a couple of my buddies who work on locomotives and such and we consulted about this thing and basically have all agreed that what I'm thinking about doing is going to be an appropriate repaired this so I've got this bolted up but we're on the table of the of the middle machine now this is of course the cylinder head off the end of cylinder here's the pipe threads that are broken out back on the back this is just not the way to do it and also after the consulting and really kind of confirming my suspicions this is not original guys this was something that somebody did after the fact I don't know this is something that the museum did or this was something that was done to the locomotive before they ever came to the museum that locomotive you know it's been around it's almost 100 years old so it's been in a lot of different places over the years and it's only been in the museum to the last uh I don't know 30 40 years something like that 30-something years so here's the game plan I've got this on here I need to get centered up over this so what I did I actually just took a piece of pipe and it's not turning by hand real easy but I can actually thread this down in there in the middle so and I just line it up by moving back and forth so that is centered over that hole and it's not super critical it doesn't have to be exactly on center but that's where I want it and what I'm going to do is we're going to take a big in mil an inch and a quarter in bill and we're just going to basically plow down through this and create a nice bore that goes down about the depth of this up over recess in here and that should give me a nice flat bottom and nice straight sides hopefully and once we get that bore in there then we're going to make a little plug that fits down in there and that plug we made out of ductile cast iron to match the material of this it could be made out of steel but there's a lot of moisture in this area and still just rust and corrode a lot more readily than cast iron so we're going to put cast iron back in here I think I'll just hold up better over time we'll drill and tap the new plug for the half-inch pipe threads and then the plug will be put in here with some little screws to hold it in place on either side and it will probably silver solder it in place I could braise it I have got a inch and a quarter in mil in here so when it shanks so I've got actually an r8 adapter for when it shank here that comes down and grips that real good so speed looks pretty good we're at about a 175 rpm and what I'm going to do is we're just going to come in here and raise the table up in this nice and slow hopefully it's going to just bill the pocket down through there that's my game that's probably deep enough right there guys so come out of that hole I mean we should have a nice round board hole we put a plug to fit down inside so we're on laid now we need to turn this down this actually will be about three quarters of an inch it's a little shy that actually deep I probably go down about an inch face in turn that down to the diameter and I'm gonna get my micrometer out and get a good measurement on that it looks like it's just a little over inch and a quarter will make it where it'll fit we're shooting for one-inch 265,000 so to you it's going to measure this for the dial calipers right now we've still got a ways to go so right now I'm just still right at a inch and a half we were about a hundred thousands over anything I've still got putting thousands to come off of there close to it so another hundred thousands past I just took my finished pass there and I realized my camera was off anyway out of season four fifteen over and I'm just maybe a about two-tenths so that should give me just it should just fit right down in that all right well I'm after that's probably 8/10 undersized perfect come here and put a sinner drool just spot that Center realist with a tap hole for the out for the pipe tap so this is a 23 30 seconds I've got my pipe tap here tap wrench this is just a little tap follower in here to keep it all straight and we're gonna go ahead and just do this by hand now I don't think this is going to quite go all the way around no I was afraid of that so I'm gonna have to come in here and kind of drew read this thing to get it to make a full circle but we're going to go ahead and and tap this on out I think I'm gonna move the camera cause it's just in my way guys sorry now we've got some nice fresh new threads in there that ought to be just right for holding that up pipe nipple from here on out so what I'm gonna do now I think is just pull it out we're going to take it over to the bandsaw just cut it off and then I'm going to turn around and we'll just face it down to get it to the right length I can control that better facing that I can with a parting tool so I think that's what we'll do I'll be right back we got to get this need to be about 7.5 here forty so I'm going to do is when we use my dial indicator I put it down here on the carriage and I can measure how far I move in little boy well guys this is kind of embarrassing but after all that talk us about silver soldering I go to look for our silver starter and I can't find any and I could spend the next 30 minutes drive into town 45 minutes getting some I'm just going to braise it I think raising would be just fine so we're going to put some heat on this and and braze it up guys well I can't say a prettiest phrasing job that they were done but that should definitely hold it in there I'm back over here on the mill now and what I want to do is I'm going to drill and tap a couple of holes on two of them on here and then just put a little set screw in there and what that's will do is it's just some added insurance I think the braze is clean strong enough on this but that way it will never twist and it cannot go up and down it will lock it in that hole and I'll have some mechanical locking going on here as well we go up in higher speed here so listen to some four-twenty setscrew so we'll drill this for the number-7 drill bit and lower the table down a little bit and we're going to tap this now and I'm just going to do it by hand because we're going into a blind hole I don't want to power tap that power tapping through holes but a power tapping at the bottom you're going to break a tap with this set up I can feel when I hit the bottom and stop and that's bottom right there I'm gonna put a set screw in here now I'm a little whoops Loctite on it just make sure it doesn't go anywhere this is probably gonna stick up just a little bit we're going to mill it down flush all right I'm going to put another one on this side and I think we'll be in good shape I'll do that one off-camera and the next thing I want to do is just kind of mill all this down flush and I got a face feeling here to do that we're just going to go across it all right I like the way that looks I don't think that is going anywhere so there's the finished preparer you know we got a nice tight fit in here we got this thing keyed into places with set screws so it can't twist it can't move in and out and then we got Braves around it as well I'm a little not very happy about my little puddled mess down here I really should have tilted this thing when I was braising that but I didn't have a really good way of doing it I need a weld positioner is what I need to hold these things in the right place but some of my Braves kind of ran down into the bottom and made a mess but it's not going to hurt anything and it's actually out of sight nobody will be able to see it so I'm alright with it but what's important is I think we got a good solid repair to hold that drain so we're ready to put it back home so we're about ready to put the cylinder head back on now everything's ready to go just a couple of comments over here so we had to pull the studs out to get the dang thing off and while we had them out we just went ahead and replace the studs put new studs in here these old studs or were just really in bad shape and in fact we went ahead and got new nuts to go on here as well so we've got all new hardware coming on here I've already got the studs installed so that's ready to go I wanted to point this out to you know we talked a little bit about these drain and how this was was I thought it was a an add on something that was not original to this train if you look down in the in the bottom right down here you see that little hole that's where the original drain actually drained out the front cylinder head so that the piston comes up to about right in here and that's as far as piston goes assisters headspace and that allowed the water to drain out and I'm not sure exactly how the actual drain connected into that there would have been a valve that you could open and close to blow those down but those are gone don't know the history that don't know if that was something that happened again when this locomotive came to the museum back in the early 80s and they did the initial restoration on it or whether these drain cops were put on you know by some other company or somebody that was operating this locomotive before we got it so the history on this locomotive is made in 1917 and it was used on up through probably the late 30s before it just kind of went out to pasture and during that period of time it was owned and operated by you know probably close to a dozen different entities so there's no telling this room that then really matter what we got so we're going to work with it works and it's fine and we're going to go ahead and get this head put back on now so we get ready for this head back on originally when this was made you got this little ring right around here that seals up on to the the the face of the the cylinder and this was probably originally ground perfectly flat as well as the the face on the other one and there was no gasket material used because you had real two good surfaces but because it's old been around 100 years we're not guaranteed that we got a good seal so what we're going to use is just some high-temperature silicon here this is a copper based Permatex a gasket maker and we're just going to put a little thin coat all the way around this thing we use this on other places on the locomotive as well but this will just give us some assurance that we got a nice good seal and we'll get my finger all messy here now and just kind of spread the stuff out I don't want a real thick layer of this most I was going to squeeze out anyway that I do like to make sure that I got it covered over the whole surface just to assure that we got good contact I was ready to go home one thing I did is I went around I cleaned all these holes out let's get a little hammering you did him give me that hammer so before I put this on I took a drill bit and cleaned all these holes out to get them back to size it's going up on there I'm just going to take my little hammer now all right will you start tighten them up with the nuts now start by just getting them all on here all right we're just going to start tightening these up and I want to just kind of work around in a pattern here I'm not torquing them at this point in time I'm just trying to get them tight and we're going to come in with a torque wrench you know we don't have the original specifications on this I've looked up the recommended torque for these particular studs and nuts that we're using and it's about 125 pounds so that's what we're going to torque them to all right I'm gonna get the torque wrench now all right so I got my torque wrench set to 125 and we're just gonna go around I'll skip to I think you I've been around one time I'll go around one more time all right that should be it now we see to install a nipple and it will be done I'm gonna go ahead and put our new nipple in down here all right I think we're done so guys I think what we're going to do now is we're going to call this quits for now I'm just going to put a little cap down here on this I'm just going to put on their thumb tight right now but we're going to fire this engine up and we'll take the cap off get it drained out and I'm going to put the cap on it seal it up real good and we'll put some pressure on the cylinder and just make sure that we don't have any other steam leaks on here we shouldn't but just to make sure we're not going to do that right now we got some other maintenance things we're going to do before we fire the engine up but that's the game plan all right guys that'll be a wrap on the locomotive repair at least for now we've got some other maintenance things that need to be done on this not a murderous routine but if we get another opportunity for a project that you guys be interested in we'll sure try to get you in on it but hopefully this did another good example I mean we started out we really didn't know exactly what the problem was until we got in here and looked at it and then we just come up with a game plan and tackle it let's name the game so we're gonna keep the old volcán running she's a but 98 years old late 1917 no 99 years old Wow so I think she turns 100 years old about January February this coming year so anyway we're gonna try to keep her going for a little while longer thanks for watching we'll catch you guys later you

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 334,621

Rating: 4.8943601 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Lathe, Milling Machine, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Georgia Museum of Agriculture, Woodworking, Metalworking, How to run a lathe, how to run a mill, restoration, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org

Id: LexIyn7gQUw

Length: 35min 18sec (2118 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2016