Finishing off a 5" Gauge Simplex Loco

[Deko]

Glad i could be of assistance in some way Stew I see there is a new open day planned in October, while i know its not M.E. i could bring along the track and some rocker cover racers if they can find the space to set it up. Like we did at the car show, a small charge could be made to "rent a racer" in aid of the chosen charity. See what the powers that be say.

Cheers Dek

[NickG]

Looking good Stew, laughing at the spring story but bet that was really annoying at the time!

[sbwhart]

Glad i could be of assistance in some way Stew I see there is a new open day planned in October, while i know its not M.E. i could bring along the track and some rocker cover racers if they can find the space to set it up. Like we did at the car show, a small charge could be made to "rent a racer" in aid of the chosen charity. See what the powers that be say.

Cheers Dek

The October day is being run by a medical charity Hernias of Africa or something like that, its a group of medics who ones a year go over to Africa set up a surgery in the bush and carry out hernia ops, the club are turning the track over to them and some of the guys are running their locos for them. Not quite sure who the powers to be are I'll make some discreat enquiries.

Looking good Stew, laughing at the spring story but bet that was really annoying at the time!

You can say that Nick:- I was bloody livid, I have an habbit of setting myself a target for the day, i wanted to mod the lift table with a rotating engine assembly frame, but I spent such a long time looking for that spring I failed, still its there for another day.

Stew

[sbwhart]

Well things havn't come to a standstill on this just a bit slow plus I had a thick.

Cleaned up the coupling rods as they were laser cut this just ment cleaning the hard scale off heat effected edge this was easiliy done with an old file then they were given a good going over with emery cloth.

Then after carfully measuring the axle centres set them up in the mill and using the DRO drill for the bearings at the correct centre distances.


With that done i had to make a jig from a chunk of ally to hold the rods on their side for thining them out and cutting the flute with a woodruff cutter.



Then using a slitting saw cut the tang for the tennon



Then cut the tennon in the other link.

Then made the phos bronze bushes sorry no pics of this just a simple turning job.

As I'd carfully made everything at the correct centers i was full of confidence that it was just a matter know of fitting the bearing and away we go NO i was wrong the darn thing locked up, checked everything ok all correct still locked up  this was the start of my thicky week I tried everything to try and get it to turn over opened out the bushes this worked but resulted in a very sloppy fit not happy with that measured and re measured swappped thing arround still no good.

Saturday morning came round without sucess and went to a club charity steam up, got talking to some of the wise old guys, "you have made the bushes excentric havn't you and made everything a lose fit":-   "no i've made everything a good fit and concentric":- "well thats were you've gone wrong you should make the two outside bushes excentric and a lose fit crank pin, you then rotate the bushes in the rods until you get the sweet spot wher the loco turn over mark their position and fix them with some loctite retainer.

This morning up bright and early turned some bushes up with and 0.5mm off set fitted them as advised job done in three hours:--- you can't beat a bit of experience

 



Thats it the loco is going away for a few monthe whilst I build the dake

Stew 

[Deko]

Nice one Stew, I knew you would get it sorted.

Cheers Dek.

[saw]

Wow 

[sbwhart]

Well I guess its time i brought you all up to date with this project, I must admit I've been a little remis at taking picture the reason being is my trusty old shop camera started playing silly buggers, and I've only just got a replacement.

So what have i been up to:- well I've more or less remade everything you see in this picture, this doesn't include the cylinders and vlave chest, but everything else I've remade including fitting cast iron pistons and rings.



This is my pile of bits I've scrapped off so far.




Still got a few more bits to make:- motion plate bits for the lifting link and valve link, when these bits are done I will have everything to start putting it back together but I I know this will take a bit of fitting and fetling to make everything to look buisness like. I'm getting a bit fed up with the project so before i put it together I'm planning on a quicky engine build, my simple horizontal mill engine.

Stew

[Stilldrillin]

Stew! 

You were so quiet, I was starting to think your new office job had completely taken over 

Nice to see you're still moving this project along........   

Waiting for the video. 

David D

[sbwhart]

I think the video is some way of Dave :- Office job is not too bad it doesn't keep me out of the shop, mostly reading done at night whilst avoiding the rubish on the telly 

I'm going to park the loco project and make a start on the simple horizontal mill engine I drew up as way of giving me a break from the loco, I'm beging to get a bit weary of it and need the break before I start on the home run.

Completed the expansion link assembly



Its the bit that puts the loco into reverse.

Cheers

Stew

[sbwhart]

Picked up the cudgel on this again, I left off, where I just needed to make the motion plate and one more link arm thingy. Before I started on the motion plate tried a lose assembly just to see how things lined up in case I needed to make a small adjustment to it, and it was clear that with my new linkage there was no way things would line up, particularly with the left hand side of the loco so did a bit of measuring and

 

The position of the valve rod on the left hand steam chest is only out by 5mm there is no way that the linkage will miss the slide bars and the right hand one is out by 2mm.



The lines indicate where it should be.

 

This explains why the linkage on the loco when I bought it were all bent and cut about in short they had been well bodged.

Decided I'd better check a few more things out ports in the cylinder ok, they took a good look at the slide valve

 



The pocket in the face of the valve should be in the centre there is no way this would work, the narrow slot should be closer to the edge by about 3mm.

I have only two options buy new casting but I'm allergic to that word buy or rework the existing ones some way. With the steam chest I can cut the crap bits off drill and tap a hole in the correct position and screw and Loctite in some new bosses  so correcting the error, with the slide valve there is no way to correct them so I've ordered some cast iron bar to make new.

So to fix the steam chest.

As nothing is square on this darn thing first thing I had to do was give myself a square face so clamped the cylinder to an angle plate fastened the steam chest to it and skimmed off its back face square, I can use this to ensure that the valves rods work parallel with the pistons.



Then using this square face clamp the steam chest onto the angle plate, line up on the scribed lines and zero the DRO



Machine the boss off and skim another face square.



Come back to the zero position and as the hole is out of position trying to drill through would cause the drill to wonder, so use a slot drill to take away the hole.



Then drill and tap 1/2"*32 ME



The surgery on the other end was not as drastic as this just had a 3/16" hole that guides the tail of the valve rod, so with this one centre on the cross lines and drill through and tap 3/8"*32 ME



Turn up and thread a couple of plugs



And screw them in good and tight with stud lock.

Remark the correct position, and set back up on the angle plate, pick up on the cross lines, drill and ream through 3/16 and drill and tap the top boss 3/8"*32 ME for the valve gland.

The front boss needs to be drilled 3/16" dead in line with the rear boss so I used a long series centre drill for this.



Need to make or buy a long series 3/16" drill to finish off, but before I got that far I got one of those Dad can you help calls from my daughter.

Stew

[sbwhart]

Sorry that I've not done an update on this for some time chaps but a lot of my time for the last few months has been taken up with holidays (artic circle) birthdays and anniversaries, the biggest of which was our 40th, spent a lovely weekend with all the family around us, it was really nice seeing our three grand kids all playing together.

Any way on the simplex front I reworked the steam chest and made new slide valves. Next up was making new motion plates these were fabricated from 5/16" plate and angle iron riveted together. I simple stuck the two plates together with two way tape and a pin, then marked the part out and milled it out to shape.







This is the finished motion plate



I also made new lifting block for the reverser and the lifting link the block for the lifting link was an interesting job it has a 4" curve that required the use of the RT.



This is the block the little bit with a hole in it assembled in the curve of the link I made two together.



I also moded my engine assembly manipulator to fix the simplex this makes it easyr to turnthe engine over to get to each side far better than mauling it around to get to the part you want to



The rest of the work was all about fitting bit cleaning them and getting them to work correctly, I spent a good few days trying to chase out tightness in the end I traced it down to one of the piston rings standing proud by about 0.002" it was sorted by cutting the groove in the piston a little deeper.

This is the state of play so far



I hoping to try it out on air in two or three weeks time so keep your fingers crossed.

Stew 

[sbwhart]

Thanks for your interest 

I remade the reversing quadrant the one that came with the loco was a bit rough so I remade it.



The notches still need cutting but that won't be done until the valve are set.

Now I wonder if any one can give me a bit of advice on how to sort out the next problem I've come across.:-

I've tried a number of time to assemble the coupling rods and get it so that the wheel rotate coupled together but no mater how I tried they lock up, if I open the bearing out by 0.032" they will rotate over half a turn but lock up.

I measured the axle centres in the frame and they are correct within 0.004" and everything is square, I've checked the crank pins quartering out at they are spot on all the same on all three axles, I've checked the coupling rod centres out and they are spot on the correct centre distance, the only way I can get the wheels to turn over anything like is two make the bearings in the coupling rods big by 0.40 that is far to slack to my mind. The only thing that I haven't worked on is the throw of the crank they are how the original builder made them, so checked the throw out



The throw should be 1.0625" but it is far more important that the throw on the crank pins are all the same:-

What I got was axle 1 :- 1.087" and 1.092" axle 2 1.074" and 1.083" axle 3 1.080" and 1.063" so they are far from consistent there is up to 0.030 variation.

Ok hers the ? is this too much variation

Do I need to correct this and how

The only way I can think of correcting it is to recut the crank pin hole in the wheel to the next size up and fitting new crank pins.

Is there any Loco builders out there who can point me in the correct direction.

Stew
 

 

[ozzie46]

  Stew, when you try turning the wheels do you have packing pieces between the axle boxes and the spring plates to bring the wheels to running height like it would be when fully assembled? The plans say to use 1/8 packing pieces.


   Also I have read that fits on Locomotives are almost a worn out fit. Don;t know how true that is.
 

  Great job on the rebuild so far by the way. 

 Ron

[sbwhart]

Hi Ron

Thanks for you're interest, and pointing out the need for packing I haven't tried that so will give it a go.

You right about the fits on locos they need to be slack but that's where I have a problem knowing whats too slack and what is just right to guess the only way to find that out is trying it.

Cheers

Stew

[chipenter]

If the wheels are off the axle you could reduce the pins , and either make sleeves or smaller bearings , using a jig on a face plate .


Jeff

[Stilldrillin]

Thanks for your interest


Sorry for the silence Stew.

My thoughts were. If you can't say anything to help..... Say nowt! 

Tricky little buggers, these orphans....... 

David D

[sbwhart]

Thanks for your interest


Sorry for the silence Stew.

My thoughts were. If you can't say anything to help..... Say nowt! 

Tricky little buggers, these orphans....... 

David D
 

You're not kidding about them being tricky buggers    I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that this is the last trick from this one 

Stew

[Kjelle]

Hi Stew!
Been following this since I first saw it, but as I have nothing to add, I just kept my mouth shut (or rather my fingers off the reply button). I'm impressed by your work, and hope to see it run in the end.

Kjelle

[ImIndoors]

Hi Stew
I have very little knowledge of locos and thus little to add to your thread.  But I have been following with very keen interest as the "saves" you have been making translate to other engineering areas.
Please keep posting and don't lose heart I'm sure you'll get it running right eventually.

Jim

[sbwhart]

Kjelle/Jim:~ Thanks for your interest and encouragement.

This morning up bright and early I executed plan A correct the outliers on each side, the first job was to pull the wheels off the axles and press out the crank pins, so with fingers crossed this is what I did. I used a paint stripper gun for the heat gave the wheel a good blast for 5 minutes to get it good and hot and to soften the Loctite, then gave it a gentle squeeze with the puller and I'm pleased to say that they came off no problem.

.

Spent the rest of the day making bits for a jig to recut the crank throw in the wheel next size up and another jig to set the valve timing when I get that far. Took delivery of the reamer but still waiting for the 8'5mm end mill with a bit of luck that should land tomorrow.

Thanks for your suggestion and support Guys

Stew
 

[Stilldrillin]

Nicely started Stew...... 

Is that every part/ assembly, you've had to modify?   

Or, are there some areas left, you're hoping to ignore/ get away with? 

David D

[sbwhart]

Dave:-

More or less everything with the running gear from the frame onwards has had to be remade or reworked, my Boss said I could have made one from new, which I think is close to the truth, the next biggie is the boiler it has a certificate pressure tested at 180 psi, I've had the boiler inspectors at the club give it a good eyeballing and they said it looks strong and should be OK,:~ but (there is always a but) the tapping for the safety valve are way out of plum, they really offend the eye, so that is something I want to try and sort out, got one a two ideas but that is going to be next year sometime I think. It has a stainless steel supper heater that looks dog rough but that doesn't matter as long as its pressure proof. The chimney and smoke box saddle looks like they have been chewed by an crocodile with a bad attitude, but they have plenty of meat on them so I think I can tidy them up, the smoke box door needs sorting and there is quite a bit of plumbing work to do. 

 

There is a Chap at the club who has rescued a number of loco's (orphans) he seems to enjoy the process 

My objective at the moment is to get the bloody thing running on air.

I'm starting to get that itchy feeling for another engine build. 

Stew

[Kjelle]

Spent the rest of the day making bits for a jig to recut the crank throw in the wheel next size up and another jig to set the valve timing when I get that far. Took delivery of the reamer but still waiting for the 8'5mm end mill with a bit of luck that should land tomorrow.

Thanks for your suggestion and support Guys

Stew

An endmill 8 feet, .5mm? That ought to be 2438,9 mm.... How big is your mill? I mean, realy? *running, ducking, laughing*

[sbwhart]

 


Nice one Kjelle:- I think I must have had a bag dose of badtypingitis   


Stew

[Kjelle]

  I think you have the same problem as I do sometimes; one dyslectic keyboard! It can't be easy to be fluent in both Imperial and Metric measurements...

Kjelle