Regulating madness

Fellow reader, lend me your ears!.... Mine seem to have gone missing!

Well thts today's bad joke out the way I can get down to business, It's been a hard few weeks really, and I possably haven't spent as much time in the workshop as I possably should have. Things are getting done but not as fast as I may like, First and foremost, Pug is back in bits, after the snow test some issues cropped up so I have been working on that fairly hard, if you havent seen the video, go have a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK2NFSuR9Vc

First thing was a new regulator valve, the old one was on its last legs, leaked and didn't open all the way so I got a replacement for that. One of the other major issues I was battling was priming, water ontop of the firebox being thrown into the steam T and the thrown down the blower pipe, injector pipe, whistle, you name it! So after some consideration and a set of original full size pug drawings I have made a modification, the steam T now has a tube screwed into the bottom that runs inside the boiler and up the steam dome, takeing it's steam from a higher point should help a lot!

This also means we can run it with more than half a boiler of water without fear it's gunna get thrown up into the smoke box via the blower or thrown out the whistle or down the injector feed. So thats all sorted now I'm getting the regulator sorted, not only am I replaceing the valve, I'm shorting the rod and tidying up the back head a little, So this week will see the bushes and such on the lathe to take some length off them so the whole unit sits closer to the boiler makeing a little more room on the foot plate and fireing should be easier. Other issues I've addressed is getting the lubricator to throw more oil in, this I achieved fairly simply, the axle pumps were looked at again and I found the leak and fixed that, general work like tightening up the glands, hopefully all this will make a marked difference in performance, every time it runs it gets a little better, so with some luck this trend should turn out a good little engine,

Well thats about all the news .. nothing massivly exciting i know but its more progress, but ill carry on slogging with it unitll it works as well as i can get it

Progress!...... Of a sort!

Hi all.

Well, another weekend flashed past in the blink of an eye, snow, gigs and steam engines, all in all a good weekend!

The Pug made a triumphant return to the rails on Sunday, and with a little pre- snow plowing had a chuff up an down the yard, and the results were promising. As a minor test all seems promising! We are heading in the right direction it seems, some time after new years Mr F came over fora long evening and the valve gear and timeing was looked at again, and to be fair it was prity close, so the entire evening was spent shimming eccentric rods and moving valves around to get the best possable valve events and equal port openings. The results spoke for themselves in a fashion, this time we had forwards and backwards movement, and a fairly decent chuff to boot! Still haveing some passing issues where the rings/valves haven't bedded yet but in general it seems to be getting better, there are some issues to get over like the axle pump has a leak in the inlet pipe so it's dragging air not water, and the injector needs fiddling to get it to work better at lower pressures, but apart from that things are good, the next thing on the list is a coal chute to throw coal at the thing because trying to keep up with that fire is a task in itself! Also Ive got a slight modification to the steam T in mind, so hopefully it will prime less and allow for steaming with a higher water level wich should improve things even more,

Hopefully the weather gets better sometime soon, I really need to push on with the Fowler re-tube! Poor thing probily feels a little in-loved! I'll have to see if i can find all the bits I was painting, and get them up together and ready to go,..... Hmmmmmmm may need a evening of part hunting!

Next post I'll hopefully have some pictures of pug in the snow so I'll post em' up when I get em'
Laters!

Your usual service will be presumed,

Well he we are again,

The fun and excitement is all over, Christmas, new year and birthday all done time to get back to work! There was some play time over the break and pug went to Swindon for an outing, the positive side was it passed its steam test well and now is fully certificated!! Witch was something I was a little apprehensive about, I had visions of spectacular failure, new safety valves and other issues to put right, but with a little more luck than anything else it went through without an issue! Alas that's where the good luck ends, it spectacularly failed to preform in the slightest, the little pig would hardly turn a wheel, due to some serious blowing past valves or pistons and a few other issues, so back to the drawing board....

The first was a quick strip down, as much as it hurt to take it apart again!! The pistons were the first thing on the to-do list, was a fairly quick job to whip the rings out and open them up a tad and ram them back in with a load of steam oil, other things to do are re-work the axle pump to make it work!  Then mess about with the lubricator, I'm not happy with the amount of oil it's putting in, and I would rather at this point it was throwing it through way to fast, once it's run in I'll change it back to a less over active setting, so that's about as far as pug had made it so far, this week will see the the return to the workshop in a big way, got to get on with the others! 

The 2" Fowler is awaiting some attention, it's been a few weeks since the boiler inspectors were in and cleared the boiler for re-tubing, so now it's just a case of cleaning the tube holes and expanding new tubes into the holes, I've managed to get my hands on all the kit, expanders ect, so as my brother has the dungeons and dragons lot over later for the normal game day, I'll use it as an excuse to clear out and get in the workshop for an evenings work. I'm hoping with a little luck I can have pug back up together in the next 2 weeks or so. So if i'm lucky that will be almost the end of it!