steamman
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Steven's model Dockyard enginemany of you have seen this engine in the collections thread a couple of weeks ago. Today we took the engine to our local model engineering society in Reading to test it on compressed air. A good friend of mine who I call the 'steam doctor' as he can fix anything powered by steam connected the air compresser and opened the valve. Nothing happened. We improved the seal between the compresser and the engine and tried again.......Nothing happened 
After a little more playing we managed to get the engine to tick over but it was still very tight  Then for some reason the slide valve became stuck . At this point I was worried. As our club has it's own workshop we soon had the valve cover off to have a look. Three problems were soon found
1... someone in the past had removed the origanal valve and replaced it with one which was not suitable
2... the Valve rod was bent
3... the Valve timing was out.
To begin with my friend rebent the valve rod in a vice. There was not much we could do with the valve it's self but a new one would be needed should we want to run the engine on steam. He then began to reset the valve timing which took quite alot of thought and time. Earley Steven model dockyard engines eccentrics are held in place with pins rather than screws. We therefor had to be very careful and slowly adjust the valve rod until the timing was correct. We than attached the compresser pipe again.
Did it work?????
see for yourself 
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Les
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That works fine and it has a lovely noise to it, which will be even better on steam.
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johnreid
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Oh my, that is worth the effort to get going properly. I am so impressed.
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steamman
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Thank you.
It certainly has some power. My friend put all his strengh onto the flywheel and it still kept going . The gaskets need replacing so once thats done the power should be increased a little more!!!
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Sandman
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WOW. That is a serious piece of kit.
Glad to see it running in the end.
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Steve_S
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That's wonderful, and what a great sound!
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