A Real Dirty Job

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 12:54 pm

Blue tempered spring steel is really nasty stuff to work with and it made me pay the price.

The first photo shows the setup to drill the ends of some of the bottom spring steel leaves to accept the center peg in the end hangers. One has to ensure everything is dead centered here both on width and endwise (including the peg in the end of the spring hanger and the drilled hole in the end of the leaf springs) or everything will just jam up when you try and assemble the parts, hence the use of the drill bushing and the temporary close fitting center post to hold the bottom leaves together when drilling.

Even so with all of the care taken, I still ended up having to stone the spring steel leaves and turn down the top portion of the hanger pegs slightly to have a free sliding fit on the peg. Once properly setup, nothing can move at all and I think something did (the bolts holding the vise to the drill press table were not secure enough).

The second photo shows all of the parts used in the setup. When a solid carbide spade or sheet metal drill is used, it has to break through into an empty void in the supporting spacer as it is not like a twist drill.This is necessary as this type of drill is not designed to drill through thick solid metal.

Just as I said previously, even with all of the precautions taken, the spring steel will chip the carbide spade drill sooner or later (sooner in my case) as can be seen in the second photo. And that makes for a nasty burr which then has to be stoned away.

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Mon Dec 03, 2018 1:28 pm

On to the next parts, the side equalizers.

I wasn't going to touch them but then I noticed that they were only 0.047" thick for some reason and quite distorted as a result of being so thin.

I am going to make them a full 1/16" thickness (.0625") which should be a straight forward job. The ends will be offset 1/16" closer together as per the Josslin design. I have a nifty little fixture to do this.

I really don't want to but it seems pretty much everything on this lead truck will be replaced (eventually).

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Sat Dec 08, 2018 9:35 pm

Sometimes, to move things along when you don't have the necessary equipment for the job, one has to do something rather extreme.

Here is a case in point.

I had a large piece of hot rolled sheet steel 1/16" thick to use for the new equalizers which was 24" wide by 49" long.

It was too large to cut off a piece in my bandsaw or cut off saw and I don't have an electric jig or sabre saw or shear which could be employed to chop the sheet into smaller pieces.

So I made up a make do hand saw from a used 32 tooth hacksaw blade, a couple of pieces of scrap wood, a tool makers clamp and a rag to saw a 1-1/2" wide strip 24" long from the sheet. Two hours later I had my material for the new equalizer blanks.

I wouldn't do it this way again if I had a choice but...

Post by **Harold_V** » Sun Dec 09, 2018 2:07 am

Wow! A tough way to achieve the desired end! Kudos for your creativity. Sure makes me appreciate my DoAll.

I've also accomplished that task using my little Wells A7 horizontal band saw. That was of necessity, as I didn't own the DoAll at the time.

The Wells A7 has adjustable ball bearing guides, and has a very small (about 12" square) table for vertical use. By adjusting the blade way out of square, it allows the desired narrow piece of material to bypass the beam, making the job a lot easier than the Armstrong method you applied. Gotta have those adjustable guides, though. Won't work without them.

H

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Thu Dec 13, 2018 6:01 pm

After my run in with the hot rolled sheet metal nonsense, the next job was to make a working drawing of the new equalizers. See the first photo.

They will be a shade longer than the Langworthy drawings show as with the 1/16" offset on both ends of the equalizers, this has to be compensated for to have the equalizer end tabs remain centrally located on the truck axleboxes and axles.

Also, I made the tabs themselves somewhat deeper as I plan to machine locating slots in the top of the truck axleboxes so the ends of the new equalizers are positively located in the top surface of the axleboxes. If this doesn't work out, I can always go back to the original design.

I then did a layout, drilled and reamed the location of the leaf spring end hanger pins on the group of equalizer blanks.

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Sat Dec 15, 2018 7:51 pm

Machining the new equalizer outlines as a group.

Nothing special here; just careful layout, band sawing, drilling and contour milling at this point.

The scribed lines can become obscured with edge burrs as one nears the layout line but it is easy enough to remove them, re-ink and re-scribe the layout lines again from the working drawing.

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 3:12 pm

Further along.

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:06 pm

Just sailing along.

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Tue Dec 18, 2018 5:34 pm

Finishing the equalizer profile.

The most difficult operation was fly cutting the equalizer inner radii. As the sweep of the fly cutter was quite large (13/16" radius), the ends of the equalizer bundle had to be set out a long way from each end of the mill vise jaws and had to be independently supported/clamped.

After that, it was simply get it done.

The ends of the equalizers still have to be swaged inwards. One has to be very careful with this operation as it will result in a RH and LH equalizer. It is so easy to end up with things backwards and/or have the ends of the equalizers not face each other. Murphy has two chances to cross you up here so one has to both think and proceed very carefully.

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:02 pm

The equalizer swaging fixture to make the 1/16" offset bends on the ends of each equalizer.

It is both simple and tricky at the same time as one has to precisely align each equalizer in the fixture and then reverse the second, opposite equalizer in it to make the opposite bend (also must be precisely aligned).

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:33 pm

A photo of why the equalizer ends now have to be swaged 1/16" inwards.

The leaf spring/hanger arm assembly on the Josslin Hudson is 1/8" wider than on the Langworthy Hudson due to the different design of the leaf spring hanger arms (in both designs, the leaf springs are the same width at 3/8"). This leaves the new equalizers sitting right on the edges of the Langworthy axleboxes which is not good at all.

Carrdo · Post by **Carrdo** » Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:21 pm

The swaging operation.

The first photo shows how an equalizer end was set up and aligned in the swaging fixture with a piece of masking tape. Crude but effective.

There was a scribed layout line on the equalizer located 1/8" beyond the drilled holes in the equalizers for the leaf spring end hangers which was set to the top edge of the 1/16" offset ramp in the fixture.

Then carefully assemble the top plate, put the swaging fixture in the bench vise and bulge your muscles. Reverse the part and swage the other end being certain that both ends are swaged the same way - inwards.