Uncooperative lubrication.....

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johnpenn74
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Joined: Tue May 04, 2010 12:54 pm
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Uncooperative lubrication.....

Post by johnpenn74 »

Fellow Live Steamers,

I have a displacement lubricator / sight glass that just wont work!!!

While at the track this week I was getting a shay running only to find the that the original built displacement lubricator had a broken solder joint cause the main cavity to leak steam and render the device as a whole useless. See Lub 001.

With no supply of solder to be found (or application talent either) I dove into the spare parts box and assembled:
1 sight glass / needle
2 Tee with plug to add oil
3 coupling to act as a resivior
4 drain value to be use for filling
See lub 002

I had a down turned a tee connection from the throttle - cylinder line and attached it to the sight glass/ needle /resivior assembly. Everything seemed fine, cracked the throttle and I wholly expected to see condensate accumulate and drops of oil float up the the throttle line.

...Didn't happen...

After a good amount of waiting for enough condensate to collect from a cracked throttle, I opened it up. Each time the throttle opened all the condesate water in the glass would flash and go away.
I never saw the glass get completely full with water.
I never saw the oil go up.
I did get accumulated water (for displacement) at the bottom of the resivoir, when I dumped it
So what went wrong here? I had 6" or so 5/16 compression tube to condensate to the glass? Surely this was enough length to condensate water.

Do I have to have a condensor bulb to actually condense water in line?

Finally I settled for the following ***manual solution*** used while setting motor timing.
See Lub 004
Attachments
The original displacement lubricator
The original displacement lubricator
The field assembled lubricator
The field assembled lubricator
Sign glass / needle valve
Sign glass / needle valve
Desperate times....
Desperate times....
John Pennington

Logging meets that actually move logs

Project
2 Mich-Cal Shays
Allen 4-4-0 Narrow Gauge Conversion
Two Reading A5a Camelback 0-4-0
USRA 0-6-0
Clishay
4 Western Wheeled Scraper NG Dump Cars
N&W 4-8-2
ICM 2-10-2
4 Modern Stake Cars
L&N Caboose
4 Big Four Conversion Gondolas

Like I'm actually gonna build all this stuff :-P
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