Summarised Details as released in Newsletters 49 & 50 of 2008
N/L 50
33 063 : the locomotive has generally been reliable and a good starter. The occasional wheelslip fault pops up, causing the power unit shutdown.
The air system valve TM7 has been changed for a spare and the loss of air stopped. The old valve rubber seals were badly worn. The air pipe leak under drivers desk has been reduced but not fixed completely.
On going maintenance on 063 has included lubrication (grease nipples have been fitted to the brake slack adjusters),electrical checks as per maintenance sheets.
Photos of the underside of the cab desks have given a better idea of the fitment of the teleflex cable for the Fv3 brake valve (065 is disconnected at one end).
A few faults have come to light and a couple of known items under watch have got a little worse, the state of play being:
The hydrostatic oil loss has not improved, the oil header tank requiring topping up at intervals. This item has now got to the stage where we need to look at the pump drive shaft seal over the winter (2008/9)
Governor casing and jackshaft o-rings leakage not improving and we needs a reseal.
Air system leaks to reduce by:
Main reservoir SV reset
Taper drain cocks lap in
Train brake valves FV3 overhaul in both cabs
Permanent repair to Air Pipe under driver’s desk.
Remaining sander to get working
Bogie to lift, clean and repaint, including attention if possible to brake rigging
Oil Drip tray to complete
cab heaters still to be refitted and sticking vac gauge to change
Items under Watch…….
Slight leakage from the jacket water pump gland seal when stopped. This indicates some scoring of the mechanical seal, but unless the seal starts dripping when running it, only a ‘watch’ item for now.
Crankcase door gaskets are hardened and to stop the leaks on both sides we need to either buy a preformed gasket or cut one out from a blank sheet (time consuming).
Cylinder head cover rubbers to re-adjust as required (Nol and No5 done over the summer/08)
Air inlet manifold connection to reseal
33 065 : Stopped from general use and in mobile storage. Still starting on 5 cylinders to reduce smoke which she does quite happily. Now run around the yard as required monthly to keep fluids circulating, batteries charged and diaphragms etc flexing.
N/L 49
33 063 : After the blood sweat and tears of the summer(07) to get 63 ready for the Nene Valley, no real concerns have arisen for mechanically and 63 has continued to improve internally since the last newsletter (48). With the help of group members, the following achievements can be recorded:-
Cleaning of engine and painting of pipe systems in bespoke fluid colour paints.
Internal guttering repairs
Painting handrails in black
Cleaning of floor plates by removing them and steam cleaning years of gunk off.
The traction motor blower grilles have been removed, painted black and the fan entrance volute painted gloss white on both sides.
Paint removed from small labels to expose brass finish.
More debris removed around exhausters (one day all the muck must stop reappearing in this area).
Both battery banks replaced. Just four words but no small task. However with good management and care these should now last for many years to come if we keep the charge up.
Field Resistor wiring terminals cleaned as part of cleaning housing.
Inside of turbo-charger filter box cleaned. This has come up as new.
New headlight and blind box cable run in between cabs. Old cable was tripping MCB as soon as main Battery Isolator was made, indicating a blown trapped cable somewhere.
Spare brake valves have been serviced.
On the electrical side, we have tried with not much success to locate the ongoing Earth fault that we have (a tale of 2 steps forward and 3 back comes to mind).Too many back feeds for the negatives (not shown on diagrams) but still learning as we go.
We managed to locate a new fault with the headlights as a wire that runs from one cab to the other cab. This was replaced.
Electrical checks carried out as per above. If we can keep on top of these should hopefully allow more time to be able to concentrate on 065 when the time comes to rebuild her.
The lighting changeover switch has also been renewed with the replacement part coming from Holland!
Further work for this year includes the refitting of cab heaters and eventually we have to tackle the second bogie!
33 065 : The old girl has just been kept serviceable during the period of this report. A couple of items to note……..
We assessed all the batteries and replaced the worst cells with the best of the cells from the removed set from 63. Keeping the batteries on charge since then seems to have brought the banks up quite well with good cranking amps and the charge current reduces to one or two amps. If we keep the banks trickle charged during the overhaul then they should be serviceable for some time.
During the winter we noticed the stack smoke was deteriorating. 65 was used for the SVR AGM train and I asked for the engine to be ‘worked’ on the return in order to see if the smoky cylinders would start firing when hot. All that happened is the engine room disappeared in oil and smoke as well as clouds pouring out from the stack and I nearly got asphyxiated as I tried to see which cylinders were firing or not. Not very good unless you are a Clag monster but at least I confirmed from the temperatures that cylinders 4,5, and especially 7 were not doing much work. All the fuel was either vaporizing into white or washing the oil off the liners and piston rings and diluting the lube oil. So, since then we have been starting 65 up with cylinders 4,5 and 7 cut out. Result – no smoke after just 2 minutes even in freezing conditions. She sounds odd, rather like a strangled 24/25 but that is due to the missing pulses onto the turbo charger. With the Holset damper on the crank and the light loads this is a lot less harmful than letting unburnt fuel scuff the liners.
On the electrical side, the RCR voltage resistor finally packed in and once the spare was found, this was changed. Efforts were being made to source some new spares but these seem to ‘cost’ because of the quantities that we need but will keep on trying.