Live Diesel-Mechanical 1/12th scale

Really a nice piece of craftmanship! I assume you have a well-equiped shop, and sure you know how to use it!

I see that you too have difficulties in getting raw material. In France it is quite the same and I have sometimes been waiting months before being able to get some very common material, but I do not want to purchase 6m if I only need 20cm! I have sometimes to beg from craftman shops that are become rarer and rarer!

Tacbob wrote:

Just fantastic. You got a nice work shop.
Will you have space for the fuel tank in the loco?
How many castor oil do you add?

Thank you Lorenz! 
There's a lot of space inside the loco, it's huge!
I'm using an 18% oil mix

Saint-Oblas wrote:

Really a nice piece of craftmanship! I assume you have a well-equiped shop, and sure you know how to use it!

I see that you too have difficulties in getting raw material. In France it is quite the same and I have sometimes been waiting months before being able to get some very common material, but I do not want to purchase 6m if I only need 20cm! I have sometimes to beg from craftman shops that are become rarer and rarer!

 
Thank you!!  I have to buy 6m lengths too, but steel is cheap.  I've got a lifetime's supply of some stock.  Luckily brass comes in 3.6m lengths...

GWhizz wrote:

WOW! What progress!  Please, please some video soon!

lol, we are some way off running the loco.  I'm starting on the side rods now. 

best wishes,
Dave

Here's the latest progress, the side rods fitted, a test run on the line - pushed by hand...
the motion is a bit tight, it needs a good run under power.



Best wishes,
Dave.

Finally, I got the loco running again.  Last weekend I had lots of fun soldering up a small on-board fuel tank from a can.  It only holds about 40 mL, but it lasts for 20 minutes and can be topped-up when running.

Just keep filling until fuel comes out the overflow.





I put a restrictor in the muffler oil drain so that not so much exhaust goes into the gearbox.  The gearbox fills up nicely with castor oil, and slowly drains away afterwards.



Best wishes,
Dave.

Hi Dave,

That's great stuff. Congrats to your again running loco. I really like the idea of lubing the gearbox with the waste oil.
Is the castor oil already in the fuel or have you added it?
Where is your gearbox draining? Is there a overflow drainage or is it just leaking through the gaps and holes of the housing of the gearbox?
Your clutch is plain steel, right? What material is your flywheel? Aluminum?

Tacbob wrote:

Hi Dave,

That's great stuff. Congrats to your again running loco. I really like the idea of lubing the gearbox with the waste oil.
Is the castor oil already in the fuel or have you added it?
Where is your gearbox draining? Is there a overflow drainage or is it just leaking through the gaps and holes of the housing of the gearbox?
Your clutch is plain steel, right? What material is your flywheel? Aluminum?

Thank you Lorenz,
Yes, the fuel contains the castor oil.  The fuel is 18% castor oil,
There is no official drain, it just seeps out the gaps at the bottom and onto the track bed.  It builds up to quite a depth in the sump and the gears seem to be running in it.
The clutch and flywheel are both steel.
Best wishes,
Dave.

Great piece of craftmanship ! I wish I were able to build such nice mechanisms! If only I was able to use a lathe...but I do not know whether I would be patient enough to build a complete loco from scratch as you did. It is real nice. Do you plan to control it by RC? On one hand it would be easier and more realistice, on the other circuits and wires could "spoil" the neat pure mechanics.

Congratulations anyway!

Saint-Oblas wrote:

Great piece of craftmanship ! I wish I were able to build such nice mechanisms! If only I was able to use a lathe...but I do not know whether I would be patient enough to build a complete loco from scratch as you did. It is real nice. Do you plan to control it by RC? On one hand it would be easier and more realistice, on the other circuits and wires could "spoil" the neat pure mechanics.

Congratulations anyway!

Thank you!  I will keep it manual, I think.  I just need to secure the clutch lever when fully engaged and then it will be hands off operation

Best wishes,
Dave.

Really nice film giving a good feeling for what´s been built. I won´t be selling my live steam anytime soon, but it´s good to watch the alternatives.

I've been making multi-height couplings for the loco, these are chunky fabrications and have taken a long time...



Best wishes,
Dave.

Sure you must have! But you made it! Iwould not mind too much the time, if I was sure to reach my goal as you did! Real nice job.
Just for a digression, in what part of New Zealand do you live in? I recently saw on TV a film taken in the Marlborough and Polarus sounds: it looked really fantastic. I had already seen beautiful mountain views but I did not expected to see so beautiful sea landscape: you sure live in a very beautiful country (but real far from us unfortunately!)

Saint-Oblas wrote:

Sure you must have! But you made it! Iwould not mind too much the time, if I was sure to reach my goal as you did! Real nice job.
Just for a digression, in what part of New Zealand do you live in? I recently saw on TV a film taken in the Marlborough and Polarus sounds: it looked really fantastic. I had already seen beautiful mountain views but I did not expected to see so beautiful sea landscape: you sure live in a very beautiful country (but real far from us unfortunately!)

I live in Auckland.  There sure are some beautiful sights in New Zealand, but we are so far away.

Recently I've been concentrating on the exhaust system.  A manifold to turn the exhaust through 98 deg.  Then a huge box for the gasses to expand in, and then exhaust pipe going up the front middle of the cab in between the windows.  The exhaust box is all soft soldered together, and coated all over the inside surface with solder to protect the mild steel.  The exhaust box has a capacity of about 200mL.



There's the oil drain at the base of the exhaust box.



Best wishes,
Dave.

I've been sorting out the gear lever arrangement.  Here's a view through the cab door way.



The pins on the ends locate the levers in the right position.  The knobs in the middle are for fingers to push/pull the levers.  The two outer levers are forward (nearest), and reverse.  Each lever has an in-gear position and a out-of-gear position.  The two inner levers are for the different ratios.  First - Neutral - Third, and Neutral - Second. 

In the picture the loco is in First gear, but not in either Forward or Reverse.  This way the loco can be pushed along.

Best wishes,
Dave.

THAT IS MECHANICS! I am completely amazed! Really professionnal. Congratulations.

Saint-Oblas wrote:

THAT IS MECHANICS! I am completely amazed! Really professionnal. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Had a great run yesterday.  It was to test the huge new muffler / silencer box attached to the cab firewall.  There's so much expansion, that the exhaust gasses are quite cold exiting the exhaust stack.  The muffler is very effective there's little exhaust noise.  However, there is a lot of mechanical noise from the motor itself, and there's a ringing noise from the muffler as it flexes, I'll put a stay in the middle to stop it.
 
The video was taken shortly after starting, I was draining off the oil until the good stuff started coming through, then reconnected a tube to the primary gearbox.  I topped-up the fuel tank three times with the engine running.  I felt like the run was about an hour.  The loco went up and down the short section of track in all three gears, third is really rather rapid! 

I measured some temperatures during the run with my eBay bought IR handheld thermometer: 
I got cylinder head temperatures of 150 - 190 deg. C (300 - 370 deg. F). 
And, the muffler box itself was only 70 deg. C (160 deg. F), which is lucky as it's only soft-soldered.

The engine wouldn't start with the exhaust stack fitted so I removed it for starting, it's a slide fit in the muffler.



Best wishes,
Dave.

Very nice! I hope you will put a video of it running along. Your temperature analysis is a great concern to me: I always thought necessary to use hard-soldering and therefore, as a newcomer, was reluctant to start anything. The soft soldering gives me idea. But maybe the gases from a four strokes are coller than from a two strokes engine? (it seeems to me that Carl Hibbs always uses hard soldering).

Saint-Oblas wrote:

Very nice! I hope you will put a video of it running along. Your temperature analysis is a great concern to me: I always thought necessary to use hard-soldering and therefore, as a newcomer, was reluctant to start anything. The soft soldering gives me idea. But maybe the gases from a four strokes are coller than from a two strokes engine?

Thank you.  The manifold attached to the engine is hard-soldered.  The exhaust box is far enough away from the engine and big enough to expand the gasses to lose so much heat.  It was uncanny putting my hand over the exhaust flow, it was really quite cold.

I'm painting the exhaust manifold black today to radiate as much heat out of the engine as I can.

The engine is mounted direct to metal bearers which are screwed on to the side frames.  This pulls quite a bit of heat out of the engine too, along with the rich fuel setting.

Best wishes,
Dave.

I've been having doubts about reusing the engine oil in the gearbox.  With the old set-up the oil came from the very hot muffler.  With the new set-up it's a lot cooler and solid droplets of water come down the tube with the oil.

I removed the lower gearbox cover, and this is what I found: The grey particles are metal fragments.  I spent hours deburring these gears by hand when I made them.




All the muck and gunk wiped off easily with a paper towel.  There is evidence of light erosion from where the oil sits in the trough, but no red rust. 


Best wishes,
Dave.

Hi Dave,

That's really great stuff. I really like it. The sound is nice and the exhaust flag looks really cool.
Is the new muffler empty or did you solder some metal sheets in to guide the exhaust flow?

Hi Lorenz, the exhaust box is empty. I'm glad you like it.

Best wishes
Dave

I have the same question as Tacbob, how is design your muffler ?

Bearcastle wrote:

I have the same question as Tacbob, how is design your muffler ?

The muffler is just a great big hollow box with no baffles.  It's about 200 mL capacity.


The only special feature is that there are 4 holes near the end of the exhaust stack, and 4 holes near the end of the exhaust inlet tube.  I don't know if these have any positive effect, but the idea is that opposing sound waves can cancel each other.



Best wishes,
Dave.

I experienced a technical issue with the engine the other day.  The engine started running rough, fuel mix was spitting out through the carburettor, then the engine stalled.  Afterwards there was minimal compression.  I found the solution on this excellent forum: Model Flying - OS FS70 tappet problem

The engine runs fine again now, but I'm thinking with the way I use the engine that I need a breather in the rocker cover.

Merry Christmas!
Dave.