Tony, In the morning's light the cylinder's bore doesn't look as bad. It's not a sharp step, and it probably is a machining error. Definitely not caused by the piston scuffing the cylinder wall.
I'll try polishing the cylinder bore. I bought the cylinders and built the engine about 6 years ago. Ran it a few times on air, but only recently tried it under steam. I won't bother IP Engineering now. They'd know I wasn't in a hurry. The o-ring is the red material. I'll use a regular black Buna-N o-ring unless I can find a Viton one locally. Viton is colored gray, is intended for higher temperatures, and is harder. I'll continue to do a little rework to get the cylinders right. Originally the engine seemed to run okay on air, but after the initial steam test, which wasn't encouraging, I looked very closely at the cylinders and distribution blocks. The steam ports weren't symmetrical left and right, and one pivot hole was out of position by about 0.5 mm. I plugged and redrilled the pivot hole and misplaced steam ports successfully, and lapped the port faces, but then the engine wouldn't run at all! More investigation showed that the crank pins were binding in the piston rod big ends thanks to my early machining capabilities of 6 years ago. Better tools and better understanding of the materials got that corrected. But I cannot understand how the engine ever ran on air in the first place. Maybe the asymmetrical steam ports were the key. Thanks for all your advice, Tony. One of my locos is a Jane, which has always run just fine. Based on that I hesitate to disassemble the other cylinder, which seems to be okay. But I'll probably do it anyway. Steve __________________________________________________________________ Switch to Netscape Internet Service. As low as $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Netscape. Just the Net You Need. New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups. Download now at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/search/install.jsp _______________________________________________ SSLiveSteam mailing list Send messages: [email protected] Cancel subscription: http://postfix.45mm.com/mailman/listinfo/sslivesteam Rules: http://www.45mm.com/sslivesteam_guide.html
