Fixing a brass Erie 2-8-4, Class S-4 for Erieman

[ACL1504]

Here's some more dueling banjos.....

Greg,

What a great movie and banjo playing. I never knew you played the banjo or even had a swing on your porch.

Tom

[ACL1504]

If you'd like Greg and I would be willing to come down and sing in two part disharmony so you'd have some legal, if not intolerable, background music.   

Bob,

You are very kind and thoughty! But I must pass on this fine offer.

Tom

[ACL1504]

Tom


You have lost control of your thread again

John,

Yepper, I believe you are correct!

Tom

[ACL1504]

Okay,

Back to normal whatever that is. I'm waiting for the video to finish uploading.

By the way, I spoke to Darryl from NWSL. He charges a flat $45.00 bucks per hour no matter what. He feels like he has the talent, know how and tools. Take it or take your business elsewhere.

Just saying again, my measly $25.00 per hour is definitely very very conservative.

Continued in a few. Time to change.

[ACL1504]

Now, finally a new video sans music.

This one is 4:37 in length. You pretty much get the picture after a minute. No charge for the extra.

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This loco was custom painted without taking the loco apart. I'm sure the boiler was removed but you can see the top of the cross bracing and brake hanger brackets are still brass colored. All the exposed brass indicates to me it was painted with the drivers, side rods, steam chest, pilot and etc. were all in place at painting time.

Just plain lazy on the painters part.

[tct855]

Tom,
         Nice job on the video! Though I do miss the doh-wahps. ha.  I do notice you got lucky on this gear box project with a low profile worm/gear direct drive setup.  It's one of the simplest setups.  Very good, very simple, very easy to tweak.

         I also notice you have almost no wheel wear which tells me you should have almost no bearing or side rod wear also.  Lucky Bast$#d.  I notice what you were saying about the driver wobbles.  Those aren't bad at all.  As I'm sure you know, the gear noise is normal for those gear boxes, again, not bad at all. 

          Since your installing sound there is no need to tweak anything at this point. Having said that.  If this engine was remaining DC only or without sound I would tweak the gear noise though. Question, in the video photo I notice the hind driver side rod on the fireman's side looks to be slightly bent.  Is that a photo illusion?   How many hours invested to this point have you used?  Thanx Thom...

[GPdemayo]

Here's some more dueling banjos.....

Greg,

What a great movie and banjo playing. I never knew you played the banjo or even had a swing on your porch.

Tom

Hey Tom.....I put in a lot hours to get the fingers to move like that, but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Hey I even learned to count to 20 without taking the boots off.


By the way, that scene was shot in the high rent district. 

[GPdemayo]

If you'd like Greg and I would be willing to come down and sing in two part disharmony so you'd have some legal, if not intolerable, background music.   

Sounds like a plan Bob.....it might even speed up the healing process. 

[ACL1504]

Tom,
         Nice job on the video! Though I do miss the doh-wahps. ha.  I do notice you got lucky on this gear box project with a low profile worm/gear direct drive setup.  It's one of the simplest setups.  Very good, very simple, very easy to tweak.

         I also notice you have almost no wheel wear which tells me you should have almost no bearing or side rod wear also.  Lucky Bast$#d.  I notice what you were saying about the driver wobbles.  Those aren't bad at all.  As I'm sure you know, the gear noise is normal for those gear boxes, again, not bad at all. 

          Since your installing sound there is no need to tweak anything at this point. Having said that.  If this engine was remaining DC only or without sound I would tweak the gear noise though. Question, in the video photo I notice the hind driver side rod on the fireman's side looks to be slightly bent.  Is that a photo illusion?   How many hours invested to this point have you used?  Thanx Thom...

Thom,

I agree with you on all of the above. The one thing however, is that the Fireman side side rod is an optical illusion. I showed it to the Judge and Greg and they agree. It's not bent, see, I'm still a lucky Bast$^*&!

I'll have a new total after the next series of posts. but for now I'm still at 9.5 hours of work on this one.

Tom

[ACL1504]

Sounds like a plan Bob.....it might even speed up the healing process. 

Then come on down and sing, and sing often. I'm all for the healing. You can even lay hands on me and say a few Jesus things.

Tom

[ACL1504]

If my friend Steve from Washington state were making the repairs -  9.5 hours ($55) = $522.50.

If Darryl from NWSL were making the repairs -  9.5 hours ($45) = $427.50.

Very conservative Tom making the repairs - 9.5 hours ($25) = $237.50

Just FYI!

[ACL1504]

I'm going to move on to the pilot repair.

I'm not sure what happened, how it happened or by whom, but it fell on me to fix it.

The pilot was broken from the pilot deck plate. For this repair, the area we all call the "cow catcher" and the foot steps were broken.

I apologize for the bad picture below.  You can see where the pilot brackets were attached to the front of pilot decking. I say attached as it was epoxied on one side and some super glue held the other bracket on.




More in a few.

[ACL1504]

In order to make the repair, both the pilot and front pilot deck needed to be cleaned. I used a #11 Xacto blade to remove the epoxy and super glue. I then used my Dremel and wire wheel to clean and polish the brass.

Polishing the brass will make soldering the repair much much easier.

Again, my apologies for the bad pictures.





Continued in a few.

[ACL1504]

The repair can be made five different ways. The first two were part of the previous repair and proved to be insufficient.

1. Use 5 Minute Epoxy to make the repair.   F for failure.
2. Use CAA/Super Glue to make the repair.     F for failure.

3. Use a small Jeweler's torch to make the repair.  A for excellent.
4. Use the Resistance Soldering System to make the Repair.   Also A for excellent.
5. Tin both parts with solder and do it the old fashion way if possible.  Also A for excellent if done properly.

I had to use option #5 for the following reasons.

Using the small torch on this area may have led to dire consequences. The torch, in this small an area, heats all surrounding parts on the pilot, pilot deck and coupler lift rings holding the coupler lift bar.  Unsoldering all these other parts is certainly a bad idea. Option #3 - no good.

I wanted to use option #4 but couldn't. I haven't used my Resistance Soldering Unit for several years. The power supply wasn't working so I had no heat for the tweezers. This would have been the easiest choice and wouldn't unsolder the other parts. Option #4 - no good or not possible this time.

Option #5 is what I had left and I might add is the more difficult. So you see Mr. Thom D. I'm all that lucky of a guy after all.

Here is how this repair was made.

I tinned both sides of the front of the pilot deck and the backs of both the pilot step brackets.

Wow, I got involved and didn't take any pictures of this step.

More in a few.

[ACL1504]

After all four areas were tinned,  I used the tip of a toothpick and applied an extremely small bit of flux to the solder.

I then held the foot step brackets against the front pilot deck using a small clamp on one side. I used the Weller 140 Watt soldering iron and applied heat to the bracket. The soldering iron melted both the solder on the back of the bracket and the front pilot deck thus soldering both together. I then repeated the the process on the other side.

In the photo below, you can see where just this amount of heat burned the old paint. Now imagine what the small torch would have done!








Continued in a few.