A month on and alot of progress has been completed on 31463 engine.
We started the month by moving the pistons into the shed and fitting their rings. The pistons were then fitted onto the connecting rods using a process of warming the pistons with a space heater so they would expand, then they were lowered onto the conrod using the crane and the gudgeon pin was fitted to keep them together.
While the pistons and connecting rods were put back together the exhaust manifolds were being steam cleaned and the manifolds had all of their gasket faces cleaned up ready for refitting. The heat shields for the inlet manifolds were also being shot blasted and the frame the pre-heater will sit has started to be made.
The camshaft timing checks were carried out and found to be satisfactory. The reassembled connecting rods and pistons, complete with new ‘small end’ bearings and rings, have been lowered into the previously installed new/old-but totally unworn cylinder liners, big end caps bolted on with, of course, new bearings and also bolts etc, and then tightened to the specified amount of ‘stretch.’ We rounded the day off by priming the oil system (many bits plugged off due to currently being missing) and barring the engine over by hand whilst checking for satisfactory oil flow up to the pistons.
While this was happening in the loco on the bench the inlet manifolds had all of their gasket faces cleaned up ready for refitting.
We then put all the cylinder heads on the engine. These haven’t been tightened down yet, as we first had to fit the coolant block-to-head elbows and then the exhaust pipes. So far B bank exhaust is fitted and A bank exhaust is ready to crane in.
