2009 Week 1 in Review
January 1 to January 3, 2009
Work continues on the Catalyst
The New Year finds me still working on the Catalyst's big winter maintenance project. I spent most of my time this week continuing to fit in the main bearings. I started to describe this process last week, but here's a picture of the strain test:
That's the strain gauge stuck between the throws of the crankshaft, which shows how much the crankshaft is flexing, which in turn tells me how high the main bearings are and which are holding up the crankshaft. One at a time, I rolled each main bearing out, did a strain gauge on the bearings to either side of it, then rolled it back in and went on to the next. I was looking for changes made by its absence, like whether it had been lifting the crankshaft more than the other bearings.
I found some sticking up a little far, which is to be expected when some of them have been re-babbitted, so I scraped them down or used Timesaver Lapping Compound, which is made especially for bearings:
Newman Tools has a good description of the stuff on their website:
"Timesaver first acts as an abrasive, then the particles diminish to a polish, and finally to inert material. It is unconditionally guaranteed not to imbed into any metal surface. Prepared in powder form, to be mixed with oil as used. Timesaver Lapping Compound does not contain emery, aluminum oxide, silicon-carbide or similar charging abrasives."
Lapping really doesn't take much material off, since barring the engine over is so slow, so I did some scraping, too. They took a while to do, since I had to do so much barring, but I eventually got them to the specs outlined within the Washington manual.
The Westward's thrust bearing
I heard recently that the cooling system for the Westward's thrust bearing has been disabled. I understand the reasoning: thrust bearings typically have a water jacket to cool them, but it's a small casting that's easy to damage. I've seen them cracked up from rusting, freezing, and for no reason that I could see. My guess is that the Westward's thrust bearing started leaking and the owners got concerned and decided not to run coolant through it any more.
I hear that they're monitoring it's temperature closely while cruising to make sure that it doesn't overheat, so it's probably fine. Heck, it just made it around the ocean that way, so it's definitely fine. Just don't try this at home: the Westward folks are experts and know their boat really well. Unless you are that good, don't disable your thrust bearing's cooling system!
Information about a little Atlas-Imperial?
We received an email from Gary asking for information about his 3.3hp single cylinder 1LN29 Atlas-Imperial engine:
Neat, but I don't know anything about this kind of engine. Readers, can anyone provide information about the little ones like this?
Washington-Estep photos from Nick
Nick sent us some great photos of the Washington-Estep in Hawaii at the Waimea Sugar Mill Camp Museum:
What a great old engine. I can't wait to get out there to see it myself. Until then, I'll just have to look through all the shots here.
Thanks, Nick!
Kahlenberg photos from Bob
Bob sent us some neat photos of the Kahlenberg factory floor:
They're so beautiful - all clean and shiny and brand new. There's several other views here.
Thanks, Bob!
Newest Old OTM Inc Employee
OTM Inc officially hired a new employee this week: Diana the museologist!
Her services have been available by contract for the last year, but now she's officially part of the Old Tacoma Marine Inc team. She's taking on some of the curatorial components of Old Tacoma Marine Inc's business.
