Royce Woodbury wrote: > > Thanks Jim, Paul & Clark for your suggestions. One thing that I haven't > done yet is use any packing in the piston and valve rod glands. How > might packing them affect things ?
Well all steam engines leak a bit. That's part of the charm (fun). Now when under steam and you get clouds of steam coming from that area it's time to fix it. Lost steam is lost pulling power and lost run time. Steam leaks severely affect performance on our small engines. Therefore I tend to eliminate them where I can. I fix weepy safeties, glans, banjo fittings, fill plugs etc. I have engines with both O ring rear cylinder covers (Aster Mikado, Frank S, Ruby) and string packing rear cylinder covers (Aster K4, Schools, Americanized Mogul). Both work. The string units are easier to adjust and can have new packing inserted when the old stuff wears out. The O ring units require a partial tear down to get the piston off the rod so a new O ring can be applied. I have not worn the O ring in those engines that use them. I have had to add more string packing to those engines. As for drag I can't tell a lot between them. All of my engines run on 3~5 psi. But more importantly they don't leak steam. > Or can I assume that if it runs on 5 PSI without > packing, it'll run better with packing ? Well the answer is you get less loss of steam which could be used to power the wheels. Hey if you like seeing the steam weep out, have at it. Who's to say that's wrong. I do not have imperial testing data to prove my case of using packing or not. It's just that smarter folks than me (the designers) have ALWAYS included some form of sealing the piston and valve rods against steam leaks. So I use them. Clark
