Today at noon, my BL Duke of York arrived in the daily post. Just as beautiful in person as in the auction pictures. Then when I got home, the big brown truck had just dropped off my BL mogul. I am trying to date the model. Instead of the lever handle on the smokebox front, she has a round disc like a number plate. Its been restored at some point in its life but looks excellent, next I will see how she steams up. Hope to start on benchwork in the next few days. Mike
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now that is sharp!
Unfortunatly the steamer is a non runner, appears the middle driver set was installed backwards when the engine was restored years ago. Eccentric cranks lean to far forward and mess up valve timing, if I lean them back towards the cab, the angle (45 degrees) is about right but its toward the cab instead of toward the front. She will try to run with the cranks toward the cab, but only in reverse and with no power. Waiting to see what the gentleman I bought it from wants to do. Beautiful engine but no use to me if she is just a mantle piece. Mike P.S. I found out the drivers are keyed to the shaft, so I removed the middle set, reversed it and away she went, till the whole thing caught fire! I am now in need of a Crimson red paint that closely matches as the upper part of the cab sides need repainted and relined. I had some heat resistant black for the roof. Running on blocks with water underneither from the cylinders ect, add some meth and woof! Gonna have to resolder the cab roof onto the cab sides tomorrow. Mike
She isnt as pristene as she was, had a major meths cab fire, melted the cab off the chassis. The black paint that was used when the engine was restored wasnt heat resistant and it burned off the roof. So its been repainted a flat black that is heat resistant to 1500'F. I resoldered the cab back together but need some advice. First, I notice as the engine comes up to temp, it the whole thing gets hot, I start to get little spits of meth out of the vent tube on the stock BL vaporizing burner. I think this is what spread and caught fire. I have only ever had one other meths fired engine, a Mamod SL1 with a IP engineering meths burner installed. I never had little "burbs" of meth out of the vent tube with that one. I am using good quality meths from Lowe's that is for alcohol fired stoves ect. Am I doing something wrong? Also, need a source for some of this dark crimson red paint so I can touch up the upper cab sides were it got scorched off. I have some gold lining decals I can use to fix the lining with. It took about 6 tries to get her to run. Whoever did the restoration, put the middle driver set in backwards so the eccentric cranks were set wrong no matter what you did. removal and reinstall of the driver set corrected this and she now runs in both directions. Just steaming on blocks right now as the whole mechanism was quite stiff from decades of slumber. Last, can anybody date this model, she lacks the 3 lamp irons that i see on other BL moguls of later vintage and only has a round disc on the front of the smokebox, but this could be something that was added to replace a missing dart lever. Is this, along with the steam dome/safety cover available from anybody? Thanks guys, you are all the best! Mike aka Artful Dodger.
Here we see the eccentric cranks as I recieved the model, leaning way to far towards the front
And here she is post cab fire and partial repair
Artfull
you should consider joining the Bassett Lowke Society, there have been a number of articles on Moguls and Enterprise/Super Enterprises and making them run properly.
Yours may be later as there were some problems with the Meth tanks trapping air in the side tanks due to the connecting hole to the center tank being too low. The trapped air heats up and expands pushing meths out of the vent into the cab causing the flaming cab effect
Roland
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