Wednesday 14 October 2015

A little metalwork

Starting to replace the air pipes I need first to get all the relevant parts back onto the chassis. This is a double change over valve (COV) that allows one of three air supplies to release the spring brake on the back axle.



Originally it was mounted on solid air pipes in the nearside chassis rail



But since I am using mostly nylon pipes now it needed a something solid to mount it


So I made up a little bracket in 3mm steel.


Should do the job!







Thursday 8 October 2015

Air pipes #1

I have started to replace the air pipes. The first section runs from the compressor to the small condensate tank behind the front bumper. 

The pipe from the compressor is deliberately long; it runs all the way round the back of the engine, through a hose to the offside chassis rail and back across the front cross-member. This is to allow the air to cool as much as possible before it reaches the tank. I reused the first three metres of so of steel pipe (with a coat of paint) because this can easily withstand the heat. Nylon pipe would not be suitable for this.

The steel pipe ends at a non-return valve behind the front cross-member.



I replaced the valve innards

The original steel pipe to the tank looks like this


Somewhat rusty and because I had moved the pipework to clear the new clutch master cylinder it didn't fit any more. So I replaced it with 5/8" nylon.


The ends used a 3/4" UNF thread and sealed with brass olives. I was able to reuse the tube nuts and just added new olives and an inner sleeve to support the nylon


I also refitted the safety valve and a schrader valve which I assume allows the system to be pressurised externally; that could be useful for leak testing.


Finally a nice new automatic drain valve. The old one clearly was not working because the tank was half full of water when I took it off.











Air tank inspection

A few readers were worried about the state of the air tanks on an old truck like this - that they may be badly rusted inside and unsafe. So i bought a cheap USB endoscope on fleabay 



I could then inspect the inside of the tanks. The image quality is not great and what makes the camera had to use is that there is a time lag of several seconds for the images displayed on the attached laptop.

It was good enough to see that the innards were not badly corroded - some surface rust and a fair amount of black gunge