Look what I found... a Ruston Hornsby PB 3
Select this link for the June 2005 Update -
The Recovery from the forest...
or go to June 19th
2005 Home and in Good Nick!
02 July 2005 - Tearing the engine down
On a sunny Sunday at the start of October 2003 I was invited to a
mate's newly aquired farm to help begin cleaning it up. As an incentive
I was promised a look at something he'd found. When I got up there he
pointed at the forest and said there is an engine shed in there
somewhere...
I ventured down into the forest, camera in hand and kept heading down
towards the creek. After about 10 minutes of climbing downwards (and
sliding on my bum) I came across the "engine shed" such as it was...
I peered inside and cleared away the remains and found...
A Ruston Hornsby PB SNo. 227936 3HP @ 600/700 RPM imported from England
by Ruston Hornsby Melbourne and a Billabong piston pump.
The general plan is to mount the engine into a crate and drag it out of
the forest using a tractor and winch, then take the crate back in for
the pump. Should be a reasonbly straight forward restore of both.
The piston pump is mostly ok, the rods that the crossheads move back
and forth on are so expanded with rust that the crosshead is jammed.
The flywheels, gears, and pistons themselves seem free. He wants
to restore the pump for use on the farm.
The RH is in reasonable condition - it is missing a magneto (but this
is a Lucas RS-1 - not exactly hard to find - in fact I have a temporary
surplus mounted on a very dead Cooper sitting in my yard). The piston
is stuck (of course). The whole thing has been under water many times.
The carb is full of water and crud, but otherwise probably ok. The
castings seem good. I really hope that the piston is somewhere near TDC
or this is going to be a bugger to fix.
Even the orignal leather belt and a fuel can were sitting by the
engine. The belt is useless and the can is rusted out... there is more
stuff in the engine shed remains and I'll try to salvage whatever is
there. There was too much work to do on the day to spend hours at the
engine shed site sifting.
I'm aiming to have both home by summer and get them up and running as a
winter project.
June 2005 Update - The Recovery From
The Forest...
So much for the getting it home by summer 2003.... hehehe....
Yesterday the job of recovering Ruston Hornsby PB SNo. 227936 was
completed with the engine arriving home... next is the huge task of
restoring the ugly little monster.
On the first weekeend in June we started the first haul and fished it
out of the creek and up onto the creek bank - a 3 metre (yard) vertical
haul done with block and tackle and ropes pulled by hand. This took us
more than four hours to accomplish and was extremely hard going even
with two of us. The job was made worse by the slippery clay soil.
On the Sunday of the Queen's Birthday long weekend with the aid of 250
metres of rope, the same two blocks and a power winch we dragged it on
skids up a 45 degree slope through about 75 metres of tangled rain
forest area trying to minimise the damage as we went to both the forest
and the engine. The fun bit was the cheapie winch only had 15 metres of
cable and had to rest for a few minutes after each pull. With four rope
runs through the blocks, the 15 metres of pull on the winch translated
into stuff all movement at the engine end of the rope! That took
another four hours of careful tedious work.
The engine casting is in good condition externally and is only missing
the magneto (should be a Lucas RS-1 I believe. I have a spare Lucas,
but I think I'll have to get its rotational direction reversed to go on
this engine from memory - but I'll wait until I get it rotating to find
out).
The engine is frozen solid. The speed control knob shaft has absorbed
water and expanded and split. All external nuts have expanded and
split. External bolts and studs look pretty good. It still had a spark
plug which crumbled apart in my hands leaving only the porcelain and
inner electrode. It even still had a hand crank (buried under the
engine). The fuel tank was found on the creek bank - basically just a
perforated metal box. The original leather drive belt was found and
salvaged - with a hot lanolin bath it might just survive.
Inside? Who knows... today I have to work on the house since I spent
two days on the weekend doing my stuff :). If I get the new stairs
finished early enough, then I'll pull the engine apart today.
Next trip will be to recover the Billabong pump. The pump piston and
gears are free, but the motion shafts are expanded with rust sticking
the pump itself in place. I managed to break off its supply pipe. To
give you an idea of how wet it is in the area the engine and pump were
found the supply pipe was a 1" iron pipe, it had expanded externally to
almost 2" - amazing!
The engine must have been running fairly recently as its fuel pipe is
clear plastic tubing.
Serial numbers I've taken at rallies with maker dates when known
suggest this engine was probably made around 1943.
We've found evidence of several other engines around the property, but
this one appears to be the only survivor. I found a muffler from a
Casey motor (Australian copy of a Fairbanks railway speeder motor) and
several miscellaneous parts around the place. We still have not found
the farm dump - but there may not be one, the previous owners seemed to
just leave stuff wherever it died. It may be buried, or be under one of
the black berry forests! We found a truck under black berries only
about 100 metres from the house which we had no idea was there until we
burnt the black berries. The truck was too far gone before the fire to
save. It will bring a few dollars from the scrappie to help around the
farm.
No new photos because it looks just the same and we were too busy
working to photograph the work!! :)
June 19th 2005
- Home and in good nick!
The Ruston is home and in amazingly good condition - this evening after
I finished all the things I'd promised the household manager (ok, so
not quite... there is still a pile of brick rubble from the old stairs
in the front yard...)
Home in the trailer (this is as far as it got last weekend...). I dosed
everything liberally with WD-40 (don't you just love the $4 four packs
of this goop?).
I thought that the first thing I should do is get the head off and
assess the bore - decide if this is a short term or long term project.
Getting the head off was fairly easy. One of the nuts was in good
enough condition to remove the "normal" way, but the others were split
using a cold chisel and a BFH all purpose tool. The studs are re-usable
and even the copper gasket is a possibility - it is at least good
enough to be a pattern for a new one.
I managed to free the air intake choke plate on the carby and the float
chamber is not as badly off as I thought it would be. I was not able to
free up the speed control knob but one thing at a time. I don't just
want to attack it like I did the nuts on the head. I'll give the WD-40
a chance to do its job.
The head actually looks really good - I don't think this engine has
done a lot of work. There is no scarring or pitting on the surface. The
white stuff is a deposit of some sort of carbon & coke. Certainly
not water damage. Whatever it is just flakes off to the touch. There is
a lot of crap in the water spaces (surprise!) but no water entered the
head itself. This head won't need anything more than sand blasting or a
wire brush to clean it up nicely. I might even give Molassis a go this
time...
Rust coloured bore? Certainly, but not rusty. It is fairly smooth to
touch - I cannot say what it is like behind the piston, but I don't
think it is the bore that is holding this engine stuck in place. Once
the piston is out (making the brash assumption the water did not get
onto the other size of it) this bore will be good with only a hone. Why
the good condition? Take a look at the valves... they're both down the
bottom of the picture - yep, both closed. The black one on the right is
the exhaust valve and the other is the intake. The exhaust valve is
likely to be stuck in place because the exhaust pipe was so rusty it
rotted away and I hate to think what the stem and guide are like. The
intake should be ok. The surface (on this side) of both valves is good.
Either this engine was last stopped by someone who knew what they were
doing, or it involved some amazing luck for me.
My prognosis so far? This patient will have a short term recovery. This
could change when I delve in a bit more deeply next week. I'm vaguely
aiming at getting this thing running at Emerald Winterfest which is
only a few weeks away!
...
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