Excellent description of how the suspension interacts with the car and track! I had no idea how it all works.
Ahh. Back in revenue service again. Bringing up the "Caboose" position at the end of the train ready for the weekend excursions.
Spent a bit of time working on the diesel generator under the car. The diesel is a four cylinder, air cooled DEUTZ model. First you have to roll the generator cabinet out from under the car on Waukesha style outriggers. There are wheels attached to the cabinet that roll in tracks on top of the outriggers. You can see the wheels on top of the outrigger in this image. The muffler seen to the left has to be detached first. The flexible pipe connected to the exhaust manifold had broken loose again. The first time I attempted to repair it, a 3 inch piece of exhaust coupling was jammed into the flexible pipe and into the manifold flange, held in place by sheet metal screws. That lasted a few years but then started leaking real bad. The exhaust soot got sucked into the cooling air and clogged up the fins on the cylinder heads. This time we welded the pipe to the flange and reassembled it. See how long that lasts. The soot on the cylinder fins was causing the engine to overheat and shut down. Blew all that out with a power washer and it does not overheat now. The next project was to move the oil bath air cleaner assembly to the outside of the cabinet so that the oil can be changed periodically without having to roll the entire cabinet out on the outriggers. Here the air filter has been removed and a piece of 2.5 inch hose is attaced to the intake manifold and extends out the side. The hose has to have a coupling in the middle to break apart so that when the cabinet has to be rolled out, it does not interfere with the cabinet wheel track bracket seen on the left. There is a cut in the hose between the two hose clamps. A frame to create a rock shield for protecting the air filter will have panels bolted to it eventually. The air intake is at the turbine looking thing. The oil pan that the air bubbles up through is clipped onto the bottom of the assembly. This pan has to be removed periodically so that the oil can be changed. The intake air coming through the turbine blades swirls around in a vortex chamber dropping the larger dust particles into the yellow cup below it. That also has to be emptied. In this shot, the cabinet is rolled back into place where it can now stay when the air filter needs servicing.
Here we are remounting the air cleaner and rock shield. We cleaned the shield up of all the rust, "pickled" it in phosphoric acid to give it an anti-rust coating that is formed by phosphate conversion or "passivation" to prevent iron oxidation by means of the Parkerization process. (That was a mouth full.) Then primed and painted it before putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. We are working on getting some vinyl letters cut to replace the red paint. The Texas sun does a number on most red paints. Me and my white painters pants again.
I believe there are some vinyl products that are more UV tolerant. However they probably still have to be replaced sooner or later. Much easier than painting them however.
I remember working on those little Deutz 4 cylinder engines. In my younger years they were used in 1/4 yard wheeled muckers underground in a gold mine north of Silverton CO I was an underground mechanic in. Those little engines are incredibly robust little critters, last a long time if treated right. There are very few gaskets on Deutz engines of that class basically the valve covers and a couple others, push rod tubes used o-rings. The head gaskets are steel. But they come in many thicknesses, as that is how you set the compression for each cylinder. They were among the first to use degrees of turn on the cylinder bolts instead of torque numbers. You would assemble each cylinder torgue to spec, stick a piece of lead into the injector hole roll the engine crank over pull the lead and mic it, if withing spec, move to the next cylinder if not, do over till your happy. Very labor intensive, our shop gen foreman said it was cheaper to rebuild 3408 Cat, than a 4 cylinder Deutz. But pound for pound made more power than any other engine we used. We used 3, 4, 5, 6 cylinder Deutz engines. I hope you changed the cooling fan belts while you had it out. Keep it as clean as you can make sure the cooling shrouding is in place properly and it will last you a long time. I remember the German to English translation in manuals was humorous in the early 1980's.
