The running of the engine on air reported on the previous page was acheived with two or three false starts. The first pressurisation on air showed a couple of leaks from the gasket between boiler and cylinder block due to unevenness in the boiler shell, albeit slight. These were cured by using superglue! Cyano glue has a strong capilliary motion and will will wick into the small gaps. It also has a high temperature melt point of around 150 -160 degrees so it should remain stable under boiler heat.

The second attempt required a couple of the screwed plugs to be made leak tight and also the HP valve chest was not seating flat due to traces of loctite around the stud bases. These were cleaned up and the valve chest cover was also gasketed with 15thou thick material and that cured all the leaks that were preventing a goodly pressure to be obtained in the boiler.

The compressor was run to fill its resevoir to 90 psi and then the valve slowly opened to pressurise the boiler. With the reversing pole in full forward the three way valve in compound the throttle was slowly opened and the engine was off straight away as the pistons were not near TDC. The throttle response was smooth and good. The engine ran at half throttle for quite a while with the compressor delivering 50 psi at the rate of air being used by the engine.

During this run the exhaust was not connected to the chimney but came straight out of the cylinder block.

A run in reverse proved equally as successful.

A trial running in 'double high' produced a running engine but not as fast. This is put down to the 1/16" hole in the starting valve used in double high restricting the air flow. On steam with its expansive qualities it should be quite different.

So the valve settings have been shown to be right or near right on air. and they will not now be touched unless shown to need adjustment when steaming.