Rick Rowlands
Titanium
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2005
- Location
- Youngstown, Ohio
Recently we acquired an Alco S2 diesel locomotive. It is 69 years old and last ran about 10 years ago, but has been stored inside. It had a cooling water heating system to keep it from freezing up but it failed at some point and as a result there is freeze damage. It appears that the engine itself did not freeze but the rather large turbocharger was full of water in its cooling passages and cracked in two places.
With a locomotive of this age replacement parts are not available, so I would either have to find another Alco being scrapped and harvest its turbo or repair the existing one. The largest cracked area is in the shape of an H and the entire side is bowed out. The second cracked area has a crack about a foot long and extends through a pipe boss.
I'm open to ideas on how to repair the two broken parts. Its a non pressurized cooling system, but is subject to somewhat high temps and lots of vibration.
For the larger broken section, I'm thinking of removing the bulged out sections and screwing a piece of copper plate over the hole as a patch. The copper is malleable enough to be formed to a close fitting shape, and with screws every 3/4" or so around the periphery it should hold on tight.
The other crack is rather long and is problematic because it goes right through a pipe boss. So it needs enough strength to hold the pipe, and with one side bulging out the threads don't mate up perfectly.