10EE apron Bijur unit

I took the apron off my 1957 10EE and have found the Bijur metering unit that feeds the well with the cloth packing and pipe cleaner wicking was clogged. It is marked as a MRA-00. I could not find this number in the Bijur catalog so I emailed them for the current number. They replied that the replacement is number BIJ 20-0794 which also is not shown in their catalog or on any third party seller sites. Bijur said I could order directly from them at a cost of $66 plus shipping. Seems high to me. Anyone have any suggestions on a stock part number at a more reasonable price?

Also with the apron off I could not get oil to come up to the top output holes for the Bijur unit or the oil feed to the carriage hole even after priming thru the large plug and turning the carriage hand wheel for 5 minutes. I can see that turning the hand wheel does in fact stroke the pump when it is installed. I took the pump out and when operating it by hand it does dispense a drop of oil per stroke. I disassembled the pump and cleaned and inspected everything and found no problems and blew compressed air through all the apron oil passages. After I put everything back together and primmed through the large plug hole I still can not see oil coming up with 5 minutes of cranking the hand wheel. I let it sit over night in hopes that any air bubbles would rise but still get no oil. Any recommendations?

do a search on this forum to find the supplier of the oilers. you can find most of them for around $20. Did you try to prime the tube going up to the upper part of the apron? sometimes there is an air bubble.

fluidlinesystems. i bought stuff from them. reasonable

Superbowl said:

I took the apron off my 1957 10EE and have found the Bijur metering unit that feeds the well with the cloth packing and pipe cleaner wicking was clogged. It is marked as a MRA-00. I could not find this number in the Bijur catalog so I emailed them for the current number. They replied that the replacement is number BIJ 20-0794 which also is not shown in their catalog or on any third party seller sites. ..

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If memory serves, that's not a metering valve, like the rest of the Bijur fittings in the system, but a 15 PSI pressure relief valve. It keeps the rest of the system at 15 PSI and lets the excess oil return to the sump.

Cal

if you purchase new from Monarch, they will give you a 90*-ell and a 10-psi check valve as the current replacement. they say the 1/8NPT straight check valve which was the oem part is not available, but this is not correct. you can get them from fluidline systems. i have found that the 10-psi check actually opens a about ~8-psi which does not provide enough pressure for the carriage so i went with a 20-psi 1/8-Male check (part #B4450).

Cal Haines said:

If memory serves, that's not a metering valve, like the rest of the Bijur fittings in the system, but a 15 PSI pressure relief valve. It keeps the rest of the system at 15 PSI and lets the excess oil return to the sump.

Cal

Click to expand...

That may be correct Cal, and why it is so much more expensive than other fittings. I will call some of the third party sellers others have recommended but no one shows this fitting on their web site. Here is a photo of it.



Note the small pin beside it. I could get no air through the fitting by either blowing and sucking from both ends so I hit it with a compressed air hose. The small pin then came out. After it came out if I suck on one end I get a very tiny air flow. But blowing on either end still does nothing. I assume the pin was supposed to be in there but who knows. I still want to replace it so will pay to get it directly from Bijur if I can not find it cheaper from another source.

I solved the problem of no oil flow and so will document it here for those who follow. After letting the apron sit another day in hopes any air would bubble out, I cranked the carriage hand wheel for a couple more five minute stretches with no success. Several days ago I noticed that the hole that feeds oil from the apron to the carriage is threaded for seemingly no reason. I decided to try suction. The hole is threaded a standard 1/4" so I center drilled a bolt and cut the head off.


Then I screwed it in, attached a hose, and used a large hypodermic with no needle and the plunger removed to get it to hook it up to my shop vac. It took several minutes with the shop vac sucking and me turning the hand wheel but eventually I got oil I could see in the hypodermic.

After that, with the suction set up removed, just turning the wheel would make oil flow. (Note that while applying suction I had the hole for the Bijur fitting plugged. The Bijur hole is a 1/8" pipe thread.)

I suspect the reason the feed hole for the carriage is threaded is so back in 1957 the factory could apply suction to bleed out the system to confirm oil flow so perhaps I stumbled on the proper method to bleed the system. Maybe if I just had put it all together and ran the machine, the vibrations eventually would have allowed the air bubbles to escape and oil to flow but I wanted to confirm flow before I reinstalled the apron and the suction system worked to do that.

Superbowl said:

That may be correct Cal, and why it is so much more expensive than other fittings. I will call some of the third party sellers others have recommended but no one shows this fitting on their web site. Here is a photo of it.

Click to expand...

this is the 20-psi check, $20.
Bijur Check Valve 20# Adapter Type 1/8 M x 5/16-24 F #B4450

everettengr said:

this is the 20-psi check, $20.
Bijur Check Valve 20# Adapter Type 1/8 M x 5/16-24 F #B4450

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here is the catalog. look on pages 32-33 for the check valves...
http://www.fluidlinesystems.net/v/vspfiles/downloadables/BijurFittingAccessories.pdf

It is a 5 psi check valve. This is direct from Steve at Monarch. See post #14.

Apron oil pump question

Thanks for all the help guys. I just ordered a B3905 from Fluid Systems for $22.49 including shipping. B3905 is a 5psi check valve with the correct 1/8 npt threads so no 90 degree thread change fitting is needed. My decision was based on the fact that 5psi is the Monarch recommendation and that I will quickly see if oil gets up to the ways with it installed. Also if a higher pressure one never opens, it will starve the wicking of oil. If 5psi does not push oil to the ways, I will bite the bullet of dropping the apron again and installing one rated to maintain a higher pressure. Others finding the need for higher pressure to get oil flow could have problems caused by partially blocked or leaking lines on their lathes. Time will tell if 5psi is right for my machine.

For what it's worth, years back, Scott at Monarch told me that the want to see 15 PSI at the apron manifold test port. You're obviously not going to get that with a 5 PSI pressure relief valve. The pump can put out well over 60 PSI. I don't know what the metering valves want to see in terms of working pressure, but that would be worth looking at.

Cal

The system wants perhaps 20-25 PSI according to this from Bijur (page 16):

http://www.bijurdelimon.com/fileadmin/products/docs/bdius/Brochures/258_SYS_Single-Line-Resistance_BR.pdf

That would be measured at the saddle manifold.

Earlier parts of the document suggest how to calculate the pressure based on the number and sizes of meter units. I didn't try to go through that.

the metering units are designed to operate at the pressure range of the pump.
Scott sent me a 10-psi apron check but acknowledged i may get limited flow at the five metering units in the carriage (which is what happened) and recommended the 20-psi check.
i tested the 10-psi check he sent me and it is indeed ~8-10-psi. i have a '61 modular.
5-psi seems to low?

Does Bijur actually call this type of part a "check valve"? I would call this a pressure relief valve, since it's job is to bleed off excess pressure. In my world, a check valve only lets fluid flow in one direction and doesn't care about pressure. There's a check valve on the output of the pump.

Cal

Cal, that is an excellent observation. Never thought about the verbiage. All the thoughts above make sense. This is the email I got from Steve at Monarch. I bought the “5” part he described, and it has worked for me.

John,

The attached shows what metering valve goes where on the carriage, although that probably isn't what the problem is. It's probably the one in the top of the apron. If you put a regular metering valve in there it will oil like crazy. It's supposed to be a 5 psi check valve. It will say "5 lbs" on the side of it and have an arrow pointing in the direction of flow.

Regards,

Steve Andrews
Service Manager
Monarch Lathes, L.P

I got an email from Fluid Systems today that the B3905 5psi unit I ordered is on back order for at least a month. Therefore I am now going to try the 10psi B3906 that costs $10 more.

yes, it's a check valve and only allows flow in one direction.
but in the direction of flow it is spring loaded such that the 'check valve' does not open until the pressure exceeds the load (force) on the spring.
basically, it is acting like a relief valve and bleeding pressure/lube until the check closes at the rated pressure.

Once again this forum comes through with great information. When I got the apron off of my machine, the well at the top which feeds oil to various places in the apron was dry. There was also no wicking material in it. There was oil on the V way when running earlier, so I assumed the pump was ok.

I put some oil in and turned the gears by hand and got lots of flow and pressure to the port that feeds the saddle, but putting my thumb over it and pumping I got nothing through the check valve to the well.

I took out the fitting and cleaned it up and was able to force some oil through it. Then I got curious and set up the test in the picture. The lower tube is filled with oil. Here are the results.

PSI. Seconds between drops

5 40
8 30
10 16
11 16
12 16
15 13
? 5 (Maybe 40 PSI)

So I'm guessing the valve is fine.

My plan is to fill the well with felt and put it back together. I'm going to clean up the saddle and make sure all of the lines and valves are ok.

There was no gasket between the apron and the saddle around the feed hole. What is supposed to be there?

One of the saddle oil meters might be open. I recall the saddle meter to actually be a 5 psi "regulator" - basically open at 5 psi.

Also, I recall using cotton twine as cotton waste in the apron well.

Check that the line down to the half nuts is open, it's often clogged closed.

Cotton twine is a great idea. All of the passages are open in the apron. I know you need some kind of wicking material in there as the flow is pretty low and the outlets are all at different levels. With nothing to slow things down, all of the oil would go to the half nuts. I'll probably poke a piece of twine down each outlet hole and stuff the cavity full.

I'm guessing I do need something between the pump passage and the port in the saddle to hold the pressure.

I'm amazed at how much pressure that pump puts out and how well it holds the pressure when it stops.