So Dick V. was kind enough to loan us his engine for use in the Steam Powered Snow Cone Machine for Maker's Faire, 2010. We noticed at the fair that the back gasket was leaking so we made it a point to make and install him a new gasket.
I've started doing this now whenever I have an engine apart. I measure the bore and stroke and take a picture, so I won't lose the sheet of paper I wrote it on or forget (due to my early onset Alzheimer's ;-) J/K)
Here we have a stroke of 3 inches.
We have a bore of 2.5 inches. I'll have to calculate the HP curves from this data.
Here you can see we removed the lagging and carefully laid it out so we could put it on exactly how it came off. The back (furthest away from the cylinder head) gasket was the one that was leaking so we had to take the cylinder off to get to it.
Here's another view of everything.
Emmy is wiping down the piston and rings with a clean cloth.
Stephen is calling to get expert advice on how to proceed. ;-) Notice the tape we had to put on the flywheel rim to get the belt to not slip as bad.
Here is the cylinder, coated with our magic mix of steam cylinder oil and graphite powder (to make a paste)
Of course, we didn't have any gaskets, so we used the good one to make a pattern. I cut it out with a razor blade and punched the holes with a punch. Then it went on with our secret gunk (see above) The material is just an old manilla folder.
This was kind of weird. It looks like a casting imperfection in the cylinder wall, although someone suggested it was for exhaust. Not exactly sure. We got the engine back together (tricky getting the cylinder past the rings because everything was so tight) and the lagging back on and it ran great on compressed air (for testing only)