While all that stuff was going on I have continued with the refit. So far have removed and stipped down the boiler to its cladding. I gave it all a good wash and scrub, dried it and found the varnish in good order but stained in way of and below the flue by rusty water coming down from inside the outer funnel. This was made from a steel hoover hose extender and I never did anything about painting inside as it was only a stopgap until I sourced an aluminium one. This proved harder than I thought so am considering plastic bathroom waste pipe which is pretty close in size and, if I can find a piece with no writing on it, self coloured. So I cut back the remaining shine on the boiler cladding with fine wire wool, which also removes varnish from the brass banding giving a good keyed shine to it, and gave whole cladding a new coat of yacht varnish. Looks better than when new. I have only to paint end plates and flue stub with cream radiator paint and boiler will be boxed off. While varnish was drying I cleaned and polished all pipework and brass fittings with wire wool and painted valve bodies, wheel inners, elbows and sight glass and blowdown valve fittings with humbrol gloss maroony type gloss. I blew through the holes in the ceramic burner and noticed quite a few holes seni blocked so using the correct size drill bit in hand cleared all the holes and burner works well again. Next job is to remove engine and clean and repaint the plant bedplate which with all the mods since new is looking worse for Wear (get it?) Also intend to bed engine and pump/crankshaft outrigger bearing housing on thin film of silicone. This is to turn the holes in engine bedplate into little oil sumps to splash lubricate big ends and eccentrics. Anybody got any thoughts on that? Can't see it will do any harm. Will finally have to nake up new pipework foth the new, reduced capacity (and weight) oil seperator. Here goes with a pic, fingers crossed.
Jerry.