Quincy 325 compressor

[milomilo]

Ingenuity at work!!!!

[Ironman]

Today I ripped the head off.
I pulled all the valves out and noted that one sealing ring at the base of the low pressure discharge valve was missing completely. I have a complete gasket set and so I sorted out the new head gasket, intercooler gaskets, valve cover gaskets, and brass seal rings....ooops. I am missing one of the small rings.
So....that crunching sound is everything grinding to a halt til Tuesday. Monday is Thanksgiving holiday. I considered making one out of aluminum, but the last one was aluminum and the machine ate it.

The seats where the rings sit ar not at 90 deg to the valve, and as they are all smooth and shiny, and the mating surface of the valve body is at the same slight angle. So I debated squaring things off in the lathe and mill, but this slight dish is only for the small diameter rings and the intakes which have a larger brass ring are flat.
So we'll see what Tuesday brings.

[Ironman]

Well, boys and girls, I have returned from town and the Quincy dealer with no parts and much information.
Due to covid "free money" and paying people to stay home, with the intended goal of breaking the supply chain, I can say the goal was successfully achieved. They cannot get any employees and National Process has a devil of a time to get parts. They had none of the copper gaskets I needed, so I will be making my own. I spoke with a compressor mechanic and he recommended aluminum, as the newer series of machines are using that. He also got me a parts list and diagrams with part numbers. The Record of Change numbers are in the 170's now, and my R.O.C. number 4 was made in 1932. Kind of shows the durability of this machine. Some of these rings could be annealed and re-used, we'll see.
So the next pictures will be of machining a thin washer

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Ironman

Well, boys and girls, I have returned from town and the Quincy dealer with no parts and much information.
Due to covid "free money" and paying people to stay home, with the intended goal of breaking the supply chain, I can say the goal was successfully achieved. They cannot get any employees and National Process has a devil of a time to get parts. They had none of the copper gaskets I needed, so I will be making my own. I spoke with a compressor mechanic and he recommended aluminum, as the newer series of machines are using that. He also got me a parts list and diagrams with part numbers. The Record of Change numbers are in the 170's now, and my R.O.C. number 4 was made in 1932. Kind of shows the durability of this machine. Some of these rings could be annealed and re-used, we'll see.
So the next pictures will be of machining a thin washer

Think they may have them here? https://www.quincycompressor.com/sales-service-locator/

[arizonian]

Originally Posted by Ironman

Well, boys and girls, I have returned from town and the Quincy dealer with no parts and much information.
Due to covid "free money" and paying people to stay home, with the intended goal of breaking the supply chain, I can say the goal was successfully achieved. They cannot get any employees and National Process has a devil of a time to get parts. They had none of the copper gaskets I needed, so I will be making my own. I spoke with a compressor mechanic and he recommended aluminum, as the newer series of machines are using that. He also got me a parts list and diagrams with part numbers. The Record of Change numbers are in the 170's now, and my R.O.C. number 4 was made in 1932. Kind of shows the durability of this machine. Some of these rings could be annealed and re-used, we'll see.
So the next pictures will be of machining a thin washer

Gerry, you already have aluminum (aluminium) shards in the downstream paths. I think copper would be the material of choice. For what it's worth, my youngest brother during his school years made a composite copper/aluminum head gasket for a Honda 350 single cylinder dirt bike as an "engineering exercise" being that he did not have the funds to purchase a head gasket from Honda. It worked until the day he sold the bike. Just anneal the copper first and you will have a winner.

[Ironman]

I agree that copper is better.
It seems at one time this machine was run without a copper gasket under one of the valve bodies, resulting in a taper of the seat and contact area on the valve body of about 10 degrees. This makes the copper ring slightly cone shaped.
The old boy I was chatting with talked about wire worm holes, and explained that's what they call a small track that can form on a gasket, and the air leakage will erode this wire track into a large damaged area of the head casting. I'm thinking of dropping this head onto the mill and trimming the seat to flat. Same for the valve body. It may not be necessary to do this with copper gaskets.
I'm expecting an email from the distributor telling me the cost and availability of these parts.

Anyway, not today. I was supposed to replicate a casting in steel for this guy and with no plasma table working, I'm going to weld up the old casting and give it to him to carry on til I get up and running.

[Ironman]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Think they may have them here? https://www.quincycompressor.com/sales-service-locator/

That sales/service locator page shows me that National Process Equipment in Edmonton is the dealer I can use.

[Ironman]

Today I found some time to work on the compressor. I decided to anneal what I had and go with that.
The copper is easy, heat to a dull red and drop it in the water. Aluminum anneals about 75 degrees below melting point, so I used my felt pen and made a black mark all around the two original rings. You are supposed to heat it till the marker disappears. I had one spot that was still dark because of overlapping. By the time that cooked off it was too hot and sort of folded up when I tried to sweep it into the water.
I threw in a pdf on the valves so it isn't all greek, you can see the copper seals at the top and bottom of the body and the wide flat ones under the caps.
So I went to the lathe and made 3 of them, And true to form I did it again. In the photo. So I had to figure it out and when 70 to 90% of the marker is gone, dunk it. I won't probably do this again for another 20 years.

Anyway the head is on and torqued, and the valve assemblies are in and torqued, now I have one more valve, to do and it's ready to roll.

[Ironman]

I think I figured out the problem.with this thing.
At some point in the past the valve pressure screws were not well torqued and allowed the valve to eventually hammer up and down til the seal ring was beat to shreds and pumped out to the tank. Compressors left on all the time have these problems.
Before it could damage the head recess, it got shut down and another copper ring installed.
On inspection I found the flat on the head was not distorted, but the flat on the valve body was worn to a slight angle say, 105 degrees. If you put in a flat seal ring and torque it down, and because the angled seat is contacting the seal ring on only an edge, it soon loosens.

I'm also thinking, just like when you mount a set of tires, you maybe should re-torque after a bit of a run.

Anyway it was a 10 second job to put in the lathe and square it again.