Air starting a Bucyrus Erie

[martyn williams]

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEblQKvaEuk[/video]
Looks like a Consolidated Pnuematic compressor,the crane engine is an Atlas,of the same type fitted to very early Cats before the produced their own diesels
Martyn

[FOWLER MAN]

Hi Martyn
Thats a great find. When I started working on the navvies there were quite a few air start machines about.
The Ruston 19 with the 3 VQR engine had the compressor bolted to the floor behind the drivers seat (saddle).
It was a two cylinder unit, one petrol driven and the other making air.
You had to kneel on the cab floor to swing them. They would make about 350 lbs. of air, and as the engines were allowed to run all day if the system wasn't leaking that was enough air to last 5 or 6 shifts.
I've seen the driver distracted and leave the bar in the flywheel. Hell of a bang when the air was turned on, god knows where it ended up.
Seeing the individual exhaust pipes through the roof reminded me how, when they were working hard and the revs slowed, you could hear every cylinder fire individualy, and at dusk or in the dark a tongue of flame appeared from each pipe in turn as the engine fired.
Thats the sort of thing I miss about the old plant, it couldn't happen these days.
Fred

[martyn williams]

When you see the old Cats started with a bar it makes you think how many people got hurt whilst starting these machines.When I worked on the big Sulzer and English Electric diesels,we used to bar over the engine to adjust tappets.On the Sulzers you has a big bar and pivot assembly to bar the engine over.Some forgot to remove the bar , and then start the engine.That was a brown trouser job
We had air start locos,a petrol engine driven compressor that would charge up a receiver,open a vale in the cab and that would send compressed air to the cylinders,motor the engine and fire it up.
Most ship engines start that way.
Martyn

[gah1950]

hello martyn.
i remember when we had a couple of 54 rb s in the sixties that were started by air,there was a timing point on the block and a mark on the flywheel normally everything was ok unless you tried to start the 5 cyl ruston with less than 80lbs psi.it would normally give a chuff or two and stop,then the games would start.There was a bar we inserted into one of the many holes in the flywheel to turn the motor back to the start position and you had to be very quick because the engine sometimes used to give chuffing noise and turn very quickly with the bar becoming airborne in the back of the navvie.once started in the morning we never shut them down at break times,happy days .graham.

[chainmaker]

when I worked for a jcb agent we took a couple of air start 19s in part ex (think they came from r m douglas) a bloke from hastings bought them to mount on barges for dredging,I had the job of starting them and loading onto the trailer if I remember right the main fuel tank was under the engine and a fuel pump lifted fuel into a day tank that gravity fed the injector pump? the fuel cocks had been left open and the fuel had drained back into the main tank what a bas****d to get them started I was only a youngster but the only bloke who could drive a rope navvie in the yard at the time, I remember the young office girls came out to watch me load them (possibly because I was very close to the office) that put a bit of a swagger into my step and a couple of inches on my head amongst other placeslol

[Renaultman]

I love that engine tune, I could listen too that engine all day. Great find.

[Stormin]

When I show that my four year old lad in the morning he's going to take some convincing that it isn't steam powered with that engine noise