Since our purchase in 1999, the engine is having a new trolley fabricated, and an electric load brake is being adapted to run with the engine although mounted on a separate trolley. We already owned the brake, and by complete chance it had come from another Ruston-Hornsby college engine, and came complete with the drive wheel (multi-groove pulley about 26" in diameter) drive belt and most of the instruments.
The main items that needed sorting out were a replacement flywheel and a decent trolley to enable the engine to be moved around. It weighs about 1600lbs with oil and water, the trolley will be about 600lbs and the extras such as the rev-counter with its pedestal etc come to another 200lbs.
The trolley frame work is a ladder frame made up of 150mm (6") X 100mm (4") box section main members with 100mm (4") X 100mm (4") box section cross-members, which are extended out to the wheels to provide support for the fixed and moving axles. Axles are 100mm X 50mm box section with 40mm square solid steel axles pressed into each open end and bolted through with two 12mm HT bolts. The axles are turned down to suit the wheel bearings which are taper-roller in this case. Rolling friction is a major problem with a heavy engine, so we went for wheel sets with decent bearings.
Turntables are provided for the front axle, made of 8mm (5/16") steel plate of 14" diameter. A piece of Teflon laminate will be sandwiched between the plates to assist with defeating friction when steering the engine. The turntable pivot pin is a 30mm HT bolt which has been welded through the axle and turntable, fitting through two accurately machined holes in the axle and the turntable.
The crossmember above the steering axle has a 40mm hole into which fits a turned sleeve with an ID of 30mm to take the axle bolt, all finished off by a castellated nut and washer on top to hold it all together. Lashing hooks (6) are welded to each corner and one each side in the middle, plus four 24mm lifting eyes are bolted through the top sides of the main chassis members on the tops faces at each corner.
The engine is held to the trolley by only three bolts, and the front pair are through the hollow crankcase of the engine, just below/behind the bottom of the cylinder. To keep the main trolley members to a reasonable distance, we had to use an intermediate square bar with threads to take the bolts through the engine, the bar itself being held down by two bolts to the inner cross member (there are two of these, one at each end of the engine and one in the middle to provide support for the crankcase bottom flange all round its periphery.
The new casting was collected and stood outside for over 8 months to stabilise the casting, and then after a search we found a company that could machine it, the keyway being the only bit that they couldn't handle. It took a wait of about 3 months before we had the machined flywheel back, and another four weeks for the keyway to be cut. The new flywheel fitted very well indeed, and was visibly a very good match with the old original one. Balancing is something we will have to have a look at once the engine is on wheels, it is not that well balanced at present with a single flywheel, so a bit of static balancing will be required. The weight of the bare casting was about 550lbs, and once machined that came down to about 400lbs.