Every year, the Booleroo Steam and Traction Preservation Society conducts an annual rally during the last weekend in March. At this event, the Society’s extensive collection of early tractors, engines, and associated farm machinery is demonstrated to the public.
The Society’s unique collection of working steam equipment, includes a Yorkshire Steam Wagon, steam rollers, portables, and, in particular, two Fowler ploughing engines, which came into the Society’s possession from different sources.
In the late 1970’s, the Society acquired an 1882 built Fowler compound ploughing engine from Nonning Station, where it was last used in 1946. After this unit was relocated to Booleroo Centre, it was refurbished to operating condition, passing all the necessary tests required of a pressure vessel.
Following this effort, Mootooroo Pastoral Company donated an 1876 built Fowler single cylinder ploughing engine to the Society. This unit was in derelict condition and required extensive work, including the construction of a new boiler.
Since the early 1990’s, these two units have put on a demonstration of scarifying, and earth and dam scooping at the Booleroo rally weekend, which is possibly a unique display to the world of rally days.
Using a Fowler scoop, they demonstrate how these large engines were utilised, to construct large ‘Turkey Nest’ dams, to store water for the livestock on outback stations.
During the first scooping demonstration at a recent rally, the Fowler compound suffered a mechanical failure of its winding gear. These early Fowlers have a two shaft drive system to the winch drum, to give a high and low speed retrieve of the winch cable. The high speed shaft broke, even though high speed is never used at these demonstrations. A dog clutch is utilised to engage either gear, which is the same system as the forward and reverse of the feed rollers on a chaffcutter. However, at this event, the retaining key on the high speed shaft came partially out of its slot and fouled the shifting mechanism, resulting in the snapping of a 3.5 inch shaft. No other damage occurred so we were able to remove the high speed gear and broken portion of the shaft, thus allowing us to complete the afternoon demonstrations as planned.
As luck would have it, Simon Huntington, owner of Huntington Engineers at Mount Compass, had come along to this rally to assist with the operation of the steam exhibits. Simon has spent several years working in the steam model sphere, building fully-functioning, scale model railway locomotives and scale model traction engines. He builds the boilers, and machines the engines and gearing for himself and others, so he was very keen to be involved with the real toys!
Needless to say, Simon was involved in the post-rally discussion as to how to effect repairs to the Fowler, and he generously offered the use of his workshop equipment. John Smart, and myself, both of whom are very keen operators of the ploughing engines, set about constructing a plan to repair the shaft.
John was adamant that we get started as soon as possible, so as to be ready for next years rally, and it was lucky he did. You know how you think a job will not be too complicated or take too long. Well, we just made it!
The very next day, John, along with several local members, removed the broken shaft, as well as the slow speed shaft and associated pieces. This was no easy task, as the first step was to remove the crankshaft and flywheel assembly. He bought back a spud bin full of very heavy metal pieces which he then cleaned up.
Upon closer inspection, it was determined that excessive wear of the keys (the shafts and bushes of the lower cogs that the shafts rotated in) was the main cause of the failure. The shaft that had broken had close to 3/8 of an inch of slop in the bush it ran in, so the oil wasn’t staying in that location for long!
Cost is always a key factor in these jobs, so we decided to make a new shaft to replace the broken one, turn the worn section of the other shaft down to a new clean surface, make and fit two new bronze bushes to suit for the two cogs, and make and fit new keys for both shafts. The bronze bearing shells for both shafts were badly worn as well, but as each half shell weighed up to 6kg, the cost of new castings was out of the budget. Some machining of the faces and bores, plus plenty of shimming, would have to suffice.
I took the parts down to Simon’s and after some more measuring and cleaning he ordered the new materials. The shaft is 4 foot 6 inch long by 4.5 inch diameter, and the two bronze bushes in the lower cogs are 15 inches by 4.5 inches od.
Over four weekends, I went down to Simon’s to work on the repair. I would go down late on the Friday, so as to start early on Saturday, and stay until late on Sunday night. Simon was thus able to oversee my efforts, and tackle the more technical jobs such as the vertical milling machine. This added up to quite a bit of travel time, as it is a three hour trip down to Simon’s from home, and then two and a half hours in the opposite direction to Booleroo Centre.
Starting on the first weekend in September, I removed what was left of the bush of the slow speed cog. The high speed cog had no bush left in it at all, as the broken shaft had just been flogging around in it and it seemed to have work-hardened the bore. Simon has a large old flatbed lathe and we set the cog up in that. It proved to be extremely hard to machine so, in the end, we used high speed cutters and ran the lathe at thirty revs. Remember, we were trying to bore to a depth of 15 inches, so several boring bars were made. In the end, it took six hours and three cutter sharpening sessions for one cut, and we ended up with three different bore diameters, so the bush was turned with steps to suit.
The old shaft was put in another lathe, and the end that ran in the slow speed cog was cleaned. I then started on the new shaft that had four different diameters on it so there was plenty of swarf to be made. In another lathe, I started on the bushes, but there was no spare length, so, I had to turn one half the distance, then turn the bush around and re-set in a four jaw chuck. In the end, I was running three lathes at once.
I am quite proud that I had no accidents with the cutter or the chucks, though I had to keep my wits about me, especially as one lathe was in metric and the other in Imperial.
The following weekend saw the turning of the new shaft completed, and the internal bores of the new bushes were finished to suit the shafts. The bushes were then able to be fitted into the cogs. We tried to clean up the outer bearing surfaces on the cogs but it was extremely hard. Using the best available modern cutters, the swarf came off molten. Mr Fowler had obviously used some good material in the late 1800’s.
After a weekend break, John Smart came down as well. He worked on the keys, cutting the slots in the new shaft and then making the keys to suit. For the old shaft, the keys had to be two different widths to suit the worn shaft and sliding clutch boss. Hand filling was required. We also decided to securely locate the keys by fitting taper headed screws. John also worked on taking the slop out of the shifting mechanism by welding up the pivot pins and re-grinding them.
It was also decided to build up the teeth on the cogs in the drive train. I spent many hours at that task, resulting in pouring in 13kgs of rods. I used Austarc 12P rods as they are just mild steel and wouldn’t create hard spots. The cogs are cast steel and they were magnificent to weld, with the weld flowing on like butter. Grinding to shape was wearisome but the end result looked good. Those with blind ends on the teeth were more difficult. I took some of the cogs home to weld up during the week, with some having to be done on both sides.
The following weekend, John came down again, and we were able to complete the repair work. Most of the time was spent on the bearing shells, first taking a skim off the mating surface and then clamping the shells and re-boring the bore in the vertical mill. Not a perfect solution but we ended up with generally 75% contact surface. The contact was non existent at the shell joints but most of the thrust falls opposite to the joints. Many pieces of shim were cut so as to pack the shells up in their holders. We were also determined to improve the lubrication, particularly in the bottom cogs. This involved drilling 12 inch long holes in the ends of the shaft, which was no simple task, and then fitting grease nipples. We also fitted grease nipples to the bearing shells.
On a very hot weekend in early January, John and I took all the parts up to Booleroo Centre to refit them to the engine. Luckily, John has a HIAB crane on his truck and this was invaluable. Each shaft had to be lifted into position, the number of shims had to be estimated, then the shaft removed to fit the shims, and then refitted, and all tightened up. We were hopeful that the shaft could be turned and that the mesh of the cogs would be good enough. It took three attempts for one shaft and two for the other.
Once they were fitted, we then had to measure up the vertical position of the shafts. The bearing shells also act as the thrust washers and they were also fairly worn, allowing the mesh of the cogs with the crankshaft to be too shallow. The whole lot had to be dismantled again so that thrust washers could be made and fitted to the bearing shells. The Booleroo members were pretty amazed to see the engine back together but after a very solid weekend of work, somehow all the shafts were on the ground again.
Simon had supplied some hollow brass bar, which I took home, where I was able to machine up the thrust washers, split them, and then screw them onto the bearing shells. I was also able to fit all the grease nipples to the shells at this stage.
Finally, on the last weekend in February, we set off to reassemble the whole project. We worked hard all Saturday, with the help of John’s crane, to get the shafts in place. Even after the previous effort, we still put the wrong shaft in first and so, had to remove it and fit the other first. We were able to bring the crankshaft back to where we were working, and set it up on stands. That night, I welded up the driving cog on it, which was just in time, as Simon Huntington then turned up for the big day to follow.
We towed the engine out of the shed and, with the help of the tractor crane and some Booleroo members, we refitted the crankshaft. At this stage, we did not refit any of the connecting or valve rods. By joining all of my flat belts together, we were able to get a Farmall M tractor belted to the flywheel so that we could test our repairs. All the gearing ran as we hoped, so we then used my 4 wheel drive ute to pull out the winch cable. With the brakes locked on, the winch drum was engaged and it proceeded to drag the ute in.
This test was repeated several times, and the only adjustment required was some grinding of the teeth of the first cog that I had welded, as I hadn’t produced the lead-in angle quite right. Satisfied that all was well, we proceeded to reconnect the engine to the crankshaft.
After we finished, we found that we couldn’t turn the crankshaft. A tight valve rod eccentric was the culprit, but we couldn’t work out why. John stayed behind for another day and found a missing shim, so that was another problem solved. John then spent a full day tidying up other small jobs, and we were pretty confident by then that we had everything as we wanted it.
Normally, on the rally weekend, the engines are towed to their working compound on the Saturday, and only fired up on the rally day. In this case, we wanted to test this particular engine more thoroughly, so we planned to fire it before the rally. We also took this opportunity to have an assessor come along and conduct assessments for the steam tickets for two members. This is a full day, one-on-one process, so the boiler was fired on Friday, and Saturday as well.
The successful completion of the scooping demonstrations on the rally day certainly brought an enormous sense of satisfaction to Simon, John and I, and we look forward to the demonstration days ahead for the compound ploughing engine. *Peter Faint
