Pump wagon

At 10:15 this morning the phone rang. It was Ben, he said, "if you want help setting those lumps of Sh--, meet me at the showgrounds in 20 minutes." Okay.. it took 30 because I had to change into grubbies. It took us about an hour to load the tank and the pump. Most of it arguing with the club's clunky junky Ford hi-lift (some members have a real bad habit of abusing it, and then not telling anybody when they screw it up.)

Anyway, it turned out there was no oil in the tank (after I was told by 4 different people there was oil innit), just a skin of tar in the bottom. so lifting it was easy. It's just sitting on wood blocks for the moment. I'll try to cut the pipe supports next week. The Union pump gave us a bit of a scare when the chains shifted (the brakes on the Ford tend to be nothing or grab, so it was swinging pretty good), but it then went on with no other troubles. I didn't do any welding today because the grass is pretty wet, and I really dislike being "tickled".
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After we got it on the wagon, and more or less balanced, Ben got curious what the tags and stamps said. They told us that it's a 6x4x6 tar pump, that was once owned by a company called Koppers
http://www.oil150.com/essays/2008/0...vision-neville-synthese-rhone-poulenc-merisol


He also got rambunctious and pulled the water side on the Worthington It has leather cups so it probably was for water.
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Meanwhile, he also agrees that a mid-sized National duplex wandered off sometime in the last 3 years.... We really hope they got hernias loading it.

While I was there I took some pix just for y'all's edification. This is one of the really big simplexes... they are about 9 feet long
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The valves on this thing are pretty interesting. The rocker drives a smallish slide valve, which activates a larger piston shuttle valve that controls the cylinder
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And for those who have read about "bull plugs" but didn't know what the heck they were. This is a field made one. They also come factory made of cast iron
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Since we have to go back for the meeting tonight anyway, I'll probably go a bit early and see about finishing that tongue... the front end is getting kinda heavy and really hard to steer with just the stub.

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Today Kim and I went over to work on this thing a bit more...

It turns out the tank was sitting drunk because it was BUILT about 1/4" off square. The simplest solution was to weld one support crosspiece lower than the other. Close enough for government work!
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The Worthington got painted grey. Kind of boring, but historically correct. Most vintage industrial equipment was painted either green or grey. And this one showed spots grey paint. We also found not one, but TWO 6" long cracks in the pickup (suction) part of the pump end. If we decide to make this one operate it's gonna need either brazed or grooves ground for JB weld... since they're both underneath, and behind stuff that will be FUN I also still need 2 short pieces of 4" channel to mount it. I looked on Craigslist, but the only guy I found wanted $70 for a 6 foot piece! And the scrapyard doesn't have any.
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It's sooo hard to get good help these days...
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The tongue... They griped that they didn't want the long one I had planned "to trip over". So they gots a really, really short one, which will make this thing a royal PitA to back up. It will be painted red to match the wheels
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About this point I was getting dehydrated, had too much sun and paint fumes, and starting to feel woogly - so we bagged it for the day.

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is the tongue a timber or steel tube ? i'd just make it easily removable with a simple pin, then slide it into the channel frame when not needed. it looks like a great project. are you guys a no-profit ? if so, i'd ask the scrap guy for some scrap as a donation :)
 
It's an oak 4x4.

The club has long had a thing about corporate donations. Thyey'd rather go it alone so it's more like the early threshing bees than a "fair" (the old timers used the word "circus") Sometimes I call it "standing on your own d--k"
 
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