rhe engineer's accessories R. D. Cater NN the balcony of
Page 50
Page 51
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
this year's exhibition Jat Earls Court there was one piece of uipment that caught my eye as being of :at use to the fleet engineer. All these or souls know of the fearful expense of ing a breakdown vehicle, and most of !..,m at some time or another have suffered Ottmares after viewing the damage caused so-called "recovery experts".
The device to which I refer is the Dixonte Trailbak. This is a heavy recovery ane which can be mounted on any of a mpany's tractive units converting it to recovery vehicle. A main beam lies across top of the fifth wheel and below this ,Ire is a standard SMMT king pin which ;ates in the normal manner in the fifth mei. The front end of this beam is secured chains to the tractive unit chassis fortrd of the fifth wheel. Taking approxinely five minutes to mount, the crane is pable of handling suspended loads of to 4.5 tons. The main beam and cross ;mbers are of fabricated box sections and ; fixed jib carries a self-sustaining winch an which the lifting cable is passed round hree-pulley sheave block.
Supplied as standard with the unit is a 'Ted A-frame, draw-bar, a safety chain d two lifting slings. The unit costs £280. Moving from the requirements of ticles that are broken to those that require thing more than a "pick-me-up", I called at the stand of Dunedin Instrumentation Ltd. This company's well-known products aimed at checking diesel equipment in situ are, I feel, very useful to the fleet engineer in that they dispense with the hit and miss method of eliminating causes of bad performance, starting troubles, poor fuel consumption black smoke and the like. There is no doubt that there is a lot of time wasted in most workshops trying to locate trouble in injection systems. Even if a firm is lucky enough to have one of those geniuses who seems able to put his finger straight on the problem there is always the time when such a man will be off work or tied up with another job. At times like these there is no substitute for the Dunedin gear.
Two units that must cut the time for carrying out their particular functions by at least 300 per cent are the Electrotac and the Dieseltimer. The first mentioned is an electronic device which uses the pulses in the high pressure side of a system to record the revs per minute at which the engine is turning. Where there is no chance of getting a mechanical rev counter on to a revolving shaft there is no other method of checking this all important feature of an engine's performance. With the Electrotac it takes as long as it does for one to disconnect an injector pipe and insert the transducer that records the pulses. The device is powered by an 18 volt battery which will give about nine months of constant use. To allow the condition of the battery to be ascertained and to ensure that the calibration of the unit is always correct, a calibration check is included in the unit.
The Dieseltimer utilizes a stroboscopic light system by which timing can be quickly and accurately checked by the most unskilled labour. Using the same pressure transducer as the Electrotac, pulses are converted to electric impulses which cause the strobe light to come on. The light flashing on the timing marks or either the front pulley of the engine or on those on the flywheel, show the actual reading as though the unit were not revolving. By turning a small control knob on the set
until the required reading is obtained ii only neccessary to read-off the degrees the knob and the amount of mistiming shown and the correction can take pla These two units—which can be suppl in a single cabinet are then called the Tian talc—together with the now famous Inj tester, form a very useful kit with wh an operating engineer can have cleisel equ ment thoroughly checked without the nt to remove any one unit from the engi Prices of the equipment are: Electro £38 5s.; Dieseltimer £105 and the Di tester £59 12s. 6d. R. D. Ca