Jensen 75 - Superheated with new burner and melting solder

[senorkaboom]

I find what works for me and my engines is to just use them as is. Making changes with burners, lines and other things just leads to overheated engines, solder melting, and my engine wearing out prematurely. I just get pleasure seeing them operate as made.

[DrFrankensteam]

Nice burner!

[STEVEDIGIBOYtv]

Buy a little torch by Smith oxy/ace store bought bottles and used for jewellry with REAL med or hard silver solder. Good to over 1100f easy and sweats into seam well with borax. Use it for stirling motors turning car alternators. Strong stuff no drips LOL!

[fengineer08]

Just braise it and this wont happen.

[MisterOcclusion]

It should not have happened in the first place... Some day I will clean up and silver solder it, but right now I have just replaced the whole ugly mess with a factory fresh line

[vanhaunagan]

would you like to see where i work! a

co gen. boiler that runs at 1900 degree's sending super heated steam at 700 to 800 degree's through a steam driven turbine. dangerous stuff, but its a living.

[jamespetts2]

I'm told that one cannot siver solver anything that has ever been soft soldered...

[MisterOcclusion]

I don't know. Seems to me the alloys might combine to produce a lower temperature alloy... This is my fist foray into silver soldering/brazing, so I really don't know. I'll find out when I go to fix it, however.

[slinkynubby]

If you decide to "silver solder" the connection, you will want to cut the lines back to a point that hasn't been contaminated by the lower temperature solder. I would recommend brazing in compression fittings rather than soldering the tubing directly, this will allow you to remove the super heater in the future without the need to unsolder the lines.

[MisterOcclusion]

At this point I think I am going to remove the whole mess and install a stock line, since the superheater really seems to have little if any real practical value. It was a good experiment, though.

[jimmeh23]

how does your super-heater work?

[MisterOcclusion]

The brass tube leaves the steam dome on the left side, runs down under the boiler to the far end of the firebox and loops back along the same path, above the burner. It comes back up along side the boiler, past the steam dome and joins with the factory steam line.

If you meant How Well does it work.... Well... I'm not convinced that it was worth the time and effort. I still have to fix a leak in the line, however, where soft solder proved to be inadequate. Then we'll see.

[jimmeh23]

ok, i think i get that

[randomguy9898]

you should take a temprature reading of the superheater line.

[MisterOcclusion]

I tried, but the infra thermometer must have been picking up mostly what was behind it. It's not very good at measuring anything that isn't non-reflective

[randomguy9898]

wow, you got it so hot its melts sawter....now u have a new sawtering iron/steam engine!!!!

oh and you can hear your dog at the end.

[MisterOcclusion]

Yeah... I still have to get around to silver soldering the bugger. I didn't expect such intense heat. That's Baily in the background. He's the yappy one. Our other little one was pretty quiet, unless she took offense to the TV or her reflection in a mirror...