DECEMBER 2005:
Some new buffers have been acquired, from a dead sparky near Newport though they appear to be the correct ones. These will replace two worn ones one end and two wrong shape ones t'other end. As the No.1 cab is pretty much finnished now, attention has been turned to the body side where yet more tons of metal is being welded in by Dave the metal magician., ably assisted by Pete, Jon and the Sunday gang doing much grinding cutting and general dirty work. Here are the pics to prove it:
(These 6 photos © Pete Burrow for which thanks.)

OCTOBER 2005: We now have a pretty bogie! see photo, thanks to Jonathan 'scudclub' King and the bodywork alloy finnishing strips have been replaced, with great difficulty. The photos show why they're being replaced! and more and more metal is being glued on by Dave and his magic mig.

25 901 ENGINE REBUILD CONTINUES

04/12/05- Attention has been turned to the bottom of the engine at the moment. We have a bit of a set back as most of the big end bearing shells acquired from the Bodmin lads have turned out to be the wrong size. Therefore we are are trying to source the correct ones at the moment.

06/09/05- Much valve seat grinding and valve lapping has been going on, we are very nearly finnished with that bit. I can't deny it's a bit of a grind.

Next stage is to reassemble the valves into the heads, put the new rings on the pistons, fit the pistons and heads. We should have it done by tomorrow! (Who said tomorrow never comes?)

Thankyou to those who helped clean out the sump, a lovely job and a distinctly unpleasant version of being well oiled!

33 002 BODYWORK REBUILD CONTINUES!

SEPT 05-The Saga continues: Dave the welder has more or less re-manufactured No1 cab from scratch and very good it looks too. We are all holding our breath to make sure the windscreens fit!

The rest of the gang has been busy removing rust from the body, priming and removing 40 years worth of paint from various grills.

37 037 IS OFFICIALLY NAMED!

28th AUG: The Devon Diesel Society's 37 037 was officially named "Loch Treig" at a naming ceremony at Buckfastleigh. It was allocated the name whilst at Eastfield Depot but never actually carried it. They decided it would look good with the appropriate Eastfield livery that it is currently carrying.

25 901 ENGINE REBUILD

01/09/05- The valves have been refaced in Plymouth and work is progressing well with the valve seats. The Hall Toledo grinder is working well and the valves are proving easy to lap. The sump has been drained and cleaned, thanks to the gang that did it , not a pleasant job! Hopefully re assembly of pistons and heads will commence very soon.

07/07/05- We have got the liners back into the engine block, but we are waiting to get hold of a proper piston ring compressor before we go ahead and put the pistons back.
In the mean time we are grinding in the valve and seat faces, the latter being done with a rather fine Hall-Toledo Eccentric valve seat grinder. This was originally set up for English Electric Valves but we bought the adapters for sulzers from H-T in Ohio for vast numbers of Dollars. We could not get the job done locally as the valve stem diameters (at about an inch) were too big for the machines in the local engine shops!

05/04/05-We have stripped the cylinder heads, pistons and liners from 25901 to renew the transition and liner seals to stop coolant falling out of the engine at the rate it does! We now have all six pistons, cylinder heads & liners out. We now have most of the new seals and piston rings etc. The engine is in a worse state than we hoped, so consequently we are renewing piston rings and big end shells as well. Now all we have to do is put it all back again!