Does anyone know of an acceptable substitute for King packing as used on many locomotive cylinder rods? Our Lima 2-8-4 was designed to use them and they are now unavailable. We've been using 1" square graphited rope packing from (I think) McMaster Carr. Service life isn't good, about 300 - 500 miles at the best. The superheated steam does the graphited packing in rather quickly.

We're open to any and all ideas.

Fred
SRI Mech. Dept.

The packing ring is leaded copper, very soft. Don't drop them as they deform easily. Also they will wear out quickly if the cylinder is not getting the proper amount of steam oil or the right type of steam oil. The packing rings could be good but will blow if not getting a good oil bath on the rods.

Scott Lindsey makes new leaded copper packing rings. They are expensive as everything in this hobby is but they will be correct.

If I remember correctly, the locomotive may need all of the King parts, as it was removed and thrown away by C&O to make it easier to deadhead the locomotive to the MSU campus back when it was donated.

Steve Zuiderveen

At the (old) Georgetown Loop we successfully retrofitted France Compressor packing in our locomotives that used King packing. They were able to design the packings and the backer plates to fit the King glands, springs and spacers. All we had to do was replace the King packing with the France packing kit - everything else stayed the same. Performance was equal or better than the King packing.
As with anything else, the France packing is not cheap. It may be just as economical to have Mr. Lindsey make some new King packings.
Anyway, I don't know if this outfit is still around but here's who we got our packings from:

Industrial Compressor Products
George Nitse
801-272-8854

Phil Johnson

Steve, everything appears to be there EXCEPT the actual soft metallic packing. Garter spring, ground joint ring, gland and packing cup are still present.

Thanks, all you guys for the input. I'll follow up your leads.

Fred
SRI

Historic Machinery Services makes the King and Paxton-Mitchell types of metallic packing, as well as the older multi-angular type. We can furnish both superheated and saturated metal.

Send me the specific size of the packing and I'll get you a quote.


www.historicmachineryservices.com

Robert Yuill

Bob,

Good to hear from you. How's business?
I can highly recommend Bob's work to anyone. Several years ago he made new injector tubes and nozzles for Sellars injectors for the Loop. They were perfect and worked great.
At the time we retrofitted with France packing there wern't many alternatives. We tried making some ourselves but had trouble getting the right alloy. Especially in an historic restoration, it's probably better all around to have accurate reproductions made by properly equipped and qualified persons. Then there is no doubt about wheather or not it will work.

Phil Johnson

King packing elementrings ( split ) are made of antimonlead over here, 15 % antimonium and 85 % lead. They work fine for years but when they get really old ( used for about 120.000, km ) they tend to dismantle into a lot of small peaces like chattered glass.

The element rings are cast in a sandform or in steelmetallforms called "cokille". Dont know a proper name for cokille since Iam a Norwegian steamlocomotivefixer.

After they are casted and cooled the two halfes are pressed in a pressfitt-tool that makes the split fit whithout leakage. Then in a lathe, a strange turningprocedure whith a special spanning tool in the lathes ordinary chukc takes place in the following: first the outside angeled shapes ar turned to dimmensions, then the outer spanner ring are spinned on its treads and locks the elements in plase so the inside locking bolt can be remowed (whithout the elements mowing) and then the inside turned to the pistonrods dimmension. It takes som time but it works.