Hello,

I did a deal with a friend the other week, and I came away the owner of this started clayton wagon. The rust on the chassis is superficial, and overall its quite a nicely built wagon so far. With only minor things that aren't quite as the articles by Dyer.

I've started to strip the chassis down and I've removed the axle assemblies as complete units, so I can better paint and remove the rust on the chassis and components. A couple of different wire brushes, and some emery cloth had the steel frame back to bare metal and minus the rust. So that painting could begin.

While the red oxide paint was curing my attention turned to the rear axle assembly, I want to build a cover to eliminate muck and stray fingers from entering the diff. So this needed stripping down not only to paint but to allow access for measuring, to size the diff. On stripping down I made a discovery, the rear wheels bores and axles are actually tapered to ensure a good fit. I must say I was quite impressed with this mod, and it's execution. The axle will be measured painted then a diff cover made to bolt onto the rear of the gears on the axles. Which should keep most muck from entering and also allow oil to be squirted into the diff assembly. I'm wondering whether to clean up the wheel castings before paint, they are quite rough castings. Especially on the spoked areas. 

The axle bearings themselves though seem to have been messed up a little and soldered to the required size, these may be removed and new ones made up as currently there is no way to get oil inside the axle assembly. Alternatively they are free turning on the axle, so may just drill through the rear of the axle blocks to the bearings, and leave them in place, renewing them when needed when the axle bearings wear out. Suggestions on a postcard please.

Edited By Jon Cameron on 26/02/2023 16:44:32

I've spent a number of days now working in the dockstader simulator, trying to improve the joy valve gear on the Clayton.

Are there any helpful hints that anyone could provide on laying out joy valve gear that may prove helpful?

So far I've found that with the straight slides the simulator simply won't process the data, and I get error messages all over. I therefore changed the slides to a radius equal to the radius rod that connects to the valve rod. Also after checking my dimensions a couple times to the drawings the crank rod needed increasing by 1/8" so that the piston would travel the full length of the cylinder. This can be achieved by changing the rear bearing to a slightly larger one and offsetting the bearing hole, therefore increasing the length of the connecting rod. I believe this error has crept into the drawing as the rear cylinder cover width (1/8&quot has not been included when the valve gear was schemed out by Dyer.

These dimensions I've checked twice against the drawings, and I'm surprised that any clayton wagon is running. I'd be interested to hear from builders of the Clayton if they found this error or worked around it somehow?

By changing the above dimensions, resulted in the valve having a cut off in forward gear of 54.6% front port and 99% rear port, and in reverse the front steam port not having any access to steam inlet and the rear 97%. Also that the valve would overshoot the valve chest wall by a small margin. Therefore I have reduced the valve stem centre to centre length to 3.825" instead of the 3.975" as shown on the drawings.

This has shown a great improvement in the simulations I've run, even allowing for expansion of the steam which the joy gear is supposed to be so great for. Comparison with the above changes are as follows;

Forward gear;

Front steam port 82% cut off

Rear steam port 87% cut off

Reverse gear

Front steam port 89.1% cut off

Rear steam port 90.5% cut off

Notched up a little to midway between full forward and centre position

Forward gear

Front steam port 48.7%

Rear steam port 59.9%

Reverse Gear

Front steam port 52%

Rear steam port 73%

Still a long way to go but vast improvements.

Any help and input would be appreciated.

Jon