Mamod steam car

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

A friend has stripped a Mamod steam car for refurbishment and found a ‘spare’ hole in the boiler.
The steam is taken from a soldered connection at the back underneath with a long pipe up to the top to get steam not water. The water gauge is held on with blind pop rivets.
However underneath, halfway along but offset from the lowest point there is a neat clean hole with no sign of solder or well anything.

Red arrow points to hole. Soot shows it has been run . Partly cleaned off. Bottom hole was steam pipe. No sign of it having been a bracket.
What ? Why? How to plug?

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

My wild and uniformed guess would be that there was once a ‘fusible plug’ in there

… low melting-point alloy.

MichaelG.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Seems to be a feature added by another owner, if you look at this one being repaired it only has the hole for the steam outlet

[Mike HurleyParticipant @mikehurley60381]

I’m not necessarily saying this is the case here, but I know for a fact (relatives worked at the factory years ago) that if a model failed quality control, but otherwise looked ok they would drill a hole in the boiler and pass it to selected folk as ‘display only’ non-functioning model. Doubtful if they were ever available to the general public though.

I know, I was given one (the traction engine) about 40 years ago.

Regards Mike

 

 

 

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Very interesting Mike. The soot shows this one has been used but perhaps a previous owner saw problems and took the same step.

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