First kit started

From someone who has powder coated most of the engine, the chimney will NOT stand up to the abuse. Unless you put a second inner skin liner inside the original it gets too hot. I didnt use powder on the smoke box but some High Temp paint from an automotive suppliers which has held up fine.

Lynn - You need to fit an insulated baffle to the rear of the door to stop the discolouration. Andy welded a 10mm outer ring to the one STW supplied which I have stuffed with the fluffy stuff that came as boiler lagging and despite melting the chimney three times including two hill climbs at Dorset and one local both my name rings are still bright red!!! And I mean RED, I will take a piccy to show you.

This is the state of name rings after two years insitu, two or three climbs up the big hill at Dorset and pulling the 2.7 ton 6".



This will be a new steaming buddy, he has had a ride in the bunker and didnt seem too freaked out. He wont be in the frankly ridiculous jumper!!      This is my wife's dog, her "happy thought" as she calls him, mine being the engine and the new number plate. You can tell we have been together for many years as niether of us choose each other as a "happy thought" Ho Humm     

Hilarious!!
regards,
Tony

Chris

Like Kevin my engine also has a lot of powder coat, including the cleading and my smoke box is also powder coated and has been OK all season and is still good. The only sticking point (literally) was from sticking shut sometimes in the early days so I had to clean off the finish where the door closes and wipe with steam oil. With my leaking cylinder issue I had steamed the engine to blowing off with a leak in the block so the fire was huge. It turned the bare metal door hinge blue/black which indicates pretty high temperatures in the region of 600 degrees and the door clamp was in the region of 400 degrees, far higher than the red engine paint on my door should have withstood (300 degrees rating from Halfords, hence the now black badges). It has never been that hot again and the chimney did survive right up to the Little Leigh event in October before it blistered at the bottom of the sheet metal on a climb and I had it recoated over the top of the cleaned up surface of the first coat but it blistered again on boxing day, pulling up hill in top with a load behind.

You can get special high temperature powder coat materials that will stand a lot higher temperatures than the standard material on our engines, you would have to speak to the coaters about this.

Brian

Ok thanks guys I'll look in to it
In the mean time I've been polishing the brass hub caps!

Front axel arrived!
For some reason I have 12 leaves instead of 10 for the spring!!

Looking good takes me back nearly three years !

Decides to put a bit of paint on to stop the rust!

Smoke box started, looks good.
Any advice on the small name plate though?

Very gently with a Dremel and sanding disk. Due to the smallness of the casting it does go quite rough.