regulator blanking plate 6'' foden

Have just done air test on the near complete engine, and someone has suggested doing a hydraulic test before the first steaming to get a quicker response on any leaks.

Therefore proposing to use a plumbers hydraulic hand pump tester; not expensive.
However bit stuck. do I use the regulator cover plate with the safety valve still on?

Or being provided with a further blanking plate by STW use this and drill and tap it to take the tester hose and possibly a 1/8 BSP spigot for the inspectors equipment when it comes to a steam and hydraulic cert test.

Anyone done this before and used this blanking plate? Help welcome before I drill/tap?
Peter

Hi Peter

You can use any pump you want to hydraulic test a engine. It just needs to be 1.5x max working pressure, future proof the pump.
You can do a lot of leak testing with the safety valves fitted as you can run up to full working pressure with no safety lifting.

we use a plumbers test pump on all the hydraulics we do up to full size. Works well. Its only a cheap Chinese one but it does the job.

Making a blanking plate is simple enough. You need a place for the inspectors gauge, whether thats t'd into the pump hose, or on the plate itself doesnt really matter.

Thank for the replies, I have bought the plumber hand pump and two gauges since review stated gauge not too accurate.
So I have no got the adaptor and need to buy the drill and tap for the adaptor tread. But some one has said you need to include a 1/8'' BSP spigot in the blanking plate for the boiler testers pump too.

What does this look like and is it 1/8'' diameter or thread size, sorry its new to me.

regards peter

I used the blanking plate supplied and drilled and tapped a 3/8" BSP thread into it. That allowed us to attach a fitting and then a T-piece with a ball valve.

End result being that the tester (and us) could attach a 3/8 BSP threaded pump, pump it up, check the pressure on the valve matched, then isolate with the ball valve and monitor the pressure in the system.

We found that we needed to add gaskets in quite a few places to get ours to hold pressure FWIW.

Thank you Mozteh, for your reply on your tee piece and ball valve. It sounds the solution, where did you get the tee piece and ball valve from?
Plumbing supplies, or did you machine it?

Peter

Here's a photo of it, I've not got the pressure gauge attached at the moment but you can see where it fits on the side and then we have the two top fittings either the 3/8" BSP connector for the pump or the hose pipe connector we used for our first attempts at coldf water pressure tests.
Most, if not all, the parts came from a spares box but they are all off-the-shelf plumbers fittings that you can likely get from your local merchant or somewhere online like bes.co.uk if not.

Thank you Moztec the photo is really helpful.

Will go to the plumbers section at the builders merchants and let you know the results.
Thank you Peter