Ampico Valve Blocks
By Larry Fisher
My Dad is considering working on the old player during the cold winter months. Years ago I recovered the pneumatic stack, and bellows and most everything else. Last summer we checked the bellows after closing off all the out going tubes and hoses, and found it to hold vaccuum for over ten seconds. I considered that to be ok. We deduced that the stack has lots of little tiny leaks. We took apart a few valve blocks by removing the metal seat on top and found nothing major going on. No cracks in the bakelite disc, no dusty powdery deterioration of the leather when roughed up on the edges, and in general everything looked fairly good for it's age. So next we took one that had minor leaking. This was found by putting the valve block up to our mouths. I know this isn't very sanitary, but we hot on a trail. We roughed up the leather on the little metal disk and reassembled the valve. This got rid of the minor leaking. After doing this to a few more we decided that this was a good course of action to take to make the player pump easier. Has anyone else tried this, and should we do this to all of the valves regardless of the leakage? Is this a short term fix?
I know, I know, we should really swap out all the leathers while we're in there. Any suggestions?
By the way, I made a small jig for testing these valves so that he doesn't have to put his mouth on that dirty old thing. He can now perform the same task by putting a removable and cleanable piece of tubing in his mouth instead.
I might add, the piano and the Dad are in Wisconsin and as you can see from the sig line, I'm in........
--- Larry Fisher RPT, Portland Metro's Authority on PianoDisc Systems
For more information call (360) 256-2999 in Vancouver, Wa.
or email larryf@pacifier.com |
(Message sent Sat 7 Oct 1995, 15:30:23 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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