Hi George,
It looks like the old style cycle tyre valve where you had a rubber sleeve over the valve.
We used to carry small a tin with puncture repair kit, many a time on a cold day trying to repair a puncture and the rubber valve was perished they were cursed as there wasn't much you could do if no spare was available.
Quite right, basically a Schrader valve. In the 1980's Deryk Goodall was very successful in getting Mamod Railway Locomotives to work well. Having made them perform he came up with his top-up valve to extend the locomotives running time, this meant that with a top up system for the meths tank the locomotive could be run until boredom set in. The original system for topping up used a syringe both for the meths and water. For the water the plastic end of the syringe was placed directly into the valve. For meths the syringe had a piece of silicon tube on its end which was pushed over a tube that went into the meths tank. The design of the tank was such that the syringe could also remove meths from the tank. Deryk is a diabetic so maybe that is where the idea of using syringes came from, later he came up with the idea of using a garden spray to fill the boiler the syringe was still used for the meths. During the syringe era I had access to ethanol which was clear and didn't smell as much as meths when it burnt. One day the inevitable happened meths was put in the boiler! The locomotive travelled a couple of feet before its exhaust ignited and flames came out of the cylinder along its piston rod, a few feet further and the heat melted the soft soldered cylinders which fell off! From then on the ethanol was dyed with a little meths. Gas isn't as much fun?
Hi John,
Thanks for the drawing and photos. It just happens that I need 1/4" by 40! My main concern was the size of the hole for the water bottle tube. What did you use for the plastic tube?
You are welcome. If you are in the UK my water bottle is HoZelock which I bought in B&Q for I think £1.50. The screw spray end needs to be altered to take a 4mm nylon tube, if you have a spare spray you could perhaps use the suction tube from inside the bottle. The size of the tube is not critical but the hole in the valve is, it needs to be 0.10/0.20mm smaller than the tube. The valve tube has to be silicon to stand the heat which I got from a model shop, I think is might be used as fuel line for I.C. engines. Last time I tried to get some the model shop had stopped stocking the smaller sizes but someone told me that it is available in fishing tackle shops, what it might be used for I don't know. I still have about 6" of silicon tube which is good for about 40 valves.
Regards Tony.
