1957 Petter AVA1 Diesel Engine

Another project followed me home recently. And I fully admit I'm a sucker for small (a somewhat relative term in this case), older hand-crank diesel engines. This particular engine is a British Petter model AVA1 single cylinder diesel engine, and dates to approximately 1957. Maybe 1956. Without further ado, here's a photo:

Craftsman 313.54403 Oxygen Regulator Leak and Fix

 I bought a Sears Craftsman oxy-acetylene welding kit back in the 1970s. For the most part it's worked fine over the years but maybe 15 or 20 years ago the oxygen regulator began leaking such that the low pressure side would slowly creep up in pressure from the set point if the oxygen wasn't being used. A couple of days ago I decided to search the net to see if I could find a rebuild kit for the regulator. In the process I found a site where someone showed where he'd taken the sealing part out of his regulator and sanded it down to make it work again. Kind of. He said that the pressure still slowly crept up, 5 psi in 15 minutes, but that it was better than before, although he didn't say how quickly the creep was prior to the fix.

My regulator did a lot of creeping prior to me fixing it. The gauge went from 25 psi to 45 psi in 1 minute. Whoa. I knew of the issue so I just had to keep an eye on it when I was using it, and had to turn off the oxygen supply if I had to let the thing sit for any length of time. That got to be a pain. Time to take action.