Refurbishing spheres

[kenhall1202]

Back in my Chemical Engineering days I was stopped and my conveniently labelled 'HEAVY' suitcase searched after flying into Bangkok. Fortunately my explanation that the jars of white powder they found were simply chemical reference samples of a washing powder ingredient was accepted without hassle!

I don't think that it would be so simple these days.

[Hell Razor5543]

That is not a model, it is a work of art, and shows incredible skill and muscle control.

The fire brigade may not like the spheres in a Citroen, but they do appreciate the LHM in the older ones. Not only does it not burn in the way brake fluid does, I have seen a video where they showed it putting out a minor engine bay fire.

[Stickyfinger]

Anybody ever seen a film of a Citroen burning ?? would be interesting to see a sphere go pop


Thank you gents....I do other stuff as well

[Hell Razor5543]

Wow! How long did it take before you had such fine muscle control to make something as detailed as THAT?!?

[MJM]

They're beautiful, Sticky.
I'm just about to start on an Academy model of a Merkava Mk 4 with some PE upgrade parts. If I get "stuck" then I'll head south for some instruction and a pint or two of scrumpy to help with muscle control!
I'll be in Somerset later today.

[Stickyfinger]

These guys wetting a C5 do not seem worried by hot spheres

[CitroJim]

I've not seen a sphere go pop through burning but have heard several reports with excellent provenance where accumulators have exploded due to duff pressure regulators.

That's supposedly quite spectacular and somewhere on here I think is a picture of the aftermath of one such incident..

Spheres are pressure vessels at the end of the day and should be safe as air cargo as long as they are correctly packed for flight. Things like aerosol cans and fire extinguishers can be sent and they're pressurised and not nearly so robust..

Spheres again have such a high internal pressure that the relative difference in external pressure during all flight phases as against their internal pressure is small. Spheres are well engineers devices and able to stand far above their normal working pressures.

[Northern_Mike]

Spheres again have such a high internal pressure that the relative difference in external pressure during all flight phases as against their internal pressure is small. Spheres are well engineers devices and able to stand far above their normal working pressures.

Surely the external pressure difference during all flight phases is less than 1 bar anyway? I mean, you have 1 bar at sea level, and about 4psi at 33,000ft, a difference of about 0.6 bar..

[addo]

Try commonsense or physics with the knuckle-dragging jobsworths at any first world airport and see if it helps your cause.

[CitroJim]

Try commonsense or physics with the knuckle-dragging jobsworths at any first world airport and see if it helps your cause.

You know the answer to that one Adam

I'll give you a clue...

It's not the one you'd hope for....

[Stickyfinger]

Spheres again have such a high internal pressure that the relative difference in external pressure during all flight phases as against their internal pressure is small. Spheres are well engineers devices and able to stand far above their normal working pressures.

Surely the external pressure difference during all flight phases is less than 1 bar anyway? I mean, you have 1 bar at sea level, and about 4psi at 33,000ft, a difference of about 0.6 bar..

If the automatons on the machines cannot even spell "Sphere", where does that leave you ? ...As for 1 Bar, well they will just ask for a drink

[ggbinks]

Hi all, thanks for your many posts. To cut a long story short, I ordered the external diode mod kit from ebay, fitted it and got a remarkable transformation in ride quality !It seems that the centre sphere was constantly isolated from the suspension system, so effectively the springing was only supplied by the two suspension strut spheres, which were low on gas also. So I've had a great ride for the last 18 months or so. Thanks.
Now my accumulator is ticking every 10 seconds after having my seals replaced on the front electrovalve. The seals lasted a week before starting to leak again. They were ordinary black rubber seals from a local hydraulics shop, so clearly weren't up to the job.

So may I ask please, does anyone know where I can purchase a full set of seals to overhaul the front electrovalve/centre sphere block gubbins from please?

Also, does anyone have a tutorial for replacing them please?

Thanks for this excellent resource. I'd be lost without it

[CitroJim]

The green O rings on the electrovaves are not available separately but I have found the big green O ring is the same as the green ones used to seal the hydraulic pump 6-pisyon heads (under the big Torx caps) but the small green ones are not readily available.

Your first set of O rings will have failed because they were not LHM resistant. You need to find ones that are. Ones made of Viton rubber should be OK but any candidates must be tested by soaking in LHM for a week or so and checking for deterioration...

There are no seals in the hydractive valve blocks that can deteriorate...

[ggbinks]

Thanks CitroJim. Is there a supplier online anywhere that I could order the parts from do you know please? Google's not giving me anything

[CitroJim]

The green pump O rings are dealer only but any good professional supplier of O rings should be able to help. What you need to avoid is using O rings from those big selection boxes containing 6 milllion O rings in 20,000 sizes, none of which are exactly the right size for what you want... In my experience they're not LHM-proof...

Good old eBay throws up loads of suppliers of Viton O rings...

A few examples