Hood Lock Rods

I thought it was a good idea to have some way to lock the engine bay access doors on the side of the hood. I decided to put 3 eye bolts on each side of the hood and make a piece of pipe that would go through the eye bolts with a lock on one end. This pipe blocks the engine bay access doors from opening. I looked at many eye bolts trying to find ones that were not too large and not too small. I finally decided on an eye with a 3/8 threaded bolt on it.I was thinking of drilling 3 holes on each side of the hood for the eyes As it turns out there was a 3/8 bolt holding the hood together close to the spot that wanted the eyes. I removed the 3/8 bolts and substituted the eye bolts. I bought 2 pieces of 3/8 pipe and had them cut and threaded at 8 foot 4 in. I flattened one end of the pipe and drilled a hole for the lock. James found 2 locks at the station that I can use. I know that we are going to have a bunch of money in the motor and lot of hours of hard work. I feel better already that the engine bay is locked up.

Starting Motors

The 1500 cu LeRoi engine has two 12 volt electric starting motors. The motors are about a third larger than typical tractor starting motor. The distance between the mounting holes is 5 inches, normal tractor motors is 3.5 in. Originally we could not find any staarting motors from the locomotive or the spare engine. I took measurments from the mounting holes and searched electric motor rebuilders. I had no luck. Ray contacted Roger and he said he had 2 good starters. I got one rebuilt starter from Roger and a box of starter parts. I made another starter from the parts. I had to have some bushings machined to match one starter to the Leroi engine. The Delco number on the older starter is 412. The delco number on the newer starter is 1109889. They are clockwise rotation, 12 tooth, direct drive starters. I believe a brand new updated starter could be found for about $ 200. I contacted several after market starter manufacturers listed on the internet but they could not cross reference our Delco numbers and were not willing to open boxes and check measurements against my list. One starter bolted right in and the other has some clearence problems. I may have to re-orient the case at a later date.