A friend of mine’s Grandpa passed away recently. They found this tool in his shop. No one knows what it is. It appears to measure the length of something from about 54/64" to about 60/64". The silver knob-like thing appears to be for calibration, and is marked as being 58/64".
Someone told my friend that her grampa may have picked this tool up when he (or his father) was working for the railroad. Anybody know what this thing is for?
Any idea what craft Grandpa may have worked in when he worked with the railroads?
The tool looks too small to be used in most of the railroad shop crafts…where 1 inch bolts are considered ‘mini’. I have no idea what such a tool would be used for under any circumstance…in the railroad or out. Of course ‘special’ tools make no sense at all until you see them perform their intended function.
this is a guess “totaly!” it appears to be a gauge of some type. The handle rotates the chisel in an arc from what I see. Therfore I am guessing the dimensions are in 64ths of an inch possibly indicating upper and lower tollerances. Only possible RR use I could fathom might be for diesel cylinder liner checking before or after boring.
Yes its a EMD rack gauge for setting the fuel injector micro-rod at 1 inch. You need a “rack jack” to place on the governor to set that at 1 inch then use this tool to go through all the injectors to set them correctly at between the marks. Look at the Engine Maitenance manual for the set up. If you do it while the engine is warm you get a better setting.
The worth and progress of this thread is really cool ! The fact that a previously-unknown tool has been positively identified, with complete explanation as to its use, by a most knowledgable forum member. Outstanding, “creepycrank.”
There’s more. The one I had had a yellow handle for marine engines with PGA governors. . Different governor’s have different colored handles. The PGA and PGE governors have a scale reading in inches. On the last photo you see “L” and “S” which stand for Long and Short. When the rack is all the way out of the body that’s long and no fuel. I remember that an engine would idle at 1.78 inches and full fuel is around 0.96 inches. The situation was further complicated by changes in horsepower ratings, hence 16-645-E2 engines were rated at 1950 hp for 0.99 inches and the 12-645-E5 was rated at 2150 hp for 0.92 inches. Jammed rack or maximum fuel is about 0.69 inches. What’s being measured is the distance the rack sticks out of the injector body. The dimensions on the tool in question are for a little under 1 inch and I think it might be fore an EGB governor for electric power and they only have a 'full load" mark. The problem would be to find out what engine/governor combination it was intended for.
It has to be more modern that historic. It has a molded on plastic handle.