Cod Periscope Housing

[Mark Sarsfield]

I noticed that you guys sealed off the top of observation scope housing.  I guess you've been having leaking problems, as well.  Any idea how difficult it is to replace a seal ont he housing and what's involved?

Speaking of scopes, are your scopes operational?  Can they raise and lower or are they stuck in position?  I started talking to a company about 250VDC rectifiers, which is what you need to drive the hydraulic IMO pump motors.

[Paul Farace]

Mark:

Not sure what you mean about sealing off the top of the search scope housing... the rag is there to keep the drips of hydraulic oil from messing my wonderfully dry (but graying) hair.  Our IMO pump is workiing, as are the scopes. They are housed at the moment (for winter) and will be raised for the summer. They work fine, with the exception that they are hard to turn (lots of crud in the chevron packings, I am told)... only an intensive refurbishment of the shear packing will correct that, says Paul Lapinsky, of Kollmorgen Co. (their recently retired field rep).  Oh, and the ST radar in the search scope is not emitting (yet).

We are part way into a teardown of the accumulator (hard to work in the pump room)... but the IMO can raise the scopes fine alone.

Sorry, I just saw your posting.

Paul

[Mark Sarsfield]

Any and all information that you guys have on restoring your hydraulic/scope system would be very helpful to us.  A step by step process would be most helpful.  I know that we will need a 250V rectifier to power the IMO pump motors.  I was debating whether we wanted to bother with the accumulator and running low pressure air to it.

[Paul Farace]

My best suggestion would be to find someone with hydraulic experience in the trucking or engineering field who thinks working on a sub is neat. It really is not that tough of a job. Just have copies of the scope hydraulic system handy and don't let anyone "play" on your historic fabric... if they don't know what they're doing, they can mess up anyone in the future with the right mindset from doing the right thing. 

Back in 1993/94 PAMPANITO used a portable hyrdaulic pump to move her scopes up and down (not lightning fast, but OK for most).  They isolated the scope circuit and connected the pump. 

PF