As a few of you may be aware I scorched the Toledo boiler whilst on the the London Brighton.
On examination it was found that the main problems were with the top ends of the tubes and not the bottom. I cannot for the life of me see why the tops leaked and not the bottoms, has anyone ideas?
The boiler is now tight and working well, however it is a lot noisier than it used to be.

Ideas: Are the bottoms of the fire tubes rolled in the same as the tops of the tubes? A condensing Stanley that had it's fire tubes welded in at the botttom and rolled in at the top, it would have scortched that same as your Toledo boiler did. An old fix for a tired boiler was to turn it upside down and use it some more. I did that on my old boiler in my 1914 Stanley. Occasionally I would have a tube leaking at the top end while the boiler was cooling off. It worked fine when it was hot. A new boiler fixed that problem.

Tim - the circumferential expansion of the copper tubes is greater than that of the holes in the tube plate so at the bottom which is far hotter than the top, the tubes will be tighter. If the tubes are a little bit loose in the top and bottom plates the bottoms will be tight but the top end might not expand enough to overcome the lengthwise expansion of the tubes which is also slightly more than that of the boiler casing and will tend to unseat the tubes at the top end. My theory anyway. Glad you managed to tighten it up.

Mike

Are you talking about the boiler that is part water tube inside the firebox?
Where the tubes spiral from the bottom up to the top.

Rolly
No. It's just a standard Stanley type vertical fire tube boiler.

Tim