Rattle inside Olds O-99 piston

[WakinAZ]

One of the pistons on my Olds O-99 tuba has a loose piece inside the valve body that makes noise as the valve is moving up and down. I have only seen this problem once before, and it was on this very same model of tuba. On the previous horn I had a repair tech fix the problem, but I cannot recall what he did specifically. Any ideas?

Thanks

[YorkNumber3.0]

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[bloke]

Another way to stop a broken off valve from rattling around is to dump a bunch of super glue down inside the piston with the nozzle of the super glue down below the female threads, so as not to get Super Glue on those threads. After putting a whole bunch of super glue inside there, you can put a piece of masking tape over the hole in the bottom of the piston, put grease on the valve stem threads, screw the stem back in, and shake it all around to get the glue everywhere inside and then cross your fingers and hope that the super glue and some nook or cranny in the cross ports somewhere caught the little piece of valve stem. The grease on the valve stem prevents it from being super glued and the tape in the bottom prevents you from making a mess in your work area.

[YorkNumber3.0]

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[bloke]

Yeah those fumes are the worst.

I would still rather not flood a piston with acid and then heat it a whole bunch (not that I haven't). The best thing to not do is to turn broken off stems into a piston body.
Probably 2/3rds of the time I've been able to sharpen a small screwdriver, tap a slot into the broken threads, and then unscrew it with the same little screwdriver.

Sometimes, the tops of older pistons are only lead soldered in place, and the chunk can actually be extracted.

[bloke]

Yeah those fumes are the worst.

I would still rather not flood a piston with acid and then heat it a whole bunch (not that I haven't). The best thing to not do is to turn broken off stems into a piston body.
Probably 2/3rds of the time I've been able to sharpen a small screwdriver, tap a slot into the broken threads, and then unscrew it with the same little screwdriver.

Sometimes, the tops of older pistons are only lead soldered in place, and the chunk can actually be extracted.

[YorkNumber3.0]

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[bloke]

There are ways to replace these pistons, but those which claim to fit (new) don't (too large, "by design"), and (some of us) tend to hoard old ones - in order to keep customers' old Reynolds/Olds instruments working.

Otherwise...
(To avoid possibly messing some future person up (with super-glue fumes) I wonder about flooding the interior of such a piston with Titebond III (WATERPROOF) wood glue.

Yes, it IS "wood" glue, YET I've used it (because I'm LAZY) to span old screw holes in reused metal roofing and (you guessed it) it held up.
After it dried (since constant exposure to the sun) I did spritz the top side of it with that zinc-bearing paint...

...whatever.

[WakinAZ]

Thanks for all the helpful replies. It sounds like this issue is not limited to Olds horns, although they might be more prone to it than others due to the infamously too-soft valve stems. In fact, this horn has a different stem on the piston in question (probably Conn 2XJ/K - has the alignment marking).

[bloke]

Thanks for all the helpful replies. It sounds like this issue is not limited to Olds horns, although they might be more prone to it than others due to the infamously too-soft valve stems. In fact, this horn has a different stem on the piston in question (probably Conn 2XJ/K - has the alignment marking).

It happens MORE often than EVER, because the more recent plastic top-mounted guides are held on by a stem and a washer, and the stem has to be skinny at the bottom to fit through the metal washers they have decided to use.

[The Big Ben]

The valves on my late, lamented Olds had three rattlers at the time they were overhauled. Dan O. cut the tops out of the pistons, removed the rattlers and then bored and tapped larger holes for the stems in hopes they would not break in the future. The tops were soldered back into the pistons and the honing and plating of pistons and bores continued. New, larger stems were fabricated.

[bloke]

I know he likes to do stuff like that, and he does things - does them very well - that many others can't do, but sometimes I wonder about the time vs. cost factor.

With his equipment, he could have quickly honed those valve casings out another thousand or two (to fit the Bach-Olds diameter, as well as to true up the casings, which were old), bought some nice new Bach-Olds valves from Tom Getzen (those leftover pistons made in the 1980s in the Bach #2 plant were very well-made pistons), drilled out their stem threads, tapped them to fit King stems, screwed in King stems, and would have been done with it... quite a few hours less time, and excellent results. It seems to me that would have been less cost for him than all of that labor, but it's his business, he thinks the way he does, sometimes I think he likes to do things just because he can, and that's just fine.

The main thing is that his final results are superb.

[The Big Ben]

he thinks the way he does, sometimes I think he likes to do things just because he can, and that's just fine.

Dave Schaffsma's BBb 345 is evidence of that.

The main thing is that his final results are superb.

For sure!

[WakinAZ]

Epilogue: I did the super glue method, but I must not have been careful enough about not getting any glue on the threads. I was able to get the valve stem back in after numerous attempts and using every bit of hand pressure I had to force the male threads into the female threads and glue residue. The problem may have been exacerbated by the fact that the threads themselves were not in great shape.

Anyway after I unpuckered from that, I replaced the piston into the casing and noticed a whistling noise as I moved it up and down. I then remembered my local tech telling me that whistling sound means the bottom valve cap hole is not large enough. Since the problem had not occurred before I did this fix, I figured it must have been because of the fix.

All of a sudden a light bulb went off in my head, and I figured out what those little holes on the top and bottom of pistons are for, to let air through and decrease resistance. Apparently I put in enough super glue to block air from going through that passage inside the valve. Well I wasn't willing to do whatever it took to undo it, so I just drilled out the bottom valve cap hole, and the whistling noise went away. This is a $500 tuba so I'm okay with a little trial and error DIY.

Anyway moral of the story: maybe try the super glue in successive amounts, and especially be very, very careful with the threads.