Lyka Kit #18 Cladding and Burner Tray Part 2

As stated in Part 1 for Kit 18, the boiler stays were a bit too weak for securing the boiler to the frame. Steam Traction World has sent replacement stays and they are much better. Unfortunately in my haste to carry on with the final assembly of the cladding I failed to take a few pictures of the stays. Once I got the stays assembled the next step would be to place the top boiler hood assembly on the boiler. But I realized I had a leftover part that I don't think was mentioned in the assembly instructions. The part is a spacing ring that would go around the water feed pipe assembly keeping the boiler hood pieces separated. I'm not sure it is really needed, but instead of disassembling the hood completely to place this spacer in the right location I decided to split the spacer and slip it in as shown in the images below.

Once the boiler hood is in place, the exterior cladding is positioned around the superwool insulation.

The brass bands are next assembled. I found that I needed to use temporarily a longer bolt to tighten the bands and then replace the longer bolt with the correct bolt.

With the help of some needle nosed vise grips I was able to keep the band tight while replacing the bolt. 

In the next image you will notice the stainless steel elbow fitting installed. Don't install this fitting until later. I learned that the water check valve assembly that goes on the pipe to the left of this fitting won't thread on with this elbow installed.

Final note, I used Steam Seal on all of the pipe threads. I don't have much experience with steam or the Steam Seal Compound, but I typically know that you must really crank down on the pipe threads to get a leakless fit. I hope the Steam Seal Compound will eventually set up and seal everything. Time will tell when we steam up to 250 PSI.