Lister Engine Forum

How to / DIY => Engines => Topic started by: rbodell on May 14, 2007, 05:10:37 PM

Title: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 14, 2007, 05:10:37 PM
I noticed that there has not been a whole lot of research into rigging up electric starters. The ones who have have come up with some pretty complicated stuff.

I found this motor
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2007051321073665&item=10-1839
If you put a 2" pulley on it or better yet, a jack shaft, with 50 amps no load, it seems like it would turn a 6-1 over pretty easily. I don't imagine it has real bearings in it but all that would have to be done is to put ebarings on a shaft and run them end to end to take the load off the shaft.

I also found this motor
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2007051321073665&item=10-1899-A
it is going on 3 HP and 36 volts.  It does have a bearing in one end at least.

Any thoughts about using either with an idler pully to engage and disengage it to get an engine rolling over fast enough to start.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: dkwflight on May 15, 2007, 02:33:32 AM
Hi I don't see why a pulley and vee belt wouldn't work to start one of these things. The main problem would be keeping the belt on as the engine accelerats.
A rubber roller or wheel might be better,

Hand cranking is not difficult unless the engine is quite cold.

Arrow has a portable starter that looks nice but very pricey
Dennis
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 15, 2007, 02:54:15 AM
Actualy when I wrote that I was thinking about a serpentine belt and a hand operated idler pully, but now that you mention it, maybe a vee belt might actualy be easier top get off once it starts. Just loosen the idler and it falls off.

Actualy winter was what I was thinking about. I also have a bad back and I know there will be times I won't be able to crank it. I was thinking about getting one of those expensive ones, but I figured there was a cheaper way to do it that would work just as good. I have a couple of motors laying around and I found a couple more at the surpluscenter.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: okiezeke on May 15, 2007, 04:06:21 AM
rbodell.
Mike M makes a quality starter ring gear.  Fairly easy to mount.  Uses a ford 4000 starter motor.  Might be a lot easier than re-inventing the wheel.
Zeke
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 15, 2007, 04:15:53 AM
where can I see one? Ill keep it in mind if I can't come up with something from what I have in the shop.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: dkwflight on May 15, 2007, 05:11:00 AM
hi
Here is an interesting option

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g212/Boulton-Paul/Starter003.jpg
Dennis
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: okiezeke on May 15, 2007, 07:44:48 AM
rbodell.
I have pics of the ring gear on my Lovson 20-2 thread.  A few pages back from the last page.  Its very heavy and quality made.
Zeke

(http://thumb12.webshots.net/t/58/58/2/27/98/2237227980100184412ENeOuc_th.jpg) (http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2237227980100184412ENeOuc)

Steel plate is 5/16".  Heavy steel forged pipe flange off the shelf from McMaster-Carr.  All grade 8 bolts with locking nuts.  Machining cost, about 150.00.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 15, 2007, 02:17:43 PM
see there, that is what I mean, use what you got on hand.

hi
Here is an interesting option

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g212/Boulton-Paul/Starter003.jpg
Dennis
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 15, 2007, 02:26:06 PM
I saw that. Very nice too. I was actualy thinking about doing that, but I thought about bumping up against it when it was running. It is still one of my formost options though. Thanks.

rbodell.
I have pics of the ring gear on my Lovson 20-2 thread.  A few pages back from the last page.  Its very heavy and quality made.
Zeke
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: phaedrus on May 15, 2007, 03:29:35 PM
Seems to me that a cheap 110 vac electric motor (from harborfreight?) with a "tire" on the shaft could be mounted so that it normally resides parallel to the crank axis with the "tire" a few cm from the flywheel. In starting the motor would be swung toward the wheel contacting it and spin the engine up. At speed the compression release would be dropped and the motor released to return to its normal position. With attention to the ratios one could avoid overspeed. My wife has a gizmo rather like this attached to her pottery wheel, and I think a fella could just buy the gizmo from a pottery supply outf - they sell 'em as add-ons. As to the power to start - the battery bank-inverter set provides plenty of power to do this for us, and I would imagine it's about the same for many other people. The little "tire" on the gizmo my wife has is kinda special, sticky, tough, with a steel bushing, key broach, and setscrew. That's a nifty thing to find.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 15, 2007, 06:44:05 PM
Just wondering, does anybody know how fast you have to turn a lister for it to strart. Does 75 to 80 rpm sound out of line? I looked at a couple of videos and it was hard to tell, but people seemed to be cranking faster than 1 rev/second.

Seems to me that a cheap 110 vac electric motor (from harborfreight?) with a "tire" on the shaft could be mounted so that it normally resides parallel to the crank axis with the "tire" a few cm from the flywheel. In starting the motor would be swung toward the wheel contacting it and spin the engine up. At speed the compression release would be dropped and the motor released to return to its normal position. With attention to the ratios one could avoid overspeed. My wife has a gizmo rather like this attached to her pottery wheel, and I think a fella could just buy the gizmo from a pottery supply outf - they sell 'em as add-ons. As to the power to start - the battery bank-inverter set provides plenty of power to do this for us, and I would imagine it's about the same for many other people. The little "tire" on the gizmo my wife has is kinda special, sticky, tough, with a steel bushing, key broach, and setscrew. That's a nifty thing to find.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: phaedrus on May 16, 2007, 12:51:31 AM
I've wondered about that question. If finding the minimum necessary speed to start I suppose one would first make the machine as cold as the coldest weather expected, then experiment with cold-starts at gradually increasing speeds. I expect the relationship is roughly linear until one gets close to the cloud point of the fuel.

I guess, if spinning the thing as slowly as possible and still getting it to start is the goal, then the starter speed ought to be regulated according to the temperature. This is a goal?

This question, necessary speed, strikes me as mildly interesting but practically more or less unimportant because it is a simple matter to spin the engine up to rated speed with an electric motor. That ought to permit starts in the worst weather that the engine can start in, unless the engine were pre-heated in some way.

Because the governor and fuel rack would see this speed as full speed the injection rate at the beginning of engine self-operation would be minimal, thus minimizing, one would expect, cold start emissions.

The large diesels I have worked with, whether they use a compression relaese or not, spin up very fast. The Enterprise engines I have worked on actually ran on compressed air at rated speed - the air being admitted to each cylinder by a timed pilot valve distributor and relay valves in each head. Those are 500 hp per cylinder. Takes a big air tank.... The EMD 16 and 20's, 12 V 92's....electric motor starter, big 'un, and they lit off fast!

It strikes me as just as much work to build a gizmo to spin an engine slowly as it is to spin one fast.

Just my hunch here, based on some long ago experience, but I think the stress on the piston and rings is less when the engine is started, the pump control moved to "run", after the engine is at or near rated speed. My hunch? What was I doing? I was a kid back in 1965 trying to find out how slowly I could crank a horizontal single cylinder diesel and still get it to start - and I managed to break some rings and create a reall expensive mess. That was the generator at Monument Valley Ranger Station, the Tribe ate the cost, lucky me!
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 16, 2007, 01:53:21 AM
yeah but the slower you have to turn it over, the smaller the motor you need to do it with
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: phaedrus on May 16, 2007, 04:45:56 AM
Obviously so, and what advantage does this bestow? Weight? The machine properly installed weighs on the order of tons.
Cost? Perhaps, but that can't be much more than $150 or so, any gain there would be very modest.
Reliability? An oversized motor would likely be more reliable than a smaller one.
Effeciency? Maybe, but as usage is very brief any gain would necessarily be very modest, perhaps even hard to measure.
Designing counter to the general practice is interesting and can be valuable, but my own experience and observation, as described, leads me to hold the opinion that it's best to spin the machine up to near operating speed befor bringing the fuel pump to run.

Best of luck.

Phaedrus
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: okiezeke on May 16, 2007, 10:50:58 AM
Bumping up against ring gear when engine is running,

I wouldnt want to do this, so I'm planning to put the ring gear inside the flywheek on the starter crank side.  This will also allow for more compact starter motor mounting.  Dont think mounting the flywheel 2-1/2 in. farther out the crank will hurt any.

 My ring gear assy weighs around 100 lbs, so will act as more flywheel weight, which should be a good thing.  l Hard to tell if contact with ring gear at 650rpm would be much worse that contact with a flywheel.  Either could make a permanent impression on a fella, and probably make a big mess in the generator room.  Blood and body parts are such a pain to clean up.

Zeke









Zeke
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 16, 2007, 02:23:49 PM
Obviously so, and what advantage does this bestow? Weight? The machine properly installed weighs on the order of tons.
Cost? Perhaps, but that can't be much more than $150 or so, any gain there would be very modest.
Reliability? An oversized motor would likely be more reliable than a smaller one.
Effeciency? Maybe, but as usage is very brief any gain would necessarily be very modest, perhaps even hard to measure.
Designing counter to the general practice is interesting and can be valuable, but my own experience and observation, as described, leads me to hold the opinion that it's best to spin the machine up to near operating speed befor bringing the fuel pump to run.

Best of luck.

Phaedrus

well, actually a lot of advantage except maybe weight. You have a lot wider choice of motors, maybe even to using something you have so you dont have to buy anything. Obviously 600 rpm would be the ideal starting speed, but by design, they start just as good at a lower speed. The more you can gear it down the less strain which raises the reliability on all of them.

The two motors I mentioned at the beginning of the thread I beleive were 100 and 200 dollars approximately. The 150 you mentioned was about in the middle. Granted I am spending several grand here out of being pissed at the power company and being interested in these engines and what you can do with them, but 150 bucks is still a considerable amount of money. There is a whole lot of things I can do with that 150 bucks. If anybody out there doesn't have anything to do with 150 bucks, send it to me. I'll find something to do with it LOL.

Part of ther reason for starting this thread is to get people thinking about how to do things.  Not everybody here has a lathe they can chuck up a flywheel or the expertise to make a shrink fit. I am sure there are people here that don't have electric start because it costs too much. A lot of us are here to learn something from those who know more and have more experience with these motors. I thought it would be nice, rather than to say something won't work, to put our heads together and figure out how to make it work and for a way for somebody who doesn't own a machine shop to be able to build it.

I am not trying to come up with a better mouse trap, just a different way to catch a mouse. Same here, I am just looking for something different for the people who don't have all the options Some might have a couple of motors in the junk pile and like me, don't realy know if they will work or not. I am not bad at ideas but I lack the expertise to put them together. That means a lot of trial and error.


I had a lot of fun building a hydrogen generator, but I had a whole lot more fun building one with hand tools and stuff from the hardware store and the junk pile. Even better was that one of the neighborhood kids liked it enough to build one for a science project. He won a prize and kept working on it. That was when he was 12. He is 16 now, has plans for college and is now building a fuel cell. If he had needed a complete machine shop to build his first hydrogen generator, it never would have been built.



 

Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: phaedrus on May 16, 2007, 02:46:21 PM
Picture of add-on motor drive for potter's wheel. They want more than it's worth, imho, but the picture is useful in spuring the imagination. More valuable is the little wheel - made of what seems to be the right stuff! The wheel itself is a "wear item" and replacable - and that's the only thing I'd buy, I'd take the rest out of my junkpile.

imho adding a ring gear is unnecessary if one plans attended starts

http://www.bigceramicstore.com/Supplies/wheels/thom_stu_kw_motor.jpg

Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: Stan on May 16, 2007, 09:03:44 PM
http://www.arrowengines.com/media/990starter.pdf

Stan
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: phaedrus on May 17, 2007, 12:13:49 AM
That is a very cool starter, Stan! Thanks. Saw something like it used in the "World's Fastest Indian". Bitchen!
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: Stan on May 17, 2007, 02:23:32 AM
The entire Arrow engine model C can be had for slightly more than $10,000.  ;D
Stan
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: wirenutrob on May 18, 2007, 04:58:31 PM
Stan -

I like that Arrow 990 starter I did some investigating and turned up a price $1,340. I also learned that this starter is designed for engies much larger than ours. I own the 20/2  and he said the starter would not have any trouble turning over this engine. I think the best thing to do is to use their design or foot print and build a smaller version. It really is a nice unit and gives me some good ideas.
Rob
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: LMWatBullRun on May 18, 2007, 07:14:22 PM
HAve a PM 28V motor generator that I think I will use both as a DC genset and as a starter.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 18, 2007, 09:19:32 PM
HAve a PM 28V motor generator that I think I will use both as a DC genset and as a starter.

I have a permanent motor dc gerator made from a motor rigged like that on my backup generator. The main reason it worked was that it is a 195 rpm motor and I had to gear it down an awful lot to get it to turn slow enough as a generator. if that works, give us the info on the motor.

mmm Maybe you could have some way to change gearing after it starts too.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: Doug on May 19, 2007, 06:14:47 AM
High inrush starting currents on Pm motors tend over time to demagnetise the field....

A large starting resistor to limmit statrting current to about 3 times name plate will help reduce this effect and give a less harsh shock. When things start to roll drop aout the resistor for max power....

Serries motors are much better suited to this job but harder to find.

Doug
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 19, 2007, 12:32:07 PM
That briggs and stratton etek motor might be just the thing for that
12 -  48 VOLTS DC
VOLTAGE CONSTANT: 72 RPM PER VOLT
TORQUE CONSTANT: 1.14 LB-IN/AMP (0.13 NM/AMP)
MAXIMUM MOTOR CURRENT: 330 AMPS FOR 1 MINUTES
MOTOR WEIGHT: 21 LB
MOTOR OUTPUT: 15 HP MAXIMUM, 8 HP CONTINUOUS
BRUSH LIFE:
65 AMPS CONTINUOUS - 3000 HOURS
100 AMPS CONTINUOUS - 2000 HOURS
150 AMPS CONTINUOUS - 500 HOURS
MINIMUM NO LOADED SPEED
ROTATED 90º CW
D-D
ROTATION IS CCW AT THE SIDE OF DRIVING END, ACCORDING TO THE
PEAK EFF. 88%
6.5 AMP
3700RPM
48VDC MAX, 150A CONT
BRIGGS & STRATTON
MILWAUKEE, WI U.S.A.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 19, 2007, 04:55:50 PM
There is also a motor called a Lemco that is even more efficient, like 90% efficient. They make excelent generators too.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rcavictim on May 20, 2007, 05:25:04 PM
That briggs and stratton etek motor might be just the thing for that
12 -  48 VOLTS DC
VOLTAGE CONSTANT: 72 RPM PER VOLT
TORQUE CONSTANT: 1.14 LB-IN/AMP (0.13 NM/AMP)
MAXIMUM MOTOR CURRENT: 330 AMPS FOR 1 MINUTES
MOTOR WEIGHT: 21 LB
MOTOR OUTPUT: 15 HP MAXIMUM, 8 HP CONTINUOUS
BRUSH LIFE:
65 AMPS CONTINUOUS - 3000 HOURS
100 AMPS CONTINUOUS - 2000 HOURS
150 AMPS CONTINUOUS - 500 HOURS
MINIMUM NO LOADED SPEED
ROTATED 90º CW
D-D
ROTATION IS CCW AT THE SIDE OF DRIVING END, ACCORDING TO THE
PEAK EFF. 88%
6.5 AMP
3700RPM
48VDC MAX, 150A CONT
BRIGGS & STRATTON
MILWAUKEE, WI U.S.A.


WoW!  I had a look at that motor and count me impressed!  I would love to have one for my EV motorcycle project.  It weighs just 20 lbs and can make 20 HP for short periods.  The price ($550?) makes it way too exotic IMO to use as a starter motor.  That would be like using the Hope Diamond as a paper weight.   ;D
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on May 20, 2007, 06:45:06 PM
Quote

WoW!  I had a look at that motor and count me impressed!  I would love to have one for my EV motorcycle project.  It weighs just 20 lbs and can make 20 HP for short periods.  The price ($550?) makes it way too exotic IMO to use as a starter motor.  That would be like using the Hope Diamond as a paper weight.   ;D
Quote

Yeah, definately drooling material. They use them in a lot of EV vehicles and those battlebots. I was checking out other motors that would fit the same aplications, and the price is not all that bad considering the efficiency and what you get for your money.

Actualy, if you conside a seperate top of the line starting motor and a good DC generator or permaqnent magnet motor, it is not too much more. Brushes are cheap. long life and easy to replace too. I am seriously considering getting one just to see what it will do.

I want to hear about your motorcycle. dont disrupt the thread though, email me through the group.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on June 29, 2007, 01:46:04 PM
Yeah, I pretty much gave up on the ring gear setup especially with your coment about the blood and body parts. Just thinking about a shirt sleeve getting caught in the gear send shudders up my spine, much like waking up after a drunk and finding what is next to me.
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: listeroidsusa1 on June 29, 2007, 11:56:51 PM
A fairly easy way to have electric start is with a ford long shaft starter motor ($75 on ebay) and a 12 v A/C compressor clutch. Its a pretty simple job to turn a taper on the motor shaft for the clutch. Yje clutches are available at any junkyard in single and double v belt as well as serpentine.

Mike
Title: Re: Electric Start
Post by: rbodell on June 30, 2007, 02:43:12 AM
What about the bearing on the end o f he starter? Dont you have to cut that off? Then there is no bearing ???