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Messages - rmchambers

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 29
1
Listeroid Engines / Re: Hurry rigged starter
« on: March 27, 2016, 10:52:50 PM »
I can't help but laugh when I looked at your coked up piston head.. not at the carbon, that was impressive but the fact that your photo hosting site asked me if I wanted to make a calendar or greeting cards with the picture.  How cute would that be.. Merry Christmas from my carboned up piston :)

2
Listeroid Engines / Re: I'm gonna take her down..
« on: January 26, 2016, 12:03:31 AM »
I wouldn't say no gain whatsoever... no material gain perhaps but I've gotten WAY  more knowledge and "that's a great idea" from this forum than I've ever put into it!  There's value in knowledge my brother!

3
Listeroid Engines / Re: Catalytic converter, revisited
« on: November 24, 2015, 12:03:55 AM »
If your generator is too lightly loaded to avoid sending unburned fuel down the exhaust stack (which would smell and smoke) perhaps you can give it more work to do?  somehow have a dump circuit that goes to a big storage tank for hot water and turns on those heating elements.  You need hot water right?

I suspect when the engine isn't working hard it won't matter how you treat the after products.  My VW (older version not subject to recall) smells worse when the engine is idling than it does when everything is hot.  I have replaced the cat on mine but not because it plugged up because the weld cracked around it (known issue with the OEM pipe/cat)  As I recall the cat wasn't all that expensive and mine is pre-regen and pre-def type technologies.

Good luck!

Robert

4
Listeroid Engines / Re: Injector overflow piping....?
« on: November 15, 2015, 10:13:38 PM »
I've always sent the return back to the tank if it's close by, if any air gets bled through that it won't get re-circulated into the pump and it will force the Diesel to go back through the filter so it keeps cleaning.  The output is often pretty warm too so it helps warm up the tank after a while.

5
Listeroid Engines / Re: I am VINDICATED !!!!
« on: November 15, 2015, 10:06:00 PM »
It's a neat feeling isn't it!

My foray into backup power was a 3600 Watt Trace inverter and 4 golf cart batteries I got off a guy 20 miles up the coast.  Got a good deal and he threw the batteries in for nothing (he'd never have shipped them).

I played with it for a bit and worked out a place for it to live and got another set of 4 Trojan T-125's for it (spent more on those than the inverter) and Hurricane Irene showed up and knocked out power for 3 1/2 days.  I ran on the first set of batteries (fridge, freezer, some lights, TV, etc) and that ran out in around a day.  The second (new) set lasted 2 days and at which point the house got quiet again.  I basically said to the family "don't open the fridge and hope the power comes back on soon" and in about 6 hours it did, so we didn't lose any food.

That started me on my way towards getting a generator too, at first I looked into Listeroids which is why I frequent this fine site, but eventually I decided on an Onan single cylinder 3000w watercooled Diesel (MDJA) and bought that for $200.  It was a sad state of affairs but I took it apart and cleaned it all up, etched it and sanded and primed and painted.  Replaced the injector pump which I got from a guy on the Onan group over at smokestak (good folks there much like the people here, very helpful).  It took me a few months and a lot of garage space to finish the restoration.

I did get the "when are you going to get rid of that thing"   (not) "It's smelly"  (so?)  "we never lose power" (yet)  "what are those batteries for? (what happens when they run out)  "I might back my car into it"   (I wouldn't recommend it, you will smash your car up and won't hurt the generator"  so it lived on a dolly between the two car spaces in the garage...

Then Hurricane Sandy hit!   after the initial storm hit, the power went off and we went dark (around 7pm at night if I recall)  I got the house going on the inverter (had replaced the original battery set by then) and since I have an oil fired hot water heater we could put the kids in the shower etc.  Next morning I got up (still no power)  got the generator out of the garage and fired it up.  While it was warming up I pulled the cord to the house and plugged the inverter into it so now the little Onan was running the house AND recharging the batteries.  Brewed up some coffee and then had my nice hot shower.  I don't care how rough you're living if you can start your day off with a hot coffee and a nice hot shower, you're not doing too bad.

This went on for a week (we were out of power for 6 1/2 days) and that little Onan never skipped a beat.  I ran it out of fuel once and a safety oil pressure sense line fatigued off and that dropped the decomp solenoid.  Both of those were easy fixes.  I ran a cord to my neighbor the first day to chill his fridge down but said long term he probably ought to take his stuff to his brother in law who still had power. 

Once the power came back on and life was good we were at the in-laws and my wife's sister lamented on how bad things were in Jersey and they had no power for 7 days and had to bug out to my inlaws beachfront condo.  "what did you guys do?"    and my wife said "oh we were fine, we ran our generator and didn't lose anything, still had hot showers and TV (dish network).   I gave her a funny look and said "Oh it's OUR generator now??? that stinky thing you wanted me to get rid of is OUR generator???"   vindication indeed!

I don't get the entitlement of the other neighbor though, that's damned rude if you ask me.  There's nothing fair or not about having some forethought to set yourself up with alternate power.

Robert

6
Original Lister Cs Engines / Re: Power Inverters
« on: June 20, 2015, 01:36:25 PM »
The larger inverters, mine is a Trace/Xantrex 3624 model (3600W, 24VDC input) that I bought probably 10 or more years ago from a guy along with 4 Trojan golf cart batteries for about $600 have been very handy and reliable since I got it.

The batteries were marginal but that bank limped along for another 5 years with care and equalization charging every so often.  I purchased a set of 4 new Trojan T125's and that would run my house (both banks one after the other) for around 2 days (fridge, freezer, TV, a few lights, etc) but once the batteries were low and it shut off, I was in the dark.  The old set of batteries died and I got another 4 T125's and now I can run probably 3-4 days with just the essentials.  I've switched to mostly LED lights too which help.

When Hurricane Sandy came to town we were without power for 6 days.  By that time I had also acquired an Onan single cylinder marine generator 3000W that runs on Diesel (which I have a big tank of in the basement - #2 heating oil) so fuel isn't an issue.

I would get up in the morning and fire up the generator which fed directly into the inverter, this would run the house loads and whatever power was left over went back into the batteries.  I'd also fire up the hot water heater (oil fired) so we could shower and such.  I'd shut the generator down at night and run quiet on batteries.  This inverter does do power search (pulse to see if something gets turned on, if not it doesn't invert).

The bottom line here is if you're thinking of getting some sort of inverter to work along with your generator don't get one of the cheap and nasty ones because they will fail when you need them.  Spending a bit more on a good quality (and yes they are heavy) inverter will hopefully prevent an outage at an inopportune time.

7
Original Lister Cs Engines / Re: Good project or worthless lawn ornament?
« on: February 09, 2015, 12:43:49 AM »
Missing pushrods and rockers the valves (if they are present) should be closed.  They may be rusted but hopefully have kept water out of the bore.  Either way it will be an interesting project for you!

8
Original Lister Cs Engines / Re: Oblong Illinois Engine show
« on: August 10, 2010, 04:00:29 AM »
The tractor is lovely, so much more than the sum of all its parts (lovingly restored and painted better than new).

It's a link to your dear dad and so much more than just a garden tool.

It's just gorgeous, so are the ice cream machines but that tractor is just sweeeeet.

9
What are you going to do about the frost damage? Try and source another block or scrape the patch off and do some Guy Fawksian welding on the cast and grind and smooth to finish?

Nice find on the SOM, she will dress up nicely I'm sure.  The wiring did look a bit sketchy so it will be a good idea to replace that with new.

Can't wait to see the finished results.

10
Original Lister Cs Engines / Re: Another Rescue Engine
« on: July 27, 2010, 03:09:50 AM »
Wow Bob, that is one fantastic looking engine now! and with the proper transfers on it looks better than new.  I'm in awe.

11
Other Slow Speed Diesels / Re: Progress on the Ruston & Hornsby 1ZHR
« on: July 19, 2010, 03:34:28 AM »
That's a lovely bit of kit you've made there Peter, the only thing missing now is some sort of kettle attachment to brew up a nice cup of tea with all that hot water you've got stored!

perhaps you you can find some screw down feet for it something beefy with Acme square threads that you can steady the whole works and get it off the wheels a bit.

Regards

Robert

12
Waste Motor Oil / Re: Driving on "Wonderfuel"
« on: April 29, 2009, 03:10:33 PM »
So it sounds like you're doing ok then.  I broke down and took my friggin snowblower apart before the last big forecasted East coast storm.  It has a tecumseh snowking engine on it, I've never been a big fan of their engines and I'm still not but at least with the head off I saw what was wrong.  The exhaust valve was moving a bit on the exhaust stroke before closing tight again.  I was losing compression and some fuel mix out the exhaust pipe which explained the cherry redness of that.  Anyway the only way to adjust those valves is to pop them out and grind some meat off the bottom of the valve stem.  AFter I did that and put it back together it didn't touch on the compression stroke any more so I put the head back on.  It has enough compression now to pull your shoulder if you don't watch it and it throws snow like there's no tomorrow.  Who'd have thought eh?

What does your car smell like running on wonderfuel?  does it have the typical diesel smell or something different?

13
Waste Motor Oil / Re: Driving on "Wonderfuel"
« on: December 25, 2008, 01:00:46 AM »
Thanks RCA, I appreciate the info.  Hope all is going well with you up there!

Best wishes

RC

14
Waste Motor Oil / Re: Driving on "Wonderfuel"
« on: December 23, 2008, 04:23:59 PM »
Acetone, I've read some stuff about adding that to fuel.  the prevailing wisdom is that in a carb fueled gas engine it helps but with injection it doesn't help as much.  With compression ignition it may well give you a little boost if it's volatile enough to help pop off when the compression gets to it.

My friggin snowblower is very anemic lately, the engine is shot I think, I  just keep it going until I find something else, the last tank of gas I put in it I added a bit of acetone as well, it seemed to help but who knows.

Does anyone remember where those small diesel engines that are bolt-hole replacements for briggs and stratton are?  I thought a guy was advertising them here but I can't find them.

Good luck with the wonderfuel, perhaps if I can find one of those engines I'll run that in mine too!

Merry Christmas to all..

Robert

15
Waste Motor Oil / Re: Driving on "Wonderfuel"
« on: November 06, 2008, 01:09:15 AM »
Wow, that really sucks...

Reminds me of a tranny shop in Richardson Texas that my friend took his cutlass to back when we were in high school.

The cars tranny had been through some hell I think and occasionally it would make this awful grinding sound, then a thunk then quiet for a while.  I drove to the place with him (so I could drive him home) and the guy said to check back in a couple of days.  This was back when cell phones were the size of bricks and cost thousands of $$.

Come back in a couple of days and he said it's fixed!  so my buddy went to pay him and then he drove home with me following.  When he got home he told me, it's still making noise!  so we drove back over and I sat in the back while we had the service manager sit in the passenger seat so we should show him.  We drove along for a bit and all was well and he said "sounds great to me" then a little while later we started to hear the slight grinding whirring noise, "Ah, that's the noise!" he said "Ah yes, thats the sound the planetary gears make when they go around the sun gear thats quite normal"  Now I didn't know enough to call bullship on that but eventually  kerbang then quiet again  so I pipe up "and that's normal too is it? what's that the sun doing a big bang?"   he looked at my buddy and said "Leave it with us".  The next time we picked the car up it was quiet and he never had any more trouble with the tranny for as long as he owned it.

Sounds like the same place to me! haha

Good luck

RC

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