I have been trying to sort out what was done 'officially' by Lister and what was not in terms of engines produced outside Dursley/Cinderford. Many opinions are given as to what happened on the sub-continent, but a lot was legend rather than fact.
Talking with David Harris this morning, he has confirmed my stated view that Lister never set up any Indian production facilities for the 5/1 and variants, and later engines. What is being made is purely ripped off from the original designs with changes like the taper roller bearings to suit local manufacturing (or lack of it!)
Lister did send a representative out to look at the growing business many years ago, but the quality of the product then, led them to believe that it was not worth getting involved with and they left it alone.
Tales of kids sitting in the gutter making/cutting pushrods and castings graded and distributed on a quality basis to one of three factories abound. Early crankshafts were cast and had enormous flaws which led to many early failures, but a lot of that is history now. although it makes interesting reading... I spent a lot of time in Delhi, and their production facilities were pretty grim to say the least, although my time was in the early 1980's.
Argentina was the first official Lister overseas production sites, then later on, Malaysia, Morocco,and South Africa. The USA was a special case, and Listerset up production facilities in WWII with Nordberg. Wisconsin engines were in there somewhere as part of the organisation, Le Roi licensed one of their designs which became the G1 and G2 Lister and so on.
According to one source, one of the Indian companies went to a UK trade show with Indian-made Lister spares, at which Lister and Petter were exhibiting. They were shown the door. Spares continue to be made in Turkey of all places, where the CD/CE and FR engines are still popular, as are the 5/1 and variants.
Nordberg made the CD and CE engines, initially from kits but later full production was assumed and they were sold as "Lister-Blackstone". Genuine USA-built engines have US threads instead of Whitworth and BSF, and carry a separate run of 4-digit numbers.
The Changed Number book has separate pages for the USA-built CD and CE engines.
Must get some work done now! :-))
Peter
