Oiling mods.
A few more thoughts while I think of them.
Listers are dirty inside. Its usual to find an old one full of lumpy tar where oil should be. The main reason for this, other than neglect is temperature..... the oil never gets hot, therefore any combustion by products, acids and condensate just collect in the oil. Its actually a total waste using good oil in these. This can be improved easily by extending the oil feed pipe from the pump to allow the exhaust to heat the oil before it gets back into the engine. This will help to keep the oil cleaner for longer. I dont know about Indian Listers, but the real thing simply pumps oil into two weirs above the main bearings, the overflow running down onto the small reservoir that the dipper works from, any excess then running into the sump. There is no pressure involved, but it is a goodly flow of oil. By making another oil feed pipe from 3/8 inch copper tubing, connect one end to the oil pump outlet, wrap say 10 turns around the exhaust manifold and then back to the oil feed adjacent to the oil filler, this will go a long way to extending the life of the oil. I have removed mine temporarily during the recent "birthday".... it wont appear in the photo, the engine is very "busy" with all these add ons, and difficult to work on.
Another mod I have just remembered is to do with burning waste oil. To prevent random losses of compression when running, the fix here is to radically narrow the valve seats, especially the exhaust. Wide seats will trap carbon preventing a seal at times, a narrow seat will "punch" through any particles. It took me ages to figure this one out..
The piston pin, or gudgean pin as we call them down under, can easily be made from a 3 1/2 length of 1 inch OD bright shafting, there is no need to actually drill these hollow, the small end bush can be any generic bronze bush. The new pin will work harden very quickly. Rerplacement Lister parts are ridiculously expensive, and any savings here are very welcome.
I use the cooling water to supply heat to a wall radiator in my house. After many failed attempts at thermo syphoning the water around, I found the answer lays in plumbing any ancillary's into the return line to the engine, not the outlet as would be expected. The height of the cooling "tower" or tank is what gives the water the flow, the return line can l suffer all sorts of strange routes, the radiator can be level or lower than the tank will be fine. Thats why the cooling tank in the photo is lagged.
My attempt at capturing exhaust heat via a heat exchanger was a failure. Deisels in real life have little exhaust heat, this is to do with them having a full intake of air on every stroke. At low load, much of the combustion heat is wasted heating the excess air. Ironically, this is also the secret to the diesels efficiency, there a less pumping losses than a petrol or gasoline engine that require throttling of the intake at low load, they waste power pulling a vacuum.
Worn valve guides can be simply drilled out, and bronze bushes pressed in from the top. Dont drill all the way through, leave a lip at the bottom, (port end) to allow the bush to bottom out.
When adjusting the injector valve tension, warm the engine first. Then apply a constant fixed full load, and while watching the fuel pump rack position, slowly adjust the spring tension for minimum opening. Lister dont recommend fiddling with this, but its not rocket science.... the engine knows best when its getting a good spray pattern with different fuels. Exhaust smoke is not the best indicator of combustion, as many dodgy fuels will smoke to some degree no matter what.
When spinning car alternators, its easier on the engine to increase the pulley size on the alternators to 4 to 5 inch diameter. I use generic alloy C` section pulleys, drilled out to fit the shaft. The alternators need to spin fast enough to allow the fan to cool them adequately, but not so fast as to rob unnecessary power. Around 1500 RPM seems about right. The engine can then sit at around 350 rpm, giving a long life with little stress.
As already said, alternators can simply be paralleled up to increase current, a cheaper option than buying a single high current type. The large B or battery terminal is connected to all other B terminals, each F, or field terminal can be switched to Battery + via seperate switches to allow each alternator to be activated individually. With battery banks, its required to have one alternator to have its regulator removed to allow overcharging to equalise banks periodically. To do this varies with alternator design. Maybe I will talk about this if anyone would like that info.
Another good reason for multiple alternators is redundancy. Car alternators are cheaply made, and not designed for continuous high current charging of humongous battery banks. They die. Having several will increase reliability, its very unlikely they will all fail together. 9 months to a year seems the average life of a car alternator used in this way.
By removing the internal diode block, and making an external cooled replacement, a normal "75 amp" alternator will make a very useful DC arc welder.... roughly equivalent to a 120 amp AC job.
more to come....