Hi DS....
+1 for what CarlB said.... But... For something really pretty.... Look for an OLD 100L low pressure electrical inline geyser(water heater)... they had copper inners.... Strip off the outer insulation, stand on the non-element side(which is dished) and put the needed fittings in place after taking off the other/top/element side to give you a lovely, copper water tank.... To sit and solder all those copper pipes in will be a pain on your design, as well as prone to cracking loose if you transport it much on bad roads....
Just a thought....
Cheerz
Ed
PS - Failing that, take a look round the scrapyards for an OLD radiator, a la Fergusson TED or Massey 135 .... Brass endcaps with copper cores and fins.... Looks beautiful when the black paint is removed and clear lacquer is applied....
Chances I'll find a water heater like that is probably close to zero, but you have a fresh idea with the brass radiator... I'll sure keep my eyes open for one of those!
If I ever do go with my design I'll weld some steel bracing in between the two tanks, but yes... it will be a pain to assemble and solder it...
@Smoker....find yourself a cast iron rad......way cool (sorry, couldn't resist) and a 10 fin works great. That's what I'm using for my "Roid daily driver.
My Dursley Startomatic has an old milk can with bosses welded in for its cooling tank and a stainless beer keg for the fuel tank........
As long as it is painted in Brunswick green you are good to go!
"Run what you brung"
Cheers,
Hugh
Sure you are very sorry for mentioning that....
One of those cast radiators is right at the top of my wishlist!
Nice idea with the milk can and diesel tank by the way!
AS much as it will upset the old school Purists, I have come to believe that critical belt alignment is WAY over rated. Like a lot of other things on the net.
I don't know if it is modern belts or the thing of having perfect alignment was a crock from the start but I have run things Big hours with visibly way off belts and haven't been able to find any problem.
Obviously the longer the belt the more ability and flexibility it has to self align.
If one is concerned about getting 10 years out of a belt I'm sure perfect alignment helps but if you are one that believes in preventative maintenance and changing things before they fail, then a bit of misalignment in my experience doesn't hurt and I have never seen it really damage or wear a belt either. I suppose it would depend on what one considered a reasonable degree of being out but I have had some I looked at and thought " bloody hell!" and it seemed that the lack of efficiency may have been a lot more of a problem than reduced belt life.
Not saying you can have them a mile out and don't worry, just no need to get too precise IMHO.... especially if you have a 2 ft gap between the pulleys.
I got the alignment to within 0.5 mm and left it there - I must strip the set again to paint the trolley and the alternator and I might fiddle with it some more when I reassemble it. I was a bit worried about the belt life, but comparing my alignment accuracy with your experience of "visibly way off alignment" my belt should last just fine. Good to get feedback from actual experience.
Like you said, the pulley center distance and of course other factors like load and speed will all play a role in the alignment and tension tolerance. When I did my trade test we were had to align the pulley faces to within 0.1 mm
The other thing I have found is tension. I put just enough on to stop them slipping and that's it. My brother in law worked in the power transmission industry and he was in agreeance. He said the less tension, the less strain and load on bearings and as long as they don't slip, all good.
Fully agree there.
I mounted the alternator on a swivel base. I still need to make the tensioner, so now only the weight of the alternator is tensioning the belts. Although the alternator is quite heavy, I must say I was a bit surprised that there was no slip when I put a full load on the alternator. There is a very slight bounce of the alternator when it runs so I'll just add the tensioner to the base so I can lock it in position.
That said, I remember going interstate one night on business and staying in this high class hotel. Outside the window there must have been an AC unit or ventilator or something. Every time the thing kicked in, the belts on this thing would scream and scare the ship out of me. I had a load of crap with me and really didn't want to move it all in the middle of the night but I didn't get used to the screeching. By the morning I was a tired, nervous wreck.
I went down to the desk and didn't even try to be polite or subtle. They upgraded me to a very swish room and although I wasn't going to stay, I said well I was going to now stay another 3 nights as I have more people to see, am I going to have to move yet again? No, that's fine. Terrific. Mrs and I had 3 days sight seeing although most of the first day we spent catching up on sleep we missed from the night before.
Yup - they sure do make one horrifying noise. We had a big dust extraction unit where I work. The motor had probably 6 v-belts driving the impeller and it made that same horrible screeching noise when it stated
It sounds wrong - but a v-belt has a surprising amount of tolerance for start-up slipping. They can screech like that day in and day out for years - as long as they don't slip while running. I had a VW Jetta with a very short narrow v-belt driving the alternator from the aircon pulley. If I gave it halve a chance to slip the belt was toast... I now sure do appreciate the poly-v belts!
Still a couple of things on my to-do list, but I'm already toying with an idea in the back of my head to improve the cooling system's look and function.
Any thoughts or ideas?
If you want something small or even you could hide, Look a t the cabin heater from a car. They will transfer an amazing amount of heat thanks to their dense design. I had a car i took the cooling fans off all together and in traffic wold just run the heater flat out. Yes, after a couple of summers doing that it got old but the car never over heated. I had a W123 Diesel mec I used to tow an oversize trailer with. Thing was only about half the cars rated towing weight but being enclosed and having a huge frontage, it was like a parachute. Towing it over 80 even with friends far more new and powerful cars used to really tax the HP and heat the things up.
The old merc would be running right at the wrong end of hot but putting on the cabin heater and rolling down all the windows made a HUGE difference. Even on my current truck that has a radiator like a Mack, it can get too warm pulling heavy loads up slow, winding hills. Put the cabin heater on and it's fine. Clearly they are dispatching a lot more than 6 HP worth of heat so I have no doubt they would easily keep a lister cool with the right fan sucking the air through.
Another one I see at the local engine show most years is a setup where the guy uses the frame itself as the radiator. He has both a genny and a pump mounted on the frame so it's kinda long and also built with the purpose in mind but the water travels through and around the frame and uses it as the heat exchanger. There are a couple of fittings on each end and he said he ran a 1" Pipe through the centre and was going to couple that to the pump throughput for extra cooling but found it wasn't necessary.
There is an opportunity to come up with something creative, different and funky here that could make the engine a real conversation piece. Maybe go for something a bit unusual here to really make your setup stand out.
Very true about the efficiency of the heater heat exchangers.
Doing something unusual can be just as interesting as something that looks pretty...