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Author Topic: The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications  (Read 288887 times)

EdDee

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The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
« on: October 14, 2015, 10:16:45 AM »
Hi Guys,

I am a "Newbie" to this forum, although I have been lurking on and off for some time as a guest. I am submitting a path of action and I would like some forecasts as to the eventual outcome from you highly experienced gents who have been down this road before. As always, experience is the best teacher and i would love to hear what you think would happen.

The scenario is as follows:
1)Take delivery of a new listeroid CS12/1
2)Do the absolute minimum prep work on the engine, check and set spill timing(A little advanced from the original 18deg to around the 20deg mark), check and set Valves, Quick Clean of Crankcase inner, Fill with Oil and diesel, Bleed injector system, Change governor spring and de-rate to 750RPM from the original 1000RPM
3)Install onto Chassis with a 7.5KW genhead driven by 2 v-belts from the Flywheel rim(No Grooves) and install a radiator with thermosyphon circulation and electrical fan assist with temperature switch.
4)Run one tank of diesel thru the engine under moderate load (2.5-3Kw) for basic break in.
5)Install a basic water injection system on the inlet manifold, install a Donaldson air filter in place of the junk filter that was supplied with the engine.
6)Break most of the rules with exhaust routing(Down 1m, Across 2m, Up 1/2m Across 1m, Up 3m or so and for giggles add another 90degree bend or 2 after all of this to get the exhaust to go where i want it)
7)Start, stop and run on WMO thereafter, highly varying load conditions, from 1.5Kw to a max of 7.5Kw for short periods, average load about about 2.5 to 3Kw.

« Last Edit: January 05, 2016, 01:57:21 PM by EdDee »
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dieselgman

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2015, 01:54:27 PM »
A couple quick responses...

1.) Do not buy a 12/1 if you want to run 750 rpm - just buy an 8/1 (850rpm) and slow it to your desired speed. This may require some adjustments to flywheel balance to make her stable.

2.) Running at 750 rpm is only going to produce barely 4kW (if that)- even if you start with the 12/1. So your high-end loading expectations will need to be adjusted accordingly.

The rest is a crap shoot with varying and unpredictable Indian assembly and QC practices as we have all observed. I have heard of a few folks assembling and running without modification and without complaint... but far too many who have found problems to remedy on close internal inspection.

dieselgman
« Last Edit: October 14, 2015, 01:57:33 PM by dieselgman »
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Combustor

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2015, 03:25:34 PM »
Hi there EdDee,
                      Carefully read as much as you can on the topic of burning WMO in the threads on this site and others, and then make up your mind as to whether it is for you.  Some report good results but others have sad tales to tell, as there are many variables and unknowns with its use. Factors affecting results include
Source and type of oil
Contamination with unsuitable oils, (synthetics, gear lubes. coolants, fuels etc.
Blend ratio's, with diesel, heating oil, kero, jet fuel, RUG, other secret brews,
Heavy metal residues, (cause deposits and abrasive wear),
Your ability to achieve fine filtration and remove residual water/detergent "goo"
Possible need to preheat to keep flowing in cold weather
Legalities of transporting and storing, in some places, once oil is used, it is classified as Dangerous Goods.

If you can secure a source of an un-contaminated oil of a single type,then it may be worth some careful trials but be prepared for a lot of research and experiment and learn from other
users who have succeeded.  Also look into waste veg oil as fuel or the possibility of turning it into bio-diesel. Either way, you will need a lot of spare time.
          Do not listen to anyone who says you can build a refining setup that will turn WMO into diesel. It is a very hazardous process,not very successful and illegal almost anywhere.
Good luck.
 
Combustor.
Toys include- Lister CS 8/1, Lister VA SOM plant and some Aussie engines.
   "Old iron in the Outback" Kimberley, West Australia.

EdDee

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2015, 05:27:00 PM »
Thanks Gman and Combustor, points noted!

 I prepare my fuel (WMO) by heating it to around 110 to 120C and stirring it around to boil off water. Thereafter I let it settle overnight and decant the top 2/3 to a holding tank (through a 5micron filter) where it can further rest till I need to use it. I guess I have just been lucky so far in my choice of bits to put the whole setup together.

There is quite a bit more to my setup than the above description of my first post, but it is essentially, in its basics, pretty much as described. My reason for posting the What If, was to get an honest, genuine opinion of what to avoid and what I could expect. Somehow, my numbers as calculated, came out pretty much similar to what you have recommended, but in reality, I am able to draw power off the unit well above what has been predicted. Initial estimates came up around the 4kw mark which is around the 18A mark at 220V... I can and do peak load at about 25 to 30A with the exhaust only just starting to smoke. So far I have racked up quite a few hours and nothing has gone bang....Yet...

Any further reccomendations would be awesome! I am a slow learner, so repeat often and no offence will be taken... ;D
12/1 750RPM/9HP Roid 5kVA- WMO Disposal/Electricity & Hot Water Gen
12/1 650RPM/8HP Roid 4.5kVa - Demon Dino
Chinese Yanmar - Silent Runner with AutoStart
Classic Komatsu 1963 Dozer/Fergusson 35 Gold Belly ...
Bikes,Cars,Gunsmithing & Paintball...Oh yes, a 5Ha open air Workshop to play in!

dieselgman

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2015, 05:49:19 PM »
Perhaps you have a 12/1 that is more than I initially assumed. Usually I thought they were the same displacement engines as the 6/1 and 8/1 - just run up to 1,000rpm to get the extra power. If yours has a larger bore and/or stroke, then it would be able to make more power at 750 rpm than what I had guessed at. Our 18/1 units run at 750rpm... just have a lot more cubic inches to make the extra power.

dieselgman
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Tom

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2015, 06:01:14 PM »
Been there, done that and don't do it any more. Motor oils are high in ash, when it's burned the ash is left behind and grinds up the rings and cylinder walls. The ash also collects on the tip of the injector as a little stalactite and messes up the spray pattern. And surprising the abrasiveness of WMO ground up the internals of a IP and injector. I tried blends, settling and filtering. The only success I've read is using a centrifuge or making your own distillery. I don't use enough fuel in a year to justify the cost of a centrifuge, so now I'm back to off-road diesel.

You will find that starting on WMO in cold weather is difficult and gets more difficult as the engine rapidly wears. I also had problems with deposits on valve stems causing sticking when cold. If you're going to run non-stop for long periods you might do better than I did. My typical run is 4-8 hours charging batteries. Order lots of spare parts with your engine if you're going to try this and depend on it for power.
Tom
2004 Ashwamegh 6/1 #217 - ST5 just over 3k hours.

EdDee

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2015, 06:32:21 PM »
Gman, i think u are right about this unit.... i havent had the lid off yet so i cant confirm though...

I am currently just over the 1k hour mark on this engine and so far, touch wood, its holding up well. Most of its life so far, has been running on WMO of the worst possible kinds I can find. Tomorrow we go to collect 1000L of old truck sump oil to burn off in her! That should keep her spinning for a while... I am burning off the oil to generate electricity and heat water for the household, but, mainly to dispose of it in a more environment friendly and useful way.

Of exhaust smoke and carboning has been very little, a little bit of water down the inlet on a constant basis seems to be working well. I never shut down the water supply, it is drawn into the manifold by induction stroke and the level of the float bowl is such that when the motor stops, so does the water. The average run lasts around 12 or more hours.

The worst wear on the injection system happened on day one - a tank of store bought, water contaminated diesel was put in... not enough to stop the engine, but enough to stuff things up quite niceley when it stood overnight in the IP... a strip and clean out, smoothing off the rough bits ensued, back up and running albeit a bit hard to start with low IP pressure.. now running on 30 to 40W oil, IP pressure is up and going! I don't preheat the fuel oil as it seldom falls into the single figure C temps here, even in mid winter...

The only major-ish failure experienced thus far was electrical of nature, a bit of creative rerouting solved that...

Tom, what is your definition of rapid wear due to ash and deposits, 100,500, or more? I am trying to work out if I have been lucky so far, or if the mushroom cloud is just over the horizon!

It looks like this thing would run on peanut butter and grease if I could get it into the pump.... Uncle Otto would be proud....
« Last Edit: October 14, 2015, 06:53:40 PM by EdDee »
12/1 750RPM/9HP Roid 5kVA- WMO Disposal/Electricity & Hot Water Gen
12/1 650RPM/8HP Roid 4.5kVa - Demon Dino
Chinese Yanmar - Silent Runner with AutoStart
Classic Komatsu 1963 Dozer/Fergusson 35 Gold Belly ...
Bikes,Cars,Gunsmithing & Paintball...Oh yes, a 5Ha open air Workshop to play in!

Tom

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2015, 09:26:06 PM »
Going from memory here, but there was a pretty good ridge on a liner in about 200 hours. There was a pretty good amount of blowby coming out the breather too. Never did try continuous water injection as I hadn't heard about doing that while I was doing the WMO experiment. On the Micro-Cogen board Glort swears by it so you may be on to something there.
Tom
2004 Ashwamegh 6/1 #217 - ST5 just over 3k hours.

dieselgman

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2015, 09:45:50 PM »
Caterpillar and the US Air Force have used their waste diesel lube oils as fuel. Cat used to recommend up to 5% waste mixed with the diesel fuel, and in fact offered a third-party system for stationary engines that continuously fed the oil into the fuel supply side of the system. The Air Force experimented with up to 15% as I recall reading... and with good results. Neither of them recommended using any kind of contaminated waste stocks though, and nothing except for lubricating oil out of a diesel engine.

dieselgman
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EdDee

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #9 on: October 15, 2015, 10:44:12 AM »
Thanks for the replies, Tom,Gman and Glort.
Gman: I remove as much contamination through filtering, settling and boiling as i can - so far it seems to be working. On the tank i again have a fine filter that hopefully takes out some more solids to make it passable...

Tom: So far there is little blow by, maybe a tad more than from new, but nothing to be alarmed about as yet....hold thumbs!!

Glort:Agreed with the prep of the fuel, that does make an enormous difference - the one batch that was from a trusted source is the one batch that caused the most problems so far! Agreed re the parrotted mantras, but, this happens in all walks of life, its a bit of the "Herd Instinct" coming to the fore i would think...

A Little common sense does seem to go a long way, often though, common sense isnt so commonly available!!

Water injection has made a big, and i mean a really big difference to the running of junk fuels in my case - before it was installed, carbon started to build up at an alarming rate and that coupled with a badly timed injection system started things down a path of early failure. At first I was under the impression that the fuel was wholly at fault, installed WI and things improved, or at the very least didnt get worse. Found the timing bolt had shifted from it's painted to lock it in position, retimed the injection and used the previously unused lock nut to lock it in place...been running ever since.... I did not decarbon after the initial SNAFU, but with the water in place, carbon has definitely reduced both in the injector area and the exhaust system... What a pleasure!!

I have the option of adding all sorts of PLC's and advanced systems to monitor and control - my opinion is that these are most likely to cause problems in the future - Listers run for decades and have run for decades without them - simple is best I reckon - I have yet to see a 10 year old PLC still in full operation in a Lister environment...

The WMO I am using has everything from Dino, ULP to ATF and Paraffin mixed - little water or coolant as such - I simply keep the Visco around the 25-35 mark and it burns well - or appears to be so far .... Time will tell!

I have been expecting early cylinder/ring failure because of ash in the burnt residue - so far compression is reasonable to good, little blow by so Poseidon is doing his work(I hope) to help rid the exhaust stroke of nasty bits!!

I have also expected IP and Injector problems due to the junk fuel - I am still sitting with a brand new Injector tip and 2xFuel pump elements as spare, waiting to install should the need arise, due to erosion by acidic WMO - It looks like the 100+C heating/cooling/settling routine is ridding the WMO of water and as such is limiting the effectiveness of the acids...

My general thoughts on the lister motor are that it was designed to be simple, with simple maintenance, with simple fuels, to be run by the common man - with todays tech we are inducing more problems through our own cautiousness, albeit inadvertently, that the simple things are being overlooked and we expect the tech to take the place of the basic needs of the engine - Coolant, Fuel, Lubrication, Tight Bolts and dont let the first three mix amongst themselves!!

My WI system is simplicity itself - controlled level float bowl(Made from bits of an old chicken waterer), gravity fed from a water hopper, with a 1/8" pipe feeding in just in front of the valve stem(guestimated) - it draws water droplets in on induction with not enough water induced to allow for a wet exhaust or enough to cause problems with milking the oil.... every now and then i give it a good flush by choking the inlet to the air filter and it seems to keep things running quite clean - this is done for about 2 mins every couple of days or so... no schedule, no need, just like running the steam engine for giggles... It blows a lot of grey steam out the stack so that tells me it must be cleaning something out which cant be bad!! Lol....

I would like to try WVO, but that is in short supply in my areas, all piping etc is WVO ready, with dual tank and filters just waiting....

Anyways, enough rambling from my side.... time to earn a living i guess... 800L of fuel gunk just arrived, so i better get cooking!!

L8rs
E
12/1 750RPM/9HP Roid 5kVA- WMO Disposal/Electricity & Hot Water Gen
12/1 650RPM/8HP Roid 4.5kVa - Demon Dino
Chinese Yanmar - Silent Runner with AutoStart
Classic Komatsu 1963 Dozer/Fergusson 35 Gold Belly ...
Bikes,Cars,Gunsmithing & Paintball...Oh yes, a 5Ha open air Workshop to play in!

Gippslander

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #10 on: October 15, 2015, 01:03:25 PM »


.  These peasants could not be able to afford a new engine even every year so I wonder how they get on with their factory engines run as delivered?





That is a interesting question. Maybe there are lots of little listeroid repair shops in India and Pakistan .  Mike
Gippsland is in the S.E. corner of mainland Australia

dieselgman

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #11 on: October 15, 2015, 01:42:58 PM »
I have seen them running pumps and concrete mixers over in India - basically in a big pile of dirt, and seemingly doing just fine. Spare parts are almost dirt cheap there and they can rebuild in an afternoon with a few hand tools and a big hammer.

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38ac

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #12 on: October 15, 2015, 02:27:52 PM »
Not many deep mechanical thinkers live as peasants, a large part of the equation.

 From what I hear back from missionaries working in third world areas they don't,  as in  run very long. There are heaps of non running engines and equipment scattered about that need only minor repair, some of it next to new.
Another answer is those same penniless peasants that buy a cheap engine also have to buy fuel to make them run and the engines don't get run many hours. An engine that runs for 30 minutes once a week gets 26 hours a year thus a 100 hour life span engine is a four year engine. vs a 4 day engine on 24/7 operation.

My sampling of Indian engines is small compared to some, maybe 30 in total but fewer than 25% of them were free of some defect that would seriously lower a western type life expectancy. At least 1/4 of them had a major defect that was a guarantied failure with in a very short time span.  Maybe they send all the garbage here and the good ones are sold third world? I don know? This is  just my experience.




 These peasants could not be able to afford a new engine even every year so I wonder how they get on with their factory engines run as delivered?

/quote]





« Last Edit: October 15, 2015, 02:29:50 PM by 38ac »
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veggie

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #13 on: October 15, 2015, 03:03:38 PM »
As a person who imported many (from two different suppliers) I can tell you that I did not see a single engine that did not need some work.

1]The most common ailment was a poorly fitted con rod bearing. Usually waaaay too much clearance (like 10 to 15 thou") which would cause bearing destruction in short order.
I made a point of changing them out immediately or giving the buyer a new set of shells,
Many uneducated buyers would not notice the con-rod knock mixed in with the rest of the engine noise and many users of listeroids put little few hours on them so it would take some time for un-serviced bearing shells to raise an issue.

2]The second most common thing I noticed was cylinder liner protrusion above the deck. While 0.005" is the desired number, I saw many at 0.020" and this made it hard for the head gasket to seal the water passages because the cyl. head sat higher than it should. A thick gasket and a lot of lacquer at the factory got them to pass the run test.

Listeroids can be (and are) good engines if given a bit of attention at the start. And the price of spares certainly makes them good candidates for alternative fuels.
So go for it ! The cost of a set of rings and an injector may be greatly offset by the savings in fuel cost. Each person's methods and setup is different so you have to do the math and see if it works for you.
Oh...and the hobby factor ! sometimes it's just so much fun that the $$$ don't matter (within reason)  ;D

cheers,
veggie
« Last Edit: October 15, 2015, 03:05:19 PM by veggie »
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38ac

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Re: What If I did this?
« Reply #14 on: October 15, 2015, 03:22:11 PM »
many users of listeroids put little few hours on them so it would take some time for un-serviced bearing shells to raise an issue.


cheers,
veggie


That's my experience also, lots of indian engines around. Most owned by hobbyists with ideas that never got done. There are a few around that have some amount of hours on them and virtually none (by percentage) that have a history of long and hard work behind them.
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