Lister Engines > Listeroid Engines
The Listeroid Chronicles-WMO and Other Listeroid Modifications
Tom:
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.
EdDee:
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....
Tom:
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.
dieselgman:
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
EdDee:
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
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