Hey Glort/B&D,
The crank venting temp change is simply a curiosity for me, I am going to change it, just haven't got around to it... I doubt that I will take it much further... It could also probably be something so simple as the breather pipe shadowing a small draft to the side of the cyl head outlet pipe where the thermocouple is taped on... that could cause it I suppose.....
As to a fan blowing on the crankcase, I don't think it will make a noticeable difference, the wheels stir up plenty of breeze in the small enclosure as it stands....
I went back and checked the records... From new through to today, the consumption has been worst case 610ml or so to best case 590m or so per kwh... I have fairly accurate records, granted, my maths and formulas on excel aren't so hot anymore, but I think I am about right in my calcs.
What offsets it for me, is the cogen aspect - We haven't bought LPG for bathroom water heating in months. The heat store(which is very inefficient) holds temp overnight and hot water is available till early afternoon, after which it is a bit cool for comfort. The other small plus, is that the heat store is directly below the kitchen floor, albeit cement slab, and this has made the kitchen which luckily is fairly large, the social center in the evenings... What a pleasure to have everybody pitch in and clear up after dinner on a daily basis, then sit around with coffee and talk sh!t for a while... Very social!! (There are up to 9 of us in the household when most are home, and average around 7 most of the time.)
I might have sourced a contact for some large storage cells, flooded, 2V. If all goes well I might also go to a PV type addition. What has been holding me back is the cost of the batteries and the lack of good used ones on the second hand market... Hold thumbs!! For inverters, I have already got and am using 3xAPC UPS's. they total about 7.5kw in all, more than I need, but I don't know how well they will like to run on a continuous basis...I am going to look for a decent size single inverter to do the job, around 10kw I reckon should handle it mostly. Damn, Glort, now we are both gonna get kicked off here....
As I have said before, way back in this thread if I remember correctly: If I was in the middle of nowhere, no other source of power or heat, totally off grid, the Lister cogen is the way to go... As long as you are reasonably mechanically minded and not afraid to get your hands dirty on a daily basis. As a cheap/fully viable/reliable alternative to on-grid if it is available... Look elsewhere... (Eeeek....now I am really going to get flamed!)
I have also done the sums... How the Greenies at this stage can justify the cost/payback for PV, I really dont know. Every time I do the sums, the payback time is way over the MTBF estimate for the hardware. Granted, no emissions(for using them anyway), but the manufacturing emissions overheads were pretty horrible last time I checked, so either way, the planet gets a bit screwed up, not by the user, but by the manufacturer in this case..... I feel just a little bit better when I walk out my door and know that if the beast is belching out black smoke I can do something about it!
Interesting point re the power companies... Kinda "catch 22"... We know we are being screwed... We go PV... Juice price goes up... More go PV... Prices rise more... More go PV... PV panels now popular and take over as a monopoly... PV panel prices start hiking... A never ending loop of greed...
B&D - I haven't done the calcs or checks since I installed the heatex on the top line of the radiator input, but I can say that I am getting a "more than initially expected" return in heat harvesting from it. I initially calc'd out after measuring, that I was getting around 1.6Kwh worth of energy out of the exhaust heatex. With the coolant heatex in place, I, at a guestimate, am well over double that now. My initial heat store was around 90kg of water and from the exhaust only. Now we are running around 250Kg of water store and this gets up to well over the 60C mark from around a start of 10C approximate.. It does this within 2 hours or so, so I am more than satisfied. During the evening shower cycle, putting 9 people through the wash bays, with TM1 running, there is still plenty of hot left over for most of the next day.
Again I ramble....
Keep it spinning....
Regds
Ed