My first lister

[NYDiesel]

I'm looking for my first Lister(oid) engine. Where can you buy an Indian manufactured Lister clone in the United States.

Also - I understand these engines come with removable liners for rebuild. Are there any limits to the number of times the engine can be rebuilt or does the design allow for multiple rebuilds? How long do Listers go between rebuilds?

[dieselgman]

Available as kits only in the US... DES in Kansas.

Original designs do not have any sleeves, you just bore (or replace) the cylinder block on these. I would guess an average between 10,000 to 20,000 hours would be normal for one of these. The beauty in the design is that they can be rebuilt many, many times with very good results.

Power Solutions and others have used a non-standard sleeved cylinder design...

dieselgman

[NYDiesel]

Thanks! How many times is many?

[dieselgman]

Thanks! How many times is many?

If maintenance is performed properly, then as many times as you could manage in your own lifetime - plus probably your children as well!

Since the individual parts are readily available (at least for standardized parts), anything that fails or wears out can readily be replaced, and the design provides for all wear components to be replaced on a routine basis as part of your usual operations.

dieselgman

[NYDiesel]

The block doesn't eventually crack from thermal cycling?

How much does it cost to get into a Listeroid?

[dieselgman]

Engine blocks experience very little thermal cycling and I have not seen any cracked other than from catastrophic crankshaft failures and the like. That is a rare occurrence.

Current clone kit pricing in the US is $2195.

dieselgman

[NYDiesel]

If only they made auto engines that fixable!

[AdeV]

The block doesn't eventually crack from thermal cycling?

It's not thermal cycling that gets Lister(oid) blocks - it's frost. And I suspect it mostly affects British engines which, having served their farms/homes for a lifetime, were then sadly neglected as progress brought mains electricity across the country, so one winter they just weren't drained, and the block blew out the first proper freezing night.

America didn't really get into the Listeroids until they were a "collectable", or at least a novelty engine. Back in the days when mains electricity was scarce, you guys had plenty of your own engines (which we Brits also look at with envious eyes, in these days of collecting old engines); most of yours were gasoline engines though, we had many more diesel engines, due to the wider availability of "agricultural diesel" aka red diesel (because of the red dye they put in it), which attracted much less tax than road diesel (aka DERV - Diesel Engine Road Vehicle).

Can't help you with costs, I'm afraid, your EPA has mucked all that up.

[dieselgman]

Some confusion may be brewing here...

In usual British Lister parlance the "block" describes the cylinder... in general use in the USA the same term often means the crankcase. My tendency is to assume block means crankcase.

dieselgman

[BruceM]

Thanks, Gary.  I was getting very confused about how a CS block could possibly freeze and crack, and I knew AdeV is the opposite of technically sloppy! 

Two nations separated by a common language...

[AdeV]

Errrr, actually (oops), I was indeed being sloppy 

Pretty much every engine I deal with (Listers excepted), the "barrel" is an integral part of the block... so there's a block & head. I keep forgetting that the Lister has a separate block/barrel/head arrangement... Mea culpa.

It is, of course the barrel that cracks from frost damage on Lister(oids). Typically the weakest (thinnest) area of the casting is behind the pushrods, which is where the damage usually occurs.

[dieselgman]

I didn't find your inputs "sloppy" Ade! In fact I have always found your posts enlightening and helpful!

The problem comes along with the language. Easy to develop small misconceptions, and even sometimes major disagreements, even when trying to say the exact same thing!

dieselgman