Hi Everyone,

I have a Listeroid CS8-1, built in India. It is Powerline brand and I bought it from Power Anand in 2012. It has served me well at my off grid house where it is used several times per week for battery charging and/or powering tools that are too big to run off the house batteries. I'm currently doing a few upgrades - I suspect that it has a cast iron piston, so I'm planning to change it to aluminium. It appears that two different aluminium pistons are available - one with 4 rings and one with 5 - the 5th ring being below the gudgeon pin, so it's an oil ring. The question is, which should I use?

Here is the 4 ring piston: https://www.stationaryengineparts.com/Lister-CS-8-1-Aluminium-Piston-Assembly.html

And here is the 5 ring piston: https://www.stationaryengineparts.com/Listeroid-CS-8-1-Aluminium-Piston-Assembly.html

My next question is...whatis the best way to do the job? Should I undo the big end and lift the piston/conrod assembly out of the top of the cylinder, or should I leave the big end alone and lift the cylinder off the piston?

By the way, last weekend I had the flywheels off for balancing and I managed to get the balance pretty good. I've already put a bronze bushing in the governor linkage where the fork (for want of a better description) slides vertically in what was a pretty rough hole. And I've just received an air dashpot to add to the governor linkage which will hopefully prevent overshoot when the generator is under heavy load.

Cheers,
Martin