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Messages - GuyFawkes

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1051
General Discussion / New Orleans
« on: February 09, 2006, 02:44:47 AM »
This is inspired by the peak oil thread.

1/ I live in the UK, so this is a foreigners perspective for you USAians

2/ This is not a flame or troll.

In the 1940's the american military machien came to the south west uk to get ready for the landings in france, we'd never seen anything like we, we had petrol rationing, yank logistics was so awesome you guys had chocolate, stocking and cigarettes.

I still own an adjustable up to 3 inch pipe die that my dad pinched from the yanks, fab quality, still cuts good threads

I grew up in engineering, caterpillar, allison, detroit, onan, ruston bucyrus, plus 40s, zippo, buck, I could go on and on, fabulous quality goods, but the most amazing this was at competitive prices, available in any humanly imagineable quantity, and delivered to your site in days at worst, hours if ut was urgent

yeah, we english invented the industrial revolution, but the yanks made it a commodity and delivered ir anywhere on the planet you  liked in any quantity you liked, makes a hell of an impression

then in the sixties I stayed up late as a young boy home on leave, watching a 405 line telly, watching the yanks send men to the moon, and then just to rub it in send a 4WD to the moon and play golf on the moon for fucks sake.

we went to the cinema and saw all these 16 year old american kids running around in hot rods, god we hated you, because we wanted to be you, because america could do anything.

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skip forwards a bit, I'd owned and run vettes and harleys, zippos and bucks, drunk coke, dug the grateful dead, worked for that american invention the corporation, I was still jealous, but grown out of the envy

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skip forwards a bit, world trade centre comes down (bear in mind I grew up during the communist emergency in malaysia, then in africa was swapo was kicking off, and off course we had noraid funded ira bombings here) and the blunt truth is there wasn't a hell of a lot of sympathy, "hello and welcome to the real world" was pretty much what most people felt... bear in mind when my real trade of engineering dried up I slid into computers (via an early interest in CAD) so I wasn't exactly personally untouched by WTC, I know people who died there.

But, and forgive me for saying this, it wasn't that much of an impact, sure the telly just spooled the tapes for days till everyone was sick of it, but, speaking for myself, it was sort of "surgical" like standing next to someone who catches a bullet, everything around WTc was intact, not at all like for example an earthquake zone, which is a hell of a thing to experience, EVERYONE is a part, not just a witness, strange, but I hope you know what I mean.

However, america was still the 8000 lb gorilla, america could rebuild a couple of towers in double quick time with two towers twice as high if it decided to.

what I'm trying to say here is WTC was an "event" in history, but not one that touched what "America" meant to people over here, hope that makes sense, america was still this awesome place where you could order a fleet of 50 "semi" tractor units and have them delivered anywhere on the globe in a week, and then they'd ask you what colour you like them, and if you wanted air conditioning and satellite navigation in each one... still and awesome place.

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then new orleans happened

I dunno about you guys, but it would be really hard for me to overstate the basic lack of belief in our own eyes.

sure, events like WTC and new orleans can happen anywhere, but the rest of the world together can't equal america when it comes to fixing shit double quick

this is the country that could and did do anything, anywhere on the planet, at any grgantuan scale it chose, and here was a (admittedly major) disaster ON ITS OWN DOORSTEP at the end of it's OWN HIGHWAYS and OWN RAILWAYS and so on, and it looked like mogadishu or the ganges flood plain

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I have a memory, I was ten and got myself into a hole in the ground I could not climb out of, it was only about six feet deep but the sides were machine dug (was for a swimming pool) and I was stuck, so my dad comes out, reaches down and just pulls me out, effortless, powerful, godlike.... (bet he's turning in his grave.. lol)

now, I'm not saying we saw aamerica as like a dad or big brother who would watch over us, but there was that same sense of ability and power that was just there, no need to discuss or question or analyse, it was just there, like the ocean.

-----------------------

years later my dad was dying, he'd had heart attacks, and was going down with emphysema and leukaemia, I can remember carrying him upstairs to bed at night cos he couldn't climb them himself.

one of these nights I was holding this "bag of bones" and I remembered being pulled out of that hole in the ground, it was a profound moment, the world looked different to me after

that is the closest I can get to the aftermath of new orleans for us here in europe, I can't think of any better words to descibe it.

--------------------------

I hope nobody takes this as a flame or a troll, and I've tried to stay away from saying anything political or religious, because I don't want to start an argument, but the "peak oil" thread and the black helicopter fellas reply kind of triggered this, and this just seemed like the right place and time to get it out of my system.

cheers

1052
i neither agree that there is an energy shortage or that oil takes millions of years to create. oil is a soup of hydrocarbons that occur naturally as part of the carbon cycle. the more we use the more is created. it isnt destroyed. the more we burn, the more carbon in the atmosphere. the more carbon absorbed by plants the faster plants grow (ask greenhouse owners about raising carbon levels). the more plants grow the more carbon in the soil. ethanol after all is plant sugars with the carbon bonds broken. all fuels are hyrdo carbon chains.. methane ethane cetane propane octane....

the second point is oil companies were making a profit selling oil for under $10 a barrel six short years ago before the oil money families assumed power in america.  now they rob us blind with $70 a barrel while outlawing free energy sources like nuclear power, which despite the oil propaganda is plentiful cheap renewable and safe.

there are vast reserves of oil that have been withheld from tapping in order to create a false sense of an energy shortage so that the oligarchy of oil families can continue their destruction of OUR wealth for their benefit. As we sit right now gasoline costs 17 cents per gallon in venezuala and 6 dollars in england. how can this be and do you now understand why people like pat robertson call for venezuala's president to be assasinated.

let us not fall for their lies of their contrived shortages, but let us call a spade a spade. they seek to control us and turn us into their serfs while they live fat off our labors as they keep free energy sources from us and sell the oil of this planet that they claim as birthright to us for their excess wealth and profit while reducing our families to poverty. I have a lister engine based genset to save my family from their cruelties


dude, not wanting to get in a flame war or anything, but...

my old man was chief engineer for south east asia for P&O logistics group that supplied all the rigs out there with stuff like drill pipe etc, before that he was in tin mining in malaya, and after that coal mining in what was then zambia, so I grew up in oil and engineering, and hung around geologists and oceanographers and shit.

repeating what was told to me, all oil (and all coal for that matter) is always found UNDER rocks that are millions of years old (sure, some sometimes weeps to the surface through fissures, but the reservoirs are UNDER old rock) and there is a direct correlation between how old it is and how good it is, old good coal is anthracite, younger poorer coal is lignite

(any of this is wrong or a misinterpretation or simplification, blame me and my memory)

so unless you personally discovered oil laying under rock that is only thousands of years old I'm gonna go with what I "know"

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carbon is an element, and it makes a compound with many other elements, and lots of natural processes do this all by themselves, but it is slow and very few of them result in anything you can burn in an internal combustion motor.

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nuclear is IMHO the only hope for humanity over the next 50 years until we get fusion on commercial scales.

thing is, petrol and diesel are simply amazine fuels, they are INCREDIBLY cheap to get per gallon, especially in the starting phase of production before peak oil where all you do is drill a hole in the right place to get a gusher

petrol and diesel are also incredibly energetic per pound, and being liquids are incredibly cheap and simple to bunker (store and transfer)

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there are still vast reserves but my opinion is we already used half the oil there is, trouble is demand today is higher than ever in history and still rising, so something is going to give.

yes OPEC got greedy in 1973, and yet 86% of fuel cost here in the Uk is tax, still doesn't change the paragraph above

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the real problem is not all oils are the same, the sweet saudi crude was honey, the north sea oil for example was shit, great for making PVC, crap for petrol, there have been no new major field discoveries in the past 30 years, everything they have discovered is relatively small and, far worse, not primo quality for making petrol andd diesel

the nest big problem is the size of most of the saudi fields is bullshit, cos OPEC quotas were set in proportion to field reserve size, the instant this came in all middle eastern fields magically doubled in size...... smell a rat?

the next big problem is extraction, for some years now saudi has been having to pump water down to displace oil up, and many people say they have been doing this too fast, which is damaging the wells, in any eveny each extra barrel is costing more and more to extract, and is lower and lower quality, it's been some years now since saudi was the biggest oil producer supplying the USA for instance

iraq has about a quarter of the worlds remaining oil, iran has about a tenth, and about a quarter of the worlds remaining gas (as in LPG not gasoline) and the real reason saddam invaded kuwait in gulf war one was the kuwaitis were under drilling (angling the bores sideways) into iraqui reserves... I'm making no moral calls here about either gulf war or anything related or allegedly related, just telling it like ir is

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you talk about "big oil", you'll miss the point, they are not oil companies, or petrol companies, or diesel companies, they are in the business of selling energy, and they are selling it in a form that we are junkies for.

I can turn on the telly and see jeremy clarkson ejaculating all over the completely stupid new W12 maybach 1000 bhp supercar, sure, anyone who can afford a million dollar car could care less if it ran on chanel number 5, doesn't stop practically everyone I know lusting after one so badly if you owned one and screwed their girlfriend they'd be happy to take a life from you and discuss her performance in bed....

they could spend ten times the money telling everyone injecting 2o lbs of silicone into your testicles (idiots do this stuff believe it or not) until they're bigger thn a football is a neat idea, and the only takes would be those who would do it anyway and those who need "warning, contains hot liquid" on a coffee cup

we LOVE petrol and oil, we grew up with it, so to us it's as normal and as much a god given right as oxygen

cept it aint.

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I bought two of these
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1993-RENAULT-19-RT-TURBO-D-RED_W0QQitemZ4610876193QQcategoryZ9861QQtcZphotoQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
renault 19 non turbo indirect injection all mechanical engine systems diesels

I paid less than 200 uk pounds each, why?

because no one wants them... not flash enough, not fast enough, not fast off the line, not cool.

sure, "big oil" and "big motors" advertise and promote the hell out of their shit, but, the target audience just laps it up, can't get enough, they were born that way....

my dad had a dennis steam truck, he didn't thinks that way, his first "real" vehicle was a rudge ulster motorcycle


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try and sell a bicycle to a chinaman now, he'll piss on your feet

he wants a lexus

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dude, I'm not trying to rain on your parade, and I'm not claiming that corporate "personalities" are anything other than psychopathic, and it's great you have a lister, but if you plan on using it to save your family, you'd better have weapons of mass destruction too to keep the hordes at bay while you have light and power and they don't

everything going on in the world is more easily explained by mass stupidity than the black helicopters you occassionally see

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the way I see it, if I live another 40 years, the real challenges I will see society face are.

1/ rapidly decreasing economic viability of liquid petrol and diesel as a MOBILE fuel source.

2/ we can in theory nuke / electric everything static, if we start building fast enough, the longer we leave it, the fatsre we will have to do it and the more (safety and efficiency) corners we have to cut (top tip, the UK is already in the shit in exactly the same way as someone credt carded and mortgaged up to the hilt, it's only a question of time till the red letter lands)

3/ hydrogen is NOT a fuel, you goota liberate it from water, its a bicth and expensive to bunker compared to petrol, and you just doubled the installed nuke capacity required to make it

4/ battery powered, no matter how efficient, is NOT a fuel, you just doubled the installed nuke capacity required etc

5/ "renewables" are a joke, the entire UK renewable capacity for the last five years won't power one medium sized aluminium plant for one month, I don't plan on living on lentils and wearing animal skins any time soon

6/ "biodiesel" is a joke, unless you plan or turning the globe into a fuel farm, and I don't plan on giving up meat and veg and running off duracells instead

7/ our real problems are efficiency, or lack of it, currently the US citizen is king of per capita energy usage per year, but the rest of the planet wants the same as you guys and you guys don't want to live on lentils etc

8/ in the real world, see SUv sales, NOBODY is going to get more energy efficient unless you squeeze them financially until they have no choice, that will happen all by itself, for me listers and old cars that cost nothing and so 50+ mpg is just a way of staying ahead of the curve without working too hard.

9/ closest I'm going to get to a political statement, middle east, nigeria, russia (see that shit about the gas pipeline last week?) and south america, they have energy reserves under the ground, we want them like an addict, shit is going to happen, we'll get them, but the process will increase the cost per kwh

10/ I had a graph, could post it here if you like, world trade centre day, the main UK electricity grid output over time, you should see the MASSIVE spike when everyone picked up the phones.... telecomms systems use 10% of Uk electricity, no telecomms, no civilisation.... you got packet radio on long wave and a computer and fuck off big antenna running off that lister buddy, come back? what's your 20?

11/ hate to say it, but the only thing I can see that will take the pressure off is something like a global flu pandemic that wipes out 20% of the population

------------------------------

bottom line on all this, listers aren't going to save you from anything for more than a few days, however, what you LEARNED from playing with listers could well make you one of the most valuable people around if the shit hits the fan

I live in the UK, and guns are illegal, so the whole survival thing is a non starter here, population density is too high too, and apart from the obviosu engineering parallels between gunsmithing and enginesmithing, and the popularity of gun ownership in the states, I'm willing to bet there's a disproportionately high number on "gun nuts" on these forums, cos owning an running a lister now is like the story goes.......

(the story)

two guys, one sound guy and one camera guy, in africa, filming lions, both dressed for it and wearing heavy jungle boots, after a while it becomes apparent one of the lions is going to charge and eat them for dinner

both guys look at each other and get ready to run for their lives

then the sound guy squats down, pulls off his boots and starts putting on his trainers

camera guy starts laughing "you'll never outrun the lion in them"

sound guy replies "I don't have to outrun the lion, just you..."



1053

The other concern is contamination of the lube supply.  My simple terry cloth filter caught 400 mg of solids AFTER being completely cleaned before running, and THEN having been run for 3500 hours with 300 hour regular oil changes, including wash and wiping of the sump.  I'm estimating (or extrapolating) there could have been parts of an ounce of sand, rust flakes, paint and debris that came from the engine AFTER the total rebuild/cleaning before running.  I removed at least a pound of this stuff before putting it to use!

one job I do plan on doing is two fold.

a/ neodymium magnet in the sump

b/ secondary (oil) pump or an uprated main oil pump, which has a low extra flow rate but some pressure, but through a hydraulic mocron filter

(long terms plans are a complete strip, blueprint, and powder coat the bitch, any "gentlemen" lister owner as I tell it I'm gonna do it in pink just to watch them have heart attacks)

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Is there a possibility of finding "scrap" Lister parts in the UK?  I've been over there and Scotland buying guns when the exchange rate is right.  I always hired an 'agent' to ship guns to that I'd bought.  He would then, after I've flown back, inventory, pack and make ready for shipment, and handle paper work, loading, ect.  I think I could talk him into being my 'warehouse' until I have enough parts to (re)build one.   ;D

to be honest 95% of the "gentleman" owned lister CS's are IMHO scrap, beautifful paintwork, correct decals, varnished trolleys, but scrap as in unfit for work on anything approaching a duty cycle.

If anyone finds anything in the UK and needs a local agent, a pallette anywhere in the country to me here in the southwest is 40 to 50 UK pounds, and we have local shipping agents who can arrange onwards surface or air shipment, and I can crate it up properly for cost.

1054
Luckily this is the general thread, cos I'm about to go WAAAY off topic.

I was in the lighting shop last week buying bulbs, and I saw this thing... it was one of these

http://www.weipro.net/images/dl8200b.jpg

so I bought it......

why?

well I took one look at it and the first thing that leapt into my head was "surface carburettor"

These things have a tiny titanium disk that oscillates at 1.7 MHz and literally vapourises the water, electrically, for mere watts of power.

Not much of an application for a diesel but a modern version of a flame licker or hit and miss motor....

thoughts?


1055
I'm not evolved, I'm a tightwad.

I'm also probably "ahead" of mainland USA in this because diesel here is (checks xe.com) 1.67193 dollars per litre, ford excusion suv 44 us gall tank = 166 litres = 277 bucks US to fill up, so basically the idea of running a vehicle that costs 277 bucks to fill up, and returns 7 mpg means I will me facing a choice of moonlighting as a rent boy in the blue oyster club or running something cheaperm like my renaults diesels.

The OTHER thing the US is ahead of us here in, but we are catching up, is the "suburbia" shit, where there are no local shops, no local services, no local public transport, no local amenities, no local schools and no local work, so you kind of have a choice between living off rats in a cave and working your guts out to consume vast quantities of energy travelling just to stay alive and out of a cave.

an old pickup loaded up to GVW with lead acid traction cells and a leccy motor, all of which is charged overnight or when not moving by a lister(oid) even with all the inefficiencies of that, will I reckon give an SUV a run for its money is dollars per mile, quite apart from purchase cost....

course you'll LOOK like a beverly hillbillie

1056
OK, whether or not you believe we are at or just passed peak oil, or think it is 10 or 20 years away, there are some things we can agree on.

1/ Global demand is rising, chinese want more, india wants more, and SUV's want more.

2/ Oil takes millions of years to make, and all the big finds are found, so sooner or later peak oil will happen.

Thing is, oil will never actually run out, the rarer it gets the more expensive it gets, at some point soon it will pass beer in cost per cc, then later it will pass whiskey, then later perfume, and finally maybe even inkjet ink (vbg) but that's the way it will go, so it will never be a case of "I cannot buy any" but "I cannot afford to buy it and use it at this rate"

Next thing is "oil" is not a thing, it is a vast range of grades and products, the more refined and higher quality ones will go first, lower quality, thicker, heavier will follow later.

Next thing is you don't need to run out, you don't even need to run short, all you need is to reach an economic tipping point.

For example, I have two cars, both are 20 odd year old Renault 19 non turbo 1900cc diesels, both were bought on e-bay for about 200 Uk pounds, both return 50+ mp(imperial)g

that blows away a prius, even if I could buy a prius for 200 Uk pounds

I know US diesel (and this site is after all mainly continental US after all) has a different sulphur content than european diesel, and that and other reasons like the historically cheap and historically low state / federal fuel tax duty means petrol is king.

Now, you may whine today (and incite the wrath of millions of jealous europeans) about current gas(oline) prices, but the fact is SUV's that make the ford fairlane 500 look economical still sell very well indeed.

So how about if we get a repeat of 1973, there is no genuine shortage of fuel, in that anyone who wants or needs to can fill up the tank, but the price per gallon just doubled?

Effectively the SUPPLY of "oil" is just as large as it was "last week" before the price hike, practically you and everyone you know will be making CA$H + pink slip swap offers to anyone with a 40/50 mpg euro style compact diesel

This is a "tipping point"

You don't care that you have gone from petrol / gasoline fuel to diesel fuel, both cost about the same per gallon, you only care because one vehicle does 7 mpg and one does 7 that, or 49 mpg.

All of a sudden everyone wants something that burns a lot less, we don't care what it burns because we count what it burns in dollars per mile, dollars per hour, or dollars per kilowatt.

Lister CS diesels are hugely efficient, ten gallons of fuel is a LOT in the sense that your lister will run for days

Genuine lister CS will also quite happily run on any old muck, the stuff no one else wants and no one else is fighting over, so OUR fuel is relatively speaking compared to everyone else, cheaper to buy and easier to find.

Use your CS to charge your golf cart and you'll be driving when other people are car sharing.

This (as usual for me long and rambling before I get near the point) is for me the point about these engines, a point that many of you, perhaps because we aren't at that tipping point yet, haven't seen.

You do not want to be making them do 750 rpm, then 850, then 1000, and so on, that is costing you efficiency, you want them chugging along at the design original of 650, burining fuel as frugally as a scotsman gives away whisky.

The point, for me, is not "oh I can burn biodiesel which is half the price of regular diesel", but "I can burn each gallon of fuel FAR more efficiently than in anything else you care to shake a stick at, and I can burn practically any fuel you care to shake a stick at, and therefore I can afford to use this engine far more than any other kind of engine, and thereofre I can get far more useful work done than any other method"

I guess it's not about prolonging the ability to live my life pretty much as I do today while ignoring efficiency, because I can beat the other guy in fuel cost per litre, but more about working smarter and more efficiently instead of harder just to stand still.

When I was on the boats we had customers with 50 foot boats who would tell me they NEEDED a 25 kilowatt generator, so they could run the water system, radar, lights, watermaker, air con, electric cooker and electric kettle and hifi, and still have enough for the wife to run her hair dryer.... madness

My 5/1 CS SOM is "only" 2.5 kilowatts, but if I use it EFFICIENTLY that is loads of power (for those of you who will moan about the A/C, I grew up in the tropics, ceiling fans use bugger all and are for my money more healthy than a/c, and kept us plenty cool too, save one small phase change unit to cool the beer) 15 watt energy saving flourescent bults instead of 100 watt filament bulbs, more insulation instead of more heating, DC battery banks and inverters to handle peak loads instead of an over specced generator that is mostly glazing its bores.

Not trying to start a flame way here, just genuinely interested if mine is the minority viewpoint on this or if I'm preaching to the choir.

cheers

1057
The superiority of a lubed bushing is directly proportional to oil pressure. With limited oil pressure the compressive forces can easily overcome the oil film the bushings life is dependent on.

You're kinda making my point for me while kinda arguing against me  ... lol

Yes, pressure and flow of oil fed to a plain bearing affects maximum loads, BUT....

1/ in many cases big end bearings have effectively zero pressure delivery of oil, the spinning crank throws oil centrifugally towards the journal.

2/ the actual loads on a lister cs are so low effectively zero pressure is enough, lots of older engines had pickup rings of larger diameter that just hung on the shaft and dipped into a reservoir of oil, the rotating shaft made the pick up ring rotate and carry oil up to the shaft, which was enough to lubricate a plain bearing.

I suggest / my opinion is you'll throw a rod before coming anywhere within an order of magnitude of running a dry bearing

1058
GuyFawkes, Thank you for all the info you have provided on the Forum. I have a 24/2 coming   shortly so I guess it will be interesting to see how long it runs and what problems it develops. It has indirect injection and the change over valve for variable compression. I plan on using wmo in it once I give it the once over. I saw an interesting demonstration on how to de-carbon them using water injection as per George B's cd. Thanks  Loren.

I know bugger all about listeroids, never even touched one, so there's others on here with real experience.

Having said that, if it was me I'd strip and rebuild it before starting it, no question.

One of the tricks I learned with motorcycles was DO THE ELECTRICS LAST, cos otherwise the first "test ride" becomes the point the bike ceases getting work and starts being used, so the parallel here is the moment the crate is open pull the injection system.. >;^)

1059
GF--  Good post with well thought out analysis.

I'm currently on track to run my Listeroid 5,500 hours the first year (knock wood).  Original CS Lister's are scarce as bat tracks over on this side of the pond, but I'm in a full, 'search, then figure out how to buy' mode.

One question:  I've run a lot of bush-headed lathes and agree they dont' have the rumble of a TRB spindle, but they also don't have the interrupted cut toughness of a TRB machine.   Could it be, since most Listeroids are built without the CS valve, the TRBs will hold up better under added compression? 
    As I've said in another thread, I'd much rather have TRBs than badly fitted bushings.

disclaimer - we are talking generalities here, so none of this can be applied to specific cases
(pain in the ass trying to talk to an engineer innit... lol)

Needle roller bearings are used in the bottom end of the legendary Kawasaki Z1000 motor, but comparisons between a Z1000 and a listeroid are like comparisons between a swiss watch and a wooden clock....

The moral here is that you CAN set up roller bearings to very high levels of precision (as an aside lathes and machine tools use precision ground balls running in precision ground square cut threaded rod, accuraccy, repeatability and backlash are then just a question of $$$) but then again you CAN set up plain bearings to very high levels of precision, top tip, the incredibly precise bearings carrying hard disk platters are "plain" bearings.

Roller / Ball bearings DO NOT HAVE to be set up precisely though, you can pretty much slam them in and walk away, which is exactly what happens with vehicle wheel bearings, which can carry very substatial loads with no circulating lubrication or coolant, so going back to the target market for most listeroids, which is stunning cheap sale price and then stuck in a field somewhere in India, rollers make REALLY good sense.

quick break for a true story.

Many years ago I was in Spain, one day I was speaking to a chap who made truck bodies, I told him "In england we make these out of aluminium, the weight saving means more load capacity when full and more fuel economy when empty"

I wasn't exactly smug when I said it, but I did believe I was telling him something valuable he did not know.

He just looked at me and said "Here in Spain we have many bad roads, light alloy bodies empty of load means no traction"

boom boom, so the moral of this is unless we actually go to India and talk to the people building listeroids, it is not safe to make any assumptions about why they do it the way they do.

end of story

having said that, I'll continue with my assumptions.

so...

a/ the roller bearing listeroid makes sense for the target market, because you can just slam them in and walk away.

b/ the plain bearing of the genuine lister means you MUST set everything up to much higher standards and tolerances, no choice here, it will sieze before you've walked fifty paces otherwise.

back to the engineering THEORY and your main question about compression.

Compression and of course RPM and reciprocating masses define total load on the bottom end.

ALL roller bearings actually have a very small contact area WITHIN the bearing where the actual movement is going on, we are talking TINY here, so loads in psi are huge, orders of magnitude higher than a plain bearing, so it is simple engineering fact that for any given inch of bearing journal space, you can ALWAYS carry more load on a plain bearing than any kind of roller bearing, plain bearings (that will actually fit in between crank webs etc) will carry loads that will instantly destroy a roller.

Yes, the "breakdown" point of the lubrication layer between a plain bearing is lower in pure psi than the point loads you can get in a roller bearing, but the vastly greater area of bearing in a plain bearing more than outweighs the difference.

I STRONGLY suspect that in the case of the listeroids the roller bearings used as not sealed types because the main function of the lube oil is to carry away the heat from the bearing.

SO, to answer your question, in my OPINION the plain bearing is superior in every way to the roller bearing with reference to listersoids, but there is such a huge potential performance overhead in these slow and lazy engines that even the less technically excellent roller bearing can still provide very durable service.

Going back again to the hugely reduced manufacture costs of going roller, and the intended market, rollers make huge amounts of sense.

Taking the extra tiem to put precision rollers in (assuming the listeroid standard fare are generic) and to set them up as well as you can will again make huge advances over the standard slam it in and walk away car wheel bearing standard of assembly, which I __assume__ is  how the listeroids are made.

Plain or roller, if both are set up properly, makes no odds, because both offer performance far exceeding other factors like con-rod strength and crankpin strength.

Plain or roller, if both are set up badly, makes no odds, because both will die quickly, and both can potentially die very destructively.

With respect, your "i'd rather have bad TRB than bad bushings" I will equate to "I'd rather have a bad lung surgeon than a bad brain surgeon" when the real motto is "ANY bearing can be set up properly, and if it is, it will give extended service"

I personally, if I owned a listeroid, would investigate the split between cooling and lubrication afforded by the oil lube of TRBs

cheers

1060
Lister Based Generators / Re: Start o Matic Lister generators
« on: February 08, 2006, 04:57:34 PM »
I am not convinced about the added loads to the generator. Normally you load upp the pulley with about 3-?? kW from the engine. Take away that load, and add 1-2 kW on the "other side" will not make too much of a difference, especially if you take into consideration the extremely low hours this load (starter) will have.

I mean load between starter and gen head pulley / ring gear, not load on belts to lister(oid)

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The main reason that I was thinking about this setup with Yanmar'ish parts is simply because I am selling Yanmar clones... Parts readily availible, if you know what I mean...

lol...

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Keep it simple, that is an important factor, but also to use readily availible parts, to, you guessed it, keep it simple...
This, in my opinion, disqualifies the original setup. I like things that can easily be replaced, like a standard starter, or starter gear, or generator...

My (genuine original lister) 5/1 CS Start-o-matic is 55 years old, I'm not going to live long enough to worry about replacing the starting mechanism, my heirs might be, but by then owning an internal combustion engine will prolly get you 20 to life.

Your solution has more parts, is more complex, and there is no way in hell that your yanmar starter will still be running in 2060 AD after 55 years of service.

I'll lay a lot of virtual money you have never been able to touch and fiddle with a genuine Start-o-matic, because once you do you understand why they have such a reputation, and the simple engineering elegnce of the whole thing makes everything else look crude and the sort of thing engineering students might have produced instead of those with true knowledge and experience.

now........

if there is a demand I can do some picture over the weekend and post them?

1061

There is another factor I do not see mentioned here, Original Lister engines had chrome plated bores. This chrome was designed to hold oil by the process used to apply the chrome. This resulted in very long cylinder life. Listeroids use plain cast iron bores. While this is acceptable, the bore life of cast iron is roughly 10% that of chrome. Couple this with the Listeroids use of cast iron piston rings (rarely used today) and IMHO the Listeroid is just a standard engine. I expect this to result in unremarkable engine life.

if you have chrome (hard chrome like rams, not soft chrome like fenders) bores then you have plain rings, if you have plain bores then you have chrome rings, plain bores AND plain rings is just stupid and cheap.

Chrome bores are HORRENDOUSLY expensive come re-bore time.

Finally, and this point cannot be overstated in importance, lube oil 50+ years ago was complete crap compared to modern lube oil.

1062
Right.........

Here in the UK we have a crew of "gentlemen" stationary engine owners, you know the sort, engine gets to run maybe 12 hours a year at shows and they are more interested in having the right decals and paint colour than anything else, me and them don't get on well... vbg

The "gentlemen" owners here diss the listeroids, "not the done thing" to run a copy, especially a copy from a country that used to be a colony, blah blah blah.

So, some opinions from a time served engineer.

Original CS lister was indirect injection and variable compression via the cold start assembly, for starting, anything up to 50% load, and high altitude, you could run in high compression mode.

You also had a lot greater "off the shelf" fuel options, ranging from kerosene to heavy oil, including biodiesel and straigh veggie oil, as a direct result of this design.

The listeroid direct injection and no variable compression method is significantly cheaper to manufacture, this is one of those areas where you pays your money and takes your choices, assuming the market presents you with these choices, the original design is much better, but is it worth say US$250 per cylinder extra to you?

The original CS lister was plain bearings at the bottom end, submerged plunger pump and dipper splash lube, the listeriods apparently use roller (taper bearings) which again make machining the castings and bottom end set up a damn sight cheaper. I do not personally know the listeroids, but if I bought a new one I strongly suspect my first action would be to trash the supplied bearings and replace with premium quality ones.

The other point to note here is all ball and roller bearings are prone to rumble, whereas a plain bush will be silent, and having much greater bearing area will see lower bearing pressures, but higher viscocity shear in the lube, so we are back to the choice, is it worth another US$300 per lung to have a original style bottom end?

The original style CS was designed and built when lube oils were vastly inferior to what they are today, you can get good lube oil in listeroid home territory (India) but most of these things are made to work in the fields, they are going to be neglected and abused one hell of a lot more than a genuine CS would have been (the genuine CS was _NOT_ a cheap item even here in the west when they were new) and so the roller bearing solution as well as saving on manufacturing costs is going to show longevity benefits in the main target market, which is not the members of this forum.

One thing we here in the Uk were good at was engineering quality, pouring quality castings was a routine thing, hell, we were pouring locomotive wheels......

While there is no reason to imply that the Indians are technically or culturally unable to produce castings of at least the same quality, because they can, the fact is most of these castings will NOT be poured by the same artisans in the same factory that also make locomotive wheels, most of the pouring will be done in house, or around the corner, because again at the end of the day their main target market means they HAVE to pour a casting for something that is probably on a par with the scrap value alone here in the west.

I gather that the best quality listeroids are those that are specifically made for export, where the financial pressures of extra quality can be easily passed on to relatively wealthy buyers.

The Lister factory stopped making CS engines because nobody would buy them... would you buy a new listeroid for 1000 bucks or a new genuine lister for 5000?  I think a lot of this is BECAUSE they are stationary engines and thus very limited in scope, certainly the Gardner diesel works faced exactly the same financial pressures, but managed to survive quite nicely to this day, because you can put their engines in a boat or a vehicle.

I would suggest that people like utterpower (who I do not know personally, nor have I ever seen any of his stuff) manage to shift product BECAUSE the corners cut by the listeroid makers leave him enough slack to throw in a bit of "value added" and still come in at a price competitive of 1800 and 3600 rpm modern diesels, even after all the extra fettling and modifications.

So from the engineer's point of view the listeroid is a cheap version (NOT a copy or clone, because of the differences) of a genuine lister CS (CS = Cold Start which means of necessity it has variable compression) and so the genuine article is worthy of more respect.

BUT

From the customers point of view, the listeroid is almost certainly "good enough" and the huge cost savings vs a genuine lister CS are justifiable, because nobody on here is buying a motor to leave as a working heirloom to their kids or grandkids.

I may rant about the genuine Start-o-matic vs the copies you guys are cobbling together in another thread.... lol

I guess if all your furniture is hardwood, your audio is vinyl and the deck is set in a 40lb block of slate, your underwear is all silk and your ride is a rolls royce then you have a justification for claiming, HD style, that there is the genuine lister CS and "anything else is less"

For most of the people on here, I would suggest, as an engineer, that unless you are planning on >2000 engine hours per year a listeroid and some hours of your time fettling is good enough, you won't see the benefits of a genuine lister CS.

If you are planning on more than 2000 engine hours per year (there's 8760 in a year 24/365) and of course with an operating enviornment and maintenance standards that you would expect in the west, and not in a remote Indian farm, then the genuine lister CS would be my choice, the extra initial cost would make it worthwhile.

There is one exception, direct injection is great for regular traction grade diesel, and you can get around the lack of variable compression by fitting a electrical heater in the head same as diesel cars have if you will be cold starting in winter, BUT, and it is a big but, there is no way I personally would run a direct injection diesel of biodiesel or veggie oil, and no amount of people who have done it a have maybe a thousand or two engine hours (which convinces THEM it's OK) will ever convince me that I would do it to my property, so if you are planning on biodiesel or veggie oil I would NOT use an un-modified, eg direct injection, listeroid.

It is a feasible project to convert a listeroid into a proper clone lister CS, all you need to do is variable compression indirect injection head, and plain bearing bottom end.

Plain bearing bottom ends is just a question of line boring, listeroids being what they are it means each block will have to be manually set up and machined by hand, and labour is expensive, but it COULD be done and in theory you could find a market willing to pay the labour cost entailed, technically it is a straighforwards job.

Variable compression indirect injection heads would be more complex, read more labour, read more expensive, but it could be done and again it doesn't present any technical challenges.

Off the top of my head I would say that both of the above would probably double the cost of a listeroid, and of course you'd still have to fettle the other weak points in listeroids like fuel lines, cotter pins, timing gears and so on. There's probably just enough of a market out there to make it worthwhile for a one man band to do as a sideline business.

Again, in another thread, I may rant about the generator head side of things, and why it may be viable to remanufacture a proper Start-o-matic generator head, depends... lol

Hope nobody takes any of the above as a flame, it's just a viewpoint, but the viewpoint of someone who is time served and does understand the dollar significance of "downtime" and true year on year running costs.

cheers

1063
Lister Based Generators / Re: Start o Matic Lister generators
« on: February 08, 2006, 12:25:05 PM »
The original SOM basically had a 24 VDC motor added to the alternatot shaft, this has a lot of engineering benefits.

1/ when not in starting mode, there are zero extra moving parts or bearings running.

2/ start loads and generating loads are similar, and can go through the same bearings and drive system

3/ KISS

Your solution is going to add loads to the pulley end of the generator head, it's doable and feasible, but I'd like to see an extra bearing there so none of that load gets fed into the generator head bearings

Most decent quality starter motors will take 60 seconds cranking then 120 seconds idle duty cycles, 60 seconds will be enough to wind up a CS, if it isn't then you have engine problems.

The CS SOM has the usual manual start options, but in auto mode they are ignored, it just cranks her up as is, I personally wouldn't mess with this, better to get a cheap 24 VDC Ford 6D starter that has the muscle than a small hitachi type compact job that doesn't, remember the lister were built "by the pound" (in weight) if you know what I mean, so following that rule rather than tacking on light weight modern crap is always good to go.

If I was going to do it from new, eg retrofit a listeroid to a SOM with a generator head, I'd start by selecting a suitable (heavy duty) gen head, and arrange that so it could work the same way as a genuine SOM, a generator is just a motor in reverse in many ways after all, so you'd only have to select a head that could take high current for starting, rather than going an expensive DC battery > DC motor direct coupled to small AC genny > small AC genny output winding up main gen head in motor mode heath robinson style solution.

My dad had a 2.5 Kw petrol briggs and stratton genset in about 1980ish that would start on DC, no separate starter motor, it was inside the gen head, so this was not a unique Lister CS SOM solution, might be worth investigating this angle first.

Sure this doesn't help those who already have gen heads, but folks with paper plans and no iron could benefit.

HTH etc

cheers

1064
Lister Based Generators / Re: Start o Matic Lister generators
« on: February 08, 2006, 12:43:33 AM »
I've just picked up a 5-1 based start-o-matic, be pleased to take a any pictures anyone wants.


Have a pdf scanned in old manual, very grubby, so plan on making a new one with proper photos from scratch.

What I am lacking is the original woring schematics

cheers

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