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Topics - mikenash

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 8
1
General Discussion / Tesla
« on: December 05, 2022, 05:52:48 AM »
I wonder if any of the folks here have been following Tesla

Say what you will about the man - but the company is a game-changer in so many ways

It's the #2 vehicle seller here in NZ - behind Toyota, of course

But, imho, it'll be the Tesla Semi that will really disrupt a quite stagnant industry.  The numbers speak for themselves:

A 500 mile (800K) range, fully-loaded (something like 28 tonnes payload)

A half-hour charge time to 70% of battery

1000 volt truck & charging electrics - allowing small, light components using cooled charging conducters etc

Believe it or not as you choose - Tesla says they'll sell 50,000 of them in 2024.  The queue to buy is long & getting longer

What prompts me to mention this here is my memory of our former Australian friend challenging all comers to wager (was it $100K) that Tesla wouldn't be here in a few years

I'm watching the space with interest.  I just love the tech

2
Everything else / small heater
« on: November 08, 2022, 06:17:51 PM »
Hi guys

Building myself a shed with a sloping front for a bunch of solar panels (4 X 375W) plus room inside for batteries, a couple of gensets . . .

Shed has a two-layer floor with insulation; and I'll do the same for roof and walls - mostly for sound-deadening

But, also, with a big LiFePo4 battery, and occasional sub-zero temperatures - I'm looking for an easy way just to trickle a few watts of warmth into it overnight.  I was wondering if something like one of those small panel-heaters that are used to keep the chill off small bedrooms etc might generate a few watts if run on 12, 24, or 48VDC

Shed is 3.6M X 3.6M X about 2m - very small area, and, once well-insulated, will take very few watts to keep above freezing I would think

I'd appreciate any thoughts from someone who may have done similar

Cheers

4
Hi guys

This post is also in the "original CS" page - admin people please do delete if that's not appropriate, thanks.

I'm going to sell the Listers I have up at my "shed"

It has taken me a while to realise I no longer need their generating capacity - really, the solar provides the watts i need; and there's a substantial solar upgrade on the horizon.
 the last time I was up there I ran one generator for 5 mins so I could use the big 4-slice toaster because my inverter isn't big enough.  The rest of the time - solar did everything.

Plus, I'm 65.  pretty soon they'll be too big & heavy for me to deal with and they'll just be a hassle for my kids when I die.

So - out they go

I attach links to short vids of two of them.

The 6/1 on the trailer, with the 5-stud Indian head (I have three or four Lister heads) was taken off the trailer, had its flywheels removed for ease of handling, and was parked in a paddock three years ago.  It's well-covered & should be fine.

The 6/1 driving the ST-clone head is still in place - although de-commissioned for the winter.  It has an electric start

There's another, an 8/1, which I had running a couple years ago. it was hard to start with low compression as it had a badly worn top ring groove - among other things.  I had the barrel off it an put it aside.  There's a new, alloy, 8/1 piston for it "on the shelf" along with several standard steel pistons - at least two are new - and several barrels

There's heaps of spares - gaskets, injectors, pumps, barrels, several heads, endless small banjo bits and gaskets . . .

There's an ST-type head and a Markon head plus most of the mounting hardware/drive belts etc.  both will make about 2500 watts off the CS

I'm going to advertise it all on our TradeMe here - think eBay

if there's any interest from members of the Forum - please do get in touch.  I have lots of pics & details

There's another 6/1 bottom end which is good - and a bunch of other stuff I have forgotten

https://studio.youtube.com/video/TC9fY1mfnfs/edit

https://studio.youtube.com/video/63420EHuZ3g/edit

Cheers

5
Original Lister Cs Engines / Selling several CS 6/1s in new Zealand
« on: September 11, 2022, 05:07:04 AM »
Hi guys

I'm going to sell the Listers I have up at my "shed"

It has taken me a while to realise I no longer need their generating capacity - really, the solar provides the watts i need; and there's a substantial solar upgrade on the horizon.
 the last time I was up there I ran one generator for 5 mins so I could use the big 4-slice toaster because my inverter isn't big enough.  The rest of the time - solar did everything.

Plus, I'm 65.  pretty soon they'll be too big & heavy for me to deal with and they'll just be a hassle for my kids when I die.

So - out they go

I attach links to short vids of two of them.

The 6/1 on the trailer, with the 5-stud Indian head (I have three or four Lister heads) was taken off the trailer, had its flywheels removed for ease of handling, and was parked in a paddock three years ago.  It's well-covered & should be fine.

The 6/1 driving the ST-clone head is still in place - although de-commissioned for the winter.  It has an electric start

There's another, an 8/1, which I had running a couple years ago. it was hard to start with low compression as it had a badly worn top ring groove - among other things.  I had the barrel off it an put it aside.  There's a new, alloy, 8/1 piston for it "on the shelf" along with several standard steel pistons - at least two are new - and several barrels

There's heaps of spares - gaskets, injectors, pumps, barrels, several heads, endless small banjo bits and gaskets . . .

There's an ST-type head and a Markon head plus most of the mounting hardware/drive belts etc.  both will make about 2500 watts off the CS

I'm going to advertise it all on our TradeMe here - think eBay

if there's any interest from members of the Forum - please do get in touch.  I have lots of pics & details

There's another 6/1 bottom end which is good - and a bunch of other stuff I have forgotten

https://studio.youtube.com/video/TC9fY1mfnfs/edit

https://studio.youtube.com/video/63420EHuZ3g/edit

Cheers

6
Original Lister Cs Engines / Electric starter for 6/1
« on: July 11, 2022, 10:27:27 PM »
Hey guys there has been a conversation here on-and-off about various starters for CSs – some elegant air motors, some starter-motor conversions with rubber cush drives, various units employing a belt . . .

Realising that, sooner or later, I’m going to get too old to crank the Listers, I’ve been keen to build a starter and have been working away with some components

I tack-welded some of the bits together yesterday and attached it to the CS with some G-clamps and gave it a trial run just using a battery off my car, some heavy jumper leads and a bit of wire with a spade clip to liven-up the starter motor.

See pics?  It’s pretty self-explanatory.  What the parts are is:

A starter motor and flex-plate off an old Nissan car from the wreckers.

A 2” keyed taper-lock unit with a weld boss outer assembly, plus a hand cut/filed stepped key and a couple of grub-screw holes cut and threaded into the boss.

A bit of 10mm plate roughly cut round, bolted to the flex plate, then put in a chuck and bored to suit the weld boss of the taper-lock.

The starter-motor bolted onto a mount to suit; and that mount welded onto the chassis that supports the CS

It was raining cats-and-dogs yesterday so all I did was tack it in place and use it to start the Lister three or four times with the de-compression at the exhaust valve engaged, then dropped once the revs were up after about three or four rotations.

Works like a charm.  I got sick of getting wet before I gave it a try with full compression – I don’t know if I’d normally do that, anyway, as it seems unnecessarily hard on the gear; and it’ll be easy to mount a starter button somewhere near the pushrod side of the motor.

I reckon costs were something like:

Starter motor & ring-gear/flex-plate - $50
Taper-lock insert and weld boss - $80
Machine boss-sized hole in plate - $50
Bits of steel, welding & bolts scrounged at zero cost

This week, hopefully, I’ll weld stuff together properly and give it a better run on the next weekend I’m up there.  Cheers

7
Lister Based Generators / 6/1 driving ST clone 260 VAC
« on: May 17, 2022, 11:04:28 PM »
Hi guys

Thanks for your advice recently re the Chinese ST head

I temp-fitted it to the CS last weekend with a flat-belt drive

At 650-ish RPMs it was making something like a scary 380 VAC.  I lowered the engine speed in stages until at 528 RPM on the Lister it was producing a no-load 260 VAC.  No idea what the waveform will be like - that's a question for another day

See link attached for a short video of it running?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TC9fY1mfnfs

The Youtube guys have done a better-than-normal job of reducing the video quality to "awful" - but what the hell

I'm calling it the beginnings of a "win" and have taken that head off and put it aside for the moment to have a play with my Markon head which is a much nicer unit, to see what that will do

Whatever the relationship with these Chinese STs is between RPMs and VAC - it doesn't seem to be linear.

Once I have had a play with the Markon I can re-mount the ST-clone and find something with an oscilloscope and a Hz meter to give me some more to work with if I like

Thanks for all the various advice on this

I will have some stupid questions to ask re the Markon head, I'm sure; as it has just four identical unmarked black wires coming out of it lol.  I have it on the bench atm checking to see where there's continuity and what the resistance is between the various wires for some clues

Cheers

8
Original Lister Cs Engines / head gaskets
« on: April 27, 2022, 01:37:29 AM »
Bought four CS head gaskets from the nice Gaskets-to-go chap

They look like a great bit of work

9
Original Lister Cs Engines / A "good runner"
« on: March 28, 2022, 10:47:38 PM »
Hi guys

I’m looking for a second opinion on my diagnostics please.

I’m currently working on a CS I bought a while back from the widow of a bloke who collected and “restored” old engines and tractors.  It was described to me as a “good runner” and, once I cleaned out all the old gunged-up fuel, it ran fine

The other weekend I hooked up a temporary water supply.  I wanted to give it a longer run to get it up to temperature for an oil-change & to tinker with the diesel supply.

I just screwed in some 40mm fittings to the top and bottom flanges with a water feed running in the bottom and flowing open-ended out the top, and a valve to control the bottom flow so the water at the top was coming out warm.  I dismantled & drained this when I was finished.

This weekend when I went up there and turned it over backwards to engage the valve-lifter – water dribbled out of the exhaust - just an egg-cup-full maybe.

(Just a note that both intake & exhaust have downward-facing pipe bends so it’s not rainwater).  I turned it over a few times, then started it and it ran fine after some initial smoking.

I would guess I have a leak in the head-gasket.  I have just now sent off to Gaskets-to-Go for some replacements; and I’ll take the head off for a look next time I’m on site.

I guess it’s possible there is damage to the head or block?  I would guess, also, that any running it has done in recent years has probably just been a minute or two – there’s no evidence of any cooling plumbing having been attached to it recently.

Also I have been unable to get it to run properly on the low-compression setting.  It starts beautifully on the high-compression, but just smokes and hammers and seems to have only partial compression when the valve is screwed-out.  I took the change-over valve out and it came undone suspiciously easily.  Looking at it, I think it may have been made up from two mis-matched halves?

I have a new one to fit anyway; but I just mention it in case there’s a history of castings cracking in that area or some such.

I’d appreciate any thoughts.  Cheers, Mike

10
Original Lister Cs Engines / original CS wick filters
« on: March 20, 2022, 09:43:31 PM »
Hi guys - see pics

The CS which I'm playing with atm came with this.

I bought it from the widow of the "restorer" who described it as a "good runner" and indeed it seems to be.  There's probably no real way of telling how much the restoration was limited to a coat of green paint or not - without getting inside it.

It had the traditional stale yellow thin oil/thick diesel discharge and the traditional "stale fuel" smell

But the insert looks to be in great shape, and I cleaned it out with aerosol brakleen until it was dripping clean all over

Are people still using these filters with 'working" engines?  I have a nice Ryco filter and water-drain setup - but using this old girl seemed to give a good convenient bleed point and access to the original fat-cross-section delivery tube with the big banjo fittings

It seemed to me that with a pre-filter and water-trap, keeping the original unit in the line might have merit?

Thoughts?  Cheers

11
Original Lister Cs Engines / Quick query
« on: February 28, 2022, 01:43:43 AM »
Hi Guys

I'm thinking that next time I'm up at the site where my Listers are I need to clean up the threads in the case where the four big cylinder/head studs go one one of my CSs

I'm just ratting through the box of taps & dies in my work truck - but I'm 400Ks away from the engine to check out thread and details - but I figure someone will know:

Are they 3/4 UNC?  And do the threaded stud holes go all the way through into the inside of the case (as in - do I need a bottoming tap?  or will any old tap do?)

Cheers, Mike

12
If you don't own a tractor or other means of lifting one of these heavy old girls - then we're probably on the same wavelength . . .

The one on the left has plagued me for the last year - issues with the bore, issues with a +40thou piston badly machined, issues with a cylinder stud . . . it had got to the stage where grass and weeds were growing up around its pad as I had no way to get it "off and out" and no way to get another one "in"

Then it came to me - I was looking at it all wrong: All that was needed was to drag the "new" CS - the one on the right - off the trailer and onto a pile of timber at the correct height - THEN all I had to do was weld in a couple of 500mm lengths of heavy channel to extend the RSJs of the original CS' mounts, and, voila!  Room for two engines lol

The "new" one (on the right) was sold to me as a "good runner, just not started for a few years" (and have I heard that phrase before)

But it feels like progress.  I managed to weld the sections in without setting fire to the diesel-soaked dead grass - that has to be a good omen lol

13
General Discussion / Chrstmas 2021
« on: December 18, 2021, 08:25:31 PM »
Hi guys

We've had a couple of tough years in 2020 and 2021 worldwide in many ways

I guess lots of us are of an age where we have children and grandchildren all over the place - and it looks as if the new covid variant is spreading just in time for Christmas in many countries

Just wanted to say I hope everyone's families are safe and well over the holidays.  Cheers

15
Waste Motor Oil / 3/4" needle valve
« on: June 13, 2021, 08:31:15 PM »
See pics?

I have been looking at needle valves and they're not cheap

But gravity-feed isn't demanding and so a cheap Chinese one might do the trick?

I attach a link - should be easy to google


https://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=3128518899

Cheers

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