Hi Stef, Bob, Veg

I'm a fan of "keep it simple", Bob.  I'm not an electronics person - I like stuff that I can see the "workings".  In fact the small electronics bits of the ST clone head worry me - how will I know if a bit goes bad?  And which bit?  I'm a bit of a luddite like that.  So I'll keep it manual I guess.  Because you tend to stand "behind" the engine to operate the starter/fuel lever/decompression - I think I'll just mount a push-button there somewhere in the middle of a wire from 12VDC to the solenoid.  it'll be easy to make sure the decompression is engaged & the excess fuel is set, push the button, and drop the decompression once it fires.  i don't need anything more complex than that; and it's my habit to engage the decompression on it's last, dying revolution as it stops.

I have a couple of heads - a Markon and a Chinese St clone (with which Bruce has been very helpful, thanks).  Currently the Markon is mounted.  I also have 2 X 105A Leece-Neville truck alternators - beautiful bits of kit - and will mount one of them shortly as a battery charger

I don't live up there - I'll be retiring there in a year or two, at which point I'll upgrade my solar.  I figure a decent LiFePo4 unit, three or four of the 375W units we use for solar pumps here, plus a Victron "Easy-Solar" charger/controller is pretty much what I need.  At the moment I have 2 X 120W panels, a bunch of lead-acids & a cheap MPPT charge controller - the whole lot probably owes me $400 - but, more importantly, I'm learning how to manage the solar without destroying expensive batteries while the "learning curve" flattens out.  Like you, Stef, I'm a little way away from being there with everything running - but I'm getting there.  The solar runs lights & either one of two fridges (one DC, one off the inverter) plus charges the phone etc - that's 90% of what I need right there.

There's an older pic here of a previous CS - turned out to have a bad barrel, so put aside - sitting where the current unit is mounted.  What's not obvious - as it's overgrown - is that it's bolted to a big pad.  I need to pour some more concrete and build it a shed . . . that's somewhere down the list

At the moment it's out in the weather and I have a persistent issue with water getting "inside" - so there's a head-gasket leak or similar I need to dismantle & find before it can earn its living properly.  Plus I need to build a decent fuel tank-and-filter system etc.  No real $$ just time.  This weekend just gone I drained the cooling tank & left the drain valve open - if there's water in there next time I run it - then it's from the weather.  I don't see how rain can get "in" but maybe it is?  I'll find out.  Either way the head needs to come off.  I bought some head-gaskets from the helpful man - John? - in Thailand

Stef, I have a CS with a Listeroid head up there too - it has a COV plug in the hole, but I don't know what the compression is.  Starts & runs fine.  I have a glow-plug heater I thought I might get round to fitting into it one day - or maybe not.  Time & priorities again . . .

I have several Chinese Honda-clone generators from 2.2kW to 6.6kW, and I use them as required - but it'd be nice to have the Lister puttering away quietly for longer runs - I figure the Markon head will be good for that

Cheers

The oil cleaner is the Lister oil bath with wire mesh inside.
That was my first port of call as I was thinking it may have been inhaling oil, alas that was not the case, (that would have made me happy as it would be a quick fix).

Today I noticed that the black oil coming from the exhaust is engine oil as it is quite thick, (I put a pail under to catch the drips, but the spray droplets have covered the grass, and are evident within 15 ft of the exhaust).

Yesterday I put just enough oil to fill to the bottom of the valve springs, so there was less oil out the exhaust,

Looks like there is no other way but to drain down the coolant tank and whip the head off for a closer look, (in my enthusiasm to get it all working, I forgot to iinstall a tank drain so that's enough of a reason to pull the head anyhow and install the drain at the same time).

Live and learn I suppose hahaaha.

Says all that, the engine charges my battery bank in two hours with the Delco 32 SI (170a alternator), and used less than a litre of deisel. My gas generator used about 6 litres of petrol in the same time, so saving about $8 a day in fuel so far.


Just a comment - to prevent a possible mis-diagnosis . . . One of my old CS 6/1s has a head-gasket leak, so a bit of water gets into the cylinder.  When it fires up after sitting for a while, it sprays small black droplets everywhere - not a lot of volume, but quite a mess.  Fwiw, I reckon this is water and soot/carbon

Could be wrong.  Won't know until I get around to getting the head off . . .

Cheers

Hi Guys, it`s been a while. I`ve been a bit busy since we got burned out in the 2019 bush fires. I spent 12 months fixing chainsaws, water pumps, generators and any other piece of equipment needed by the local community to help with the recovery, all for free. I got an award from the New South Wales government for my efforts, shame they didn`t invite me to the awards ceremony. I guess they thought I was a loose canon after I got in the Governor Generals face twelve months earlier. I got my award several months later after they mailed it to a place I was no longer living in. Shameless b*stards the lot of them! Pleased to say that most of them lost their jobs in the recent elections. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Two years ago we bought a 3 bedroom property in Tasmania, if I climb on the roof I can see the sea. Sadly, having got ourselves somewhere to live, Covid struck. My Wife eventually (6 months later) got permission to travel to our new home. I had to wait a further 18 months before I was allowed to travel. Two years living in a caravan changes ones perspective enormously, I now realise how lucky I am to have lost all the sh1t that I had accumulated over the previous 60+ years. Most of it I didn`t need or want, I was just storing it because I couldn`t part with it.

So, what does the future hold? Our new home is beautiful and has a double garage but no man space! I have put in an application, to the local council, to build an 13m x 12m shed. We recently got approval for the shed and are now progressing the final designs and hope to start construction in the next few months. I would like to share the shed design/construction and fit out with the LEF. I will do my best to share photos of the build along with costs and pitfalls. I hope this will be helpful to others planning to do something similar

Thank you all for the support you have given my Wife and me over the last few years.
Bob

Good on you, Bob

I had a forced down-size recently - having to very sudddenly leave the Valley where I had lived for over 40 years

Man, did I throw out some stuff.  Got the biggest skip-bin they would deliver parked in the drive, and took a ruthless approach . . .

The more stuff I lost - the free-er I felt tbh

I need to spend a couple of years living where I am now - a very small place, but an ideal situation - before retiring and moving to my country block

To be honest, it has been good for me to get rid of a lot of stuff i think i was just keeping because it "might come in handy one day"

Good luck for the next phase of your life - a new adventure!

Hi Ade

Good work, thanks

I like to visit the site every day - and contribute occasionally.  But some of the boards I just never look at?  I suspect others may be the same?

The stats will tell you.  Perhaps you could winnow out 30-40%-ish of the content - those that are little-used?

Folks who like to post in those subject areas might be Ok about using the "everything else" board - possibly you could change the name of that/modify it a bit to be more all-encompassing; and then ditch some of the lesser-used ones

Lots of us are getting older.  There will be younger folk out there with different, but related, interests?

Cheers

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

Hey guys - thanks for the excellent advice - much appreciated

I have few chunks of finned, heat-sink alloy here out of 150kW-sized VSD/VFDs - a piece of one of them will work well.  The lads here try to throw them in the scrap every time we do a clean-up but I keep saying "I'll use these one day . . ." so there we go

I will mull over all this good advice & google a few bits so I understand - especially good explanation-to-lay-idiot of the bridge rectifier, Bruce, thanks

Quote from: cobbadog on May 06, 2022, 11:47:52 AM

To be honest, I think that nut is still good enough to go again. Once torqued up using the C spanner you only need to fold a tab over to lock it in place. If you do not have a C spanner they are so easy to make by tracing the outline of the nut onto paper and thi gives you the pattern. Then enough 3/16" piece of sheet steel and a cutter and a file and then a length of pipe on the end of a short handle.

I had to use 2 24" pipe wrenches to get it off.. and was hard to turn until it came off ...
I need to find out what size/threat it was to get it to a point that i can finger thread it on .. and use the lock washer to keep it from coming off.

Pardon me for sticking my oar in . . .

But, unless I have mis-interpreted the photos, I'd say you have a threaded taper-sleeve-and-nut assembly on that shaft?  Perhaps I have that wrong?  If that is what it is, the sleeve and bearing will come off the shaft, and the sleeve, nut and locking-ring would be sold as a unit by any bearing supplier

Good luck either way

To be honest, I think that nut is still good enough to go again. Once torqued up using the C spanner you only need to fold a tab over to lock it in place. If you do not have a C spanner they are so easy to make by tracing the outline of the nut onto paper and thi gives you the pattern. Then enough 3/16" piece of sheet steel and a cutter and a file and then a length of pipe on the end of a short handle.

Also traditionally tightened with a cold-chisel and hammer - although perhaps I shouldn't admit . . .

However a new sleeve and nut will cost almost nothing and, being free of rust & having smooth surfaces, will take up an even, gradual tension to tighten up 'just nice" - just imho