how much is too much clearance on a rod? I picked up a B6000 Kubota basket case last summer. It has a little 13HP 2 cyl water cooled diesel (ZL600). http://mountainkubota.com/MTK..EngineSpecsB6000.html
 It looks pretty over engineerd for the power it puts out. I had a bitch of a time finding parts for it but  finally got them from Greece. the crank was way off, out of round and under sized. I took it to a local engine shop along with the undersize bearings mounted in the rods and he sat on it for a month. finally I went to repo it and come to find out he botched it a bit. the one rod came out to .001 clearance but the other is at .007      I figured hey what can you do so the last few days I froze my but off out in the shop putting it all together.  got it running and seems to wok fine plowed snow with it in the driveway for about an hour today. I wonder how long will it last like this........

I have heard the urban legend of an induction motor as generator for years, I have a little pamphlet from lindseys bookstore entitled "alternator secrets" I bought in the 90's. I also used info from this link http://www.redrok.com/cimtext.pdf. well I set up a nice 3 phase 5hp 1725rpm motor coupled to the little 4hp lister LR1 I bought over the winter. made a nice base and used the doghouse from my ST head that I removed. wired it up in Star and it did nothing. waited for caps to come in the mail and added (3) 25uF caps in delta on the 3 legs and still nothing. Flashed the field and nothing. I wanted to use Star with the center connection as the neutral.  Just for kicks I rewired the motor in delta and hooked up the caps. started it up and the light on the doghouse lit right up. I thought that was cool so without a second thought I throttled her up to 1800 rpm and boom boom out go the lights followed by one of the caps being on fire. shut it down and  then in put the 20uf caps I bought as backups on and tried again. this time just idling It maks about 150 volts and if you give it any rpms the voltage goes way over the scale of the meter.  what is the deal? you supposed to add load and caps a little at a time as you load the motor as a generator? any body got experience with this? pics to follow if anybody is interested.

for years we used my hobart champion 10kw welder/generator as a backup generator for when the power was out. we pretty much just run the whole house and show no mercy. usually i try to turn off the electric hot water heater and the pool pump but it has been known to run them both when i was at work.... this last summer the power was out for almost a week and the thing was killing me on fuel so i decided to build a lister cs generator over the winter. Got this built this winter and ran it a bit, I am very pleased with the power of the engine. i have been able to run the whole house and it only drops by about 1 hz. it seems to have plenty of power to spare. I may even change pulleys and lower it down to 650 rpm and see if it can haul the mail as good as it does now. any way it seemed like the lights on the computer power strip were flickering. then a day or 2 after a test run my well pump shit the bed. (it could be by chance as it was over 10 years old). sort of made us question the waveform of the ST head and wonder if it could be improved upon. So i bought a cheap o-scope off ebay from china and a 10x attenuation probe. took a round of readings, then added two 1000 uf DC capacitors to the DC going into the field. I thought maybe that would smooth out the waveform some.  I feel like you can see the capacitors effect on the Z winding and on the rectifier output but they ultimately seem to have no effect on the actual generator output. they don't seem to hurt and maybe they would help with starting the well pump. looking for insight as to weather or not this will help or hurt. here are my scope pics. it was fun anyway and the DSO138 oscilloscope was  well worth the 30$ i have into it, i would buy another one in a hearbeat.

grid power for reference,


hobart 10kw generator no load


hobart 10kw generator running the house


lister/ st head  output  no load, no capacitors


lister/ st head output no load,  2 capacitors on field


lister/ st head output running the house 2 capacitors on field.


Z winding output no capacitors


Z winding output with 2 capacitors on field


DC rectifier +DC output no capacitors on field


DC rectifier +DC output 2 capacitors on field




 

I am in the beginning stages of putting a new DES 8/1 and 10kw st head together in my greenhouse as backup power. I just got the stuff in the mail last week.  I thought I would try to post some pics here for you to look and enjoy as I build it over the winter.  I started tearing the engine down last night. I  got the flywheels off and everything but the crank out.  The  sump looks filthy like some real bad used oil was run in it during the test run but for the most part it is going good? I saw no oil groove inside the timing idler gear, I guess I am used to seeing that in a gear like that, wondering  if I should  cut one? I also noted 2 shims on 1 side of the rod bearing cap but just 1 shim on the other side. not sure what's up with that.  I have a needle descaler and plan on trying to get all the paint out of the inside of the frame but how else do you clean the frame ? do you just lower it into lye and water and let it soak? thanks gus.