Hi macgyvermike, welcome to the forum!  Would you like to explain the problems that have discouraged you with your setup?  Most of the possible problems have been worked out by the members here.  Have you read this forum in depth and not found answers to your problems?  Setting up a Listeroid system is sort of a hobby more than a turn key project for sure.  I hate to admit that I think I've got better service from a $400 3600rpm 5KW set than I've got from my 6-1 ST5 during power outages but I'm not done playing yet.  In the long run I'm sure a co-gen setup with the Listeroid will give me satisfaction.  Many factors at play  here!    Leland

O.K. I'm bragging here  !  I've got three lathes and two milling machines!  Plus a cut-off bandsaw that can be used vertically and all the other stuff you find in a well equipped home shop.  One lathe is a cheap toy from Harbor Freight, the 7 X 12 and it is sort of stupid in the way it's built so I'm glad I only paid $100 for it.  Another lathe is a nice 15 X 60 gap bed with a 3 13/16 spindle hole also from china but a good machine.  My favorite tool is my 1943 Reed Prentice 15 X 72 engine lathe; it's just way cool and the serial number is stamped on all the tooling that came with it.  Everything works very smooth and you can just tell it's solid and rigid due to it's way generous portions of cast iron.  They just don't make things like this in the USA anymore.  The 15 X 60 lathe weighes 3500Lbs. and feels nice and solid, but I bet the Reed Prentice must weigh twice that and feels like it could carve an inch a pass on mild steel.  I also have a chinese clone of a Bridgeport with electric power feed, and an old Brown & Sharp No. 1 1/2 universal mill that has really cool because it's complicated gear drive power feed.  Yeah, I have a shop at home, maybe that's why I got no wife  !                 Leland

Hi Zagato, I'm no expert but I think that a 3-1 has a 1 1/2" diameter crankshaft and 5-1's and later had a 2" diameter crankshaft  .  You might be able to see that difference in a photo or the seller could measure for you.  Hope that helps!                        Leland

At this point about all you can do is change the engine pully so the engine runs at 850 RPM or even faster if that can be done safely to try and get as much horsepower out of the engine as possible.  Also add more capacitence to the start circut.  Check to see if the govenor can respond fast enough to keep the RPMs up during AC start period.  If this doesn't work you will need a genset that can carry about 3 times the running watts of the AC unit so that it can handle the starting watts.  The maker of the AC should be able to tell you the starting watts or the genset size needed.  I'd try and use what I have but sometimes you just have to start over  !  If AC is the main thing you need to run you might consider using the engine to run an automotive AC compressor and do the AC in a more direct manner?                       Leland

Hi ronmar.  My Metro came with a frame made out of some 1/8" wall box tubing and 1/4" thick channel iron and angle iron.  I would have used a little thicker metal if I was starting from scratch but what's here is OK, the frame weighs about 150lbs.  Then there is the weight of the ST 7.5 head and a golf cart motor.  Myself standing on the same end as the golf cart motor probably about equals the weight of the ST head on the other end and I'd guess the whole diesel powered pogo stick weights about 1500lbs  .  There are 4 nice 6" cast steel wheels built into the frame.  It just sits on the dirt and the wheels mash into the ground and keep the whole thing from migrating.  For balancing I set it on 2 1" pipes sitting on top of 2 6' pieces of 5" wide channel iron that I carefully levelled and tethered it with bungee cords.  Right now the wheels are sitting in the channel iron and the whole thing jiggles around a little but the wheels never lift off the ground.  Before I added the extra weights you would have to see and better yet feel it hop  !  Just unbeliveable!!  The first time I saw it do it's pogo stick trick I just burst out laughing, I've never seen anything like it  !!  It hops best just above idle, maybe around 250 RPM.  As you increase the speed it hops a little higher but I chickened out at about an inch and 300 RPM  !  Though it's a great ride it seems dangerous and the faster it goes the shorter the time between up n' down strokes.  If someone had the balls it would probably top out at about a 2" lift and then get smoother as the RPM increases.  At 650 RPM it might just dance around like it does now even without my balance job because inertia and time would combine to tame it.  If the whole thing was bolted to a massive weight a person might not notice it had a balance problem because above some RPM ( WAG, 400 or 450 ?) there wouldn't be enough time for the whole assembly to react.  The frame the engine came with is about 6' long and just over 3' wide and weighs probably 150 lbs. so the engine won't tip over very easily but it can hop up and down like a pogo stick.  I'm pretty sure that there is a downward thrust also when the piston/rod reverses direction at the bottom of the stroke, it might be fun to bolt the engine/frame to my utility trailer and take my home made weights off  !   Leland

Hopefully this AC is a capillary tube metering system type.  If so, you might add a hard start capaciter and solve the problem.  Small generators have a real hard time starting motors for several reasons.  If your generator RPMs drop off a lot when it tries to start the AC and the AC isn't built so that it bleeds off the head pressure when the compressor is stopped you might need to start over with different hardware  ?                Leland

Hi guys, I've tried to post a few times but it doesn't go through .  I turned my 6-1 Metro from an unusable boat anchor into a useable engine by doing a trial and error balancing job.  I removed the COV plug and set up a 3HP golf cart motor to spin the engine at 637 RPM.  This worked out quite well and only took a few hours.  I got the engine from a guy who couldn't use it because it would jump up off the ground at just above the slowest idle speed at which it would run.  Using chalk just confused me so I ended up just trial and error.  The amount of weight and location didn't seem very critical though I did use a dial indicator to try and get the least shuffle I could.  I made weights from some 3/16 wall rectangular tubing so I had some U shape pieces that straddle the ridge in the middle of the flywheel and clamp on with screws through holes I threaded in the sides of the weights.  I ended up with about a pound of weight on each flywheel about 40 degrees ahead of the cast in weights.  Without these weights the engine had tremendous lifting force at pretty low speed  , I couldn't believe how much force it lifted with!  With the new weights, no jumping and about 1/4" of back and forth shuffle with the engine & generator frame sitting on 2 1" pipes so that it can move freely; except for I had it restrained with bungee cords and chains so it couldn't totally escape the yard  .  This was very much worth the time spent!                         Leland