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Topics - Tom

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16
Everything else / We have a generator shed slab!
« on: October 27, 2008, 04:16:13 AM »
Yahoo. Pored the slab for the generator shed yesterday. The slab has the propane tank muffler embedded in it with the exhaust going under the slab and out the side of the hill pointing away from the house. I used 13' of 2" galvanized pipe from the outlet of the propane tank and sloped it down wards so it will drain. The slab is 6.5' square, I would have liked to make it bigger, but there is not any more room beside the house. Now all I've got to do is fill the big 2'X4' hole in the middle of the floor with another yard of concrete to mount the engine.

We mixed our concrete with a 3.5 cu ft mixer and it took about 12 batches to do the slab.

17
General Discussion / I scored!
« on: October 09, 2008, 04:53:46 AM »
Over 700' of 2.5" Sched 120 PVC pipe, with threaded ends! This is the nexus of a planned hydro system and will make a perfect pent stock. Best of all the price was free!

It seems some genius used it on a 25hp pump 700' down a well. Needless to say it broke. And the pipe was only used a couple of months. I'm surprised it lasted that long. I managed to haul it home with only one trip, but the truck was kind of top heavy.

My friend said their was 700' of #4 wire to go with it too, but someone had snagged it already. Now to find a nice tergo or pelton wheel.

18
Listeroid Engines / Tiny Bubbles Revisited
« on: September 22, 2008, 02:51:22 AM »
Well I tried Steve's idea to hold a glass full of water over the bubbles to see if they are steam or combustion gases. Well every one that guessed combustion gasses was correct. This engine has over 500 hours in it and the leak has not changed a bit. The only thing I can think it could be is a cracked head that only opens up when hot.

To add to the bad news, I also tested the generator support on the Outback inverters and it doesn't work. The setting is there all right, however when checking my manuals it says that this feature was not implemented yet.  >:( I hope I can get this feature with a firmware upgrade. We'll see this week.

19
Looks like an interesting generator. Anyone know what RPM this would run. I assume these are rather loud.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/grd/720531463.html

GENERATOR DIESEL GM EMERSON DELCO DETROIT 12.5 KW 120 V
DELCO PRODUCTS, DAYTON, OHIO
120 VOLT
39 AMP, 3 FAZ
60 CYCLE, 12.5 KW
ELECTRIC STARTER
ENGINE COOLANT
50% WATER + 50% ETHYLENE GLYCOL BASE
TWO WHEELS, SINGLE AXLE
THIS GENERATOR HAS BEEN WELL MAINTAINED. IT HAS NOT BEEN USED FOR AWHILE. IT IS ABOUT 30 TO 35 YEARS OLD.
IT WOULD BE GREAT FOR CONSTRUCTION SITES THAT NEED SOME SERIOUS POWER OR BURNING MAN...
IT IS LOCATED IN GLEN ELLEN CALIFORNIA.

CALL OR EMAIL TO SET UP AN APPIONTMENT TO COME BY AND TAKE A LOOK 707-938-3858

20
Waste Vegetable Oil / The Masters Formula - A new way to use WVO
« on: May 29, 2008, 05:24:41 PM »
I have been reading this thread:

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/719605551/m/555604723/p/1

about a new way to process WVO and make a sort of semi-bio-diesel. The basic formula is:
1 liter of oil
250 ml of Ethanol or E85 (optional)
4 grams of KoH

Heat oil to 131F, mix KoH into ethanol and then mix that into the WVO. Then you burn the whole lot, no glycerin separation occurs. Apparently this makes a stable mix even out of tallow or bacon fat! No heating if fuel tanks or lines is required! Anyone here tried this process?

Here is my plan. I have about 100 gal of creamy hydrogenated, used once, soy fryer oil. It is semi solid at room temp. I want to use this process to make fuel for the Listeroid to use for back-up power this winter. The plan is to use it with out the need to hang out in the generator shack and switch back and forth between diesel and WVO when starting and stopping the engine. In my area the coldest we can expect is the mid 20's, however when it is that cold it is usually clear so most of the time the temp will be in the mid 30's to 40's. I also am collecting a bit of WMO I plan to add to this mix at about 10%. Sound like a workable plan?

22
Everything else / Engine on my Case 580C Backhoe puked
« on: April 07, 2008, 01:05:50 AM »
While I was using my backhoe to prepare a garden yesterday I noticed that the coolant temp was a bit high. After I parked I found a copious amount of grey goo oozing from the front main seal. Radiator is empty and the crank case is full of grey goo. This engine had been rebuilt about 100 hours ago (and about 3 years) before I bought it. A leaking liner was the reason for the rebuild and it looks like it is doing it again.

My question, has anyone used a product like barz leaks or some such coolant stop leak to fix this kind of problem with any success. I am really stuck for $ right now and am still trying to complete our home and a good temp fix would save my bacon.

23
Listeroid Engines / Another electric start option
« on: March 18, 2008, 10:46:31 PM »
While I was cleaning out our storage unit I ran across an extra pressure plate for I have for an IH truck. The thought occurred that I might be able to mount this to the pulley on the st5 gen head for some extra weight and since I have an extra starter too it may be an easy way to do electric start and not have any parasitic drag. The question is will the serpentine belt handle the torque of cranking through a compression stroke. And with the approx 3:1 reduction will it crank fast enough to start.

After seeing that big tractor starter grunt through a compression stroke in someones video of a direct mount system, it seems like the additional reduction would help. IH uses a standard Delco starter with a special nose that will easily mount to a flat plate.

24
Listeroid Engines / Tiny bubbles..... in the cooling tank......
« on: February 22, 2008, 05:56:40 PM »
Don't make me feel fine. But if I spill the water on me it does make me feel warm all over.

I get an intermittent stream of bubbles in the tank. I took the head off last weekend and the gasket was ok, but I put a new one anyway. Same problem. I did find a small "pit", or casting flaw in the surface of the head casting well away from the valves and comet chamber. Usually I see an oily scum buildup on the surface of the water if a head gasket is leaking on a diesel, however the cooling tank is clean.

I am running a 180 deg thermostat and I just put a 1/8" hole in it with no change in the bubbles. Could these bubbles be normal or should I put my spare head on?

25
Listeroid Engines / I won, I won!!!
« on: January 14, 2008, 02:47:16 AM »
The ebay auction for the genuine lister rocker arms. My rocker shaft mounting block was drilled by the same guy as cujets (at least I think it was him that posted the picture). It will be interesting to compare the radius on roid rockers to the real thing.

http://cgi.ebay.com/LISTER-DIESEL-CS-INTAKE-AND-EXHAUST-ROCKER-ASSEMBLY_W0QQitemZ280190152046QQihZ018QQcategoryZ41505QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem   

26
Lister Based Generators / Load testing my 6/1
« on: December 08, 2007, 06:08:30 AM »
I got to do some real load testing today. Now that I've got some BIG batteries to charge and good metering on the chargers I can see what she'll do. I found I can run 3600 watts continuous with medium black smoke and a bit of blow by. I set this load by telling the Outback inverters to pull 15A on each leg of a 240 line. When I dropped back to 3400 watts the exhaust cleaned right up and the blow by stopped, so I'd guess that this is the sweet spot and that is where I'll run it.

27
Listeroid Engines / Made a propane tank muffler today
« on: November 03, 2007, 04:18:15 AM »
Wow did that cut in the noise!  8) What I did was take an old 20 lb cylinder and drill a 1 3/8" hole in the top and and side near the bottom and welded in a couple of 1 1/2" pipe couplings. On the bottom coupling I welded an extension into the tank made of 1 5/8 fence tube with a bunch of 5/16" holes drilled in it. I capped it with the plug from the hole saw. To connect I used an 18" length of 1 7/8" flexible muffler tube.

I can't even hear the exhaust note over the engine noise unless I'm standing right in front of the tailpipe. Right now this is being used in my temp location, however it will eventually be set into the engine room slab to facilitate the underground exhaust.

28
Here is my current mounting frame for my lister 6/1 - ST5 system:


I originally designed it to mount on logs as skids and it has been working fine for that. I am now ready to construct my cubic yard mounting base and am looking for suggestions to modify this frame for embedding on concrete. I was going to bolt through a 4x6 on end, however hotater has had less than stellar success with the method. I've seen the lag bolts loosen up and break on my mounts too.

I could just put some J bolts into the concrete block and bolt this frame down, but that does not give much surface area in contact with the concrete. Any way I'm looking for some good ideas.

Thanks,

29
Listeroid Engines / Interesting listeriod story
« on: August 04, 2007, 05:38:30 AM »
I've been using the Listeroid to power the construction of our off grid home. Well we are getting a sheet metal roof and the roofers showed up last week with a fancy trailer that forms the metal, as needed, from a roll.

The guys roll out a big fat power cord and proceed to plug it into the outlet box attached to the generator. When the powered up their machine you could hear the surge of the power stroke in the motors and they shut it down. Then the foreman asks me if I can idle the generator up so he can get more power. When I told him it was already running at redline he got a strange look on his face.  ;D I finally convinced him that the engine was not even straining when his machine was turned on and the surging power was normal for that generator.

The next day he was saying that thing was really cool and how much did it cost. Possibly another convert?

30
Listeroid Engines / Offset Idler bolt install report
« on: August 04, 2007, 04:51:51 AM »
Hello All,

I received my xyzer idler bolt in the mail last Friday. It was very well packed and possibly the toughest part of the job was opening the package.  ;) I installed it along with a new bronze gear kindly sent to me under warranty from George B. 

The first thing I did after opening the access door was spray the gears down with carb cleaner and mark the current timing marks on the crank and cam gear. After pulling the old cam gear I found some of the teeth were worn on one side, some in the middle and some on the other. This may be why many of these gears are failing as along with excessive lash they have bad run out too! One of the teeth on the old gear was badly work and chipped on the edge of the tooth so it was a good thing I caught it when I did.

I installed the new gear and idler bolt and found the clearance on the crank gear was a bit loose and cam a bit tight so I rotated the bolt a bit until both sides were evenly snug. Then I double checked that I put the gear in correctly by a neat method I found. The overlap on the valves occurs right right about TDC on the exhaust/intake stroke. Everything checked out so I fired it up and heard a new noise, kind of like a gear whine. Also a lot of the old noises were gone! Now after running a few days the gear whine is gone and the measured lash (using the flywheel method) is maybe a 32nd of an inch down from 1/4 inch.

So far it seems like a very worthwhile upgrade. The only bummer out of the deal is that while I was poking around in there I found some casting sand behind the boss for the head stud by the cam gear. I think I got most of it and I'll hope the rest sinks to the bottom of the crankcase.

Thanks Dave.

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