On my setup with a 6/1, 253 tstat and 35 gal cooling tank, a valve in the lower hose was needed to prevent "gulping". The hot water from this setup is used for hydronic heating and has a couple of places that the coolant them can be read. This gulping is not good for the engine due to a lot of unnecessary temp swings. Once the valve was adjusted the temps were stable over a wide range of ambient temps.
I do fully open the valve when not using the hydronic system during the summer.

It came from practical experience here. While building our remote off-grid home, the Roid was our power supply. Hot water from the tank was used for cleanup many times and although I never cooked with it, those Stoffers packaged meals designed to be boiled would have made a great lunch or dinner. Now the hot water is used to heat the floors of the house.

Not that I've ever heard of. It would probably talk longer to setup the dial indicator than removing the rod cap. The rod bearing on my 6/1 was checked with plastigauge after about 2k hours and it only took a few min. The bearing was well in spec too.

That file would be a strengthener, kind of like rebar in concrete no?

If I had to build a new system from scratch, I'd have an inverter supply all the mains power and use the Listeroid just to charge the batteries. My system is 48v and what I would do is run an STC 3 phase gen head and rectify the power into a MPPT charge controller. My reasoning on the STC gen head is that if needed 120vac can still be pulled off of each leg of it and the 3 phase power will rectify cleanly and cheaply into DC power.

Rocketboy's website was one of the few sites with any info available back in 2004 when I bought mine. He will be missed. I was going to buy a Triumph Scrambler this year, but decided not to in consideration of the wife's feelings. I sure hope that when it is my time that it's fast like that.

Depending on the oil, even when thinned with RUG, during cold temps fats can settle out and plug the system. It's very difficult to get those fats back into solution.

Oh man the stuff learned on the Internet. It amazing how much I don't know and how incompetent I am.