The bypass diodes are to provide a current path when a group of cells are shaded or have otherwise failed.  They allow the current to bypass the bad group.  A failure of a diode will not cause 0V in full sun, and in fact will have no effect unless it failed as a short, in which case voltage will be reduced, not zero.

0v is likely caused by a broken (open circuit) connection in the solar cells series connections. 

Good luck with that Bamford, 38AC.   Baffling that they would select a classic older engine with few to no parts available for it only to abuse it. 

Thank you 38AC, that is very illuminating.  Good to know the full story.  Pity you weren't around then; you could have solved it  for us in a snap.  None of us on the forum at that knew about the very relevant Lister CS bearing material history, just that spalling on upper bearings was happening regularly on Rajkot bearing shells.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing, thank you!
Bruce
 

 

Very little radiator is needed if you have forced air of some sort (I use exhaust flow induced draft ala the Rumely tractor).  Or a large radiator oriented for convection air flow works too (ala Dave XYZer's nice mobile setup). 

Cujet's mobile setup is very impressive, and others have used computer muffin fans with a small radiator and thermostat for a nice compact setup.

The big tank method seems best suited to no-freeze areas where long runs will be the norm.  Hugh's method of cast iron radiator is what what I hoped for but in central eastern Arizona I could not find one. 

Glad that it was just the usual ST-3 split phase snafu.  They can really moan and groan with sounds that say imminent failure.

You can carry a split phase situation with the ST-3 by adding a transformer with dual 115V windings, or adding two transformers  with 115V secondaries if you need more than 1500W of power.  The load on each 115 split phase must be below the rating for that secondary winding.  Spendy and a bit wasteful (40 watts iclle current for 2- 1500W tranformers) but its the best you can do with an ST-3, typically.

You can drive the Antec primaries with either 115 (primaries in parallel)  or 230V (primaries in series).

Regarding grounding of the neutral.  Sure, its nice to have the neutral grounded in one and only one location- if you ever intend to power the greenhouse from the house service - or someone might do that via extension cord, then making the greenhouse a normal code compliant sub panel with separate neutral and grounds being supplied by a grounded neutral/safety ground generator is probably best- assuming generator unplugged if house power is connected.  If the greenhouse was remote and so the generator is the only potential power source, then it could be set up just like main panel with the grounding rod connecting to the ungrounded generator ground and neutral tied to that at the panel.

Multipoint grounding of the neutral is a no-no as it causes current to flow through the safety ground which can then act as an "alternate neutral".  Bad news as the safety ground is NOT intended to be a current carrying wire within the home, it should be a relatively safe earth ground except only for clearing faults in an emergency.

Yes, I think that the diluted Aviation Gasket sealer trick (Hotater?) was originally posted about 18 years ago.  I also tried it and it worked great.

Hugh's high soot quantity in his pit type muffler points out the need for an exhaust viewing capability with pit or earth (leach field) type mufflers.

On my neighbor's 8/1 conversion to propane,  we put in a T in the 2 inch pipe leading to the leachfield muffler and put the stock Pot type CS muffler on that  (knee height) while we were working out the bugs on the conversion (which is still running well).  The pot muffler is still useful whenever there is some cocern about engine health.  Normally the Tee is plugged and normal flow is straight through with no restriction or turn.

Bruce