Automatic Rocker Arm Lubrication for Lister Engines

[Listeroidsusa]

If you are tired of constantly oiling the rocker arms or fooling around with grease cups there is a simple modification you can make to enable automatic rocker arm lubrication. After this modification you'll only need to maintain the oil level around the valve springs.

Go get your wife's mop and liberate two of the heavy cotton strings from it. Tie one around the spring adjacent to each rocker arm and dangle the ends in the oil reservoir around the valve springs. The oil will wick up the strings and keep the rocker arm shaft moist with oil. My GM-90 diesels have a much larger reservoir around the valve springs than standard Listers do so topping off the oil is done infrequently.

Mike Montieth

[Doug]

Well that is a lot simpler and cheaper than my oil filled inverted mini luber sugestion.....

Hey Mike the question has been raised. Can a GM 90 head be used with a standard Lister engine block and piston??

Doug

[Listeroidsusa]

No, the heads won't interchange with an indirect injection engine. All GM-90 engines are direct injection with the combustion chamber in the piston instead of the head. This gives about a 10% increase in both power and fuel economy due to less surface area wicking off the heat of combustion. The combustion chamber in the piston is almost identical to the military mult-fuel diesel engines. A direct injection is also much easier to decarb than an indirect injection head since the GM-90 head is flat and has no precombustion chamber. I've ran both direct and indirect injection Listers on alternative fuels and have found that there is little difference is reliabilty, starting, carbon buildup, ect. Since these are all slow-speed engines the fuel has plenty of time to burn. I personally prefer the GM-90 because it comes with a counterweighted crank, true oil pressure to the rod, tapered roller bearings, and has multi-fuel capability. All GM-90 engines use Mico injection equipment licensed through Bosch.

Mike Montieth

[Procrustes]

Listeroidusa --

How was the fit and finish on your GM-90?  How does it compare to the other makes you've looked at?

[Listeroidsusa]

I've been selling the Lister type engines for over 10 years now and have imported several different brands. The GM-90 is the best I have seen to date, both in finish and design. I have been careful in what I import and have never had the horror stories such as sand, poor fit, and sloppy workmanship. I've only been burned one time. I imported a load of "new" lister engines a few years ago which turned out to be used engines that they had just repainted and passed on. I have not dealt with that company since. Even in the best of circumstances importing Listers comes with a steep and expensive learning curve. Due to my experience I know who makes the good stuff and I just absolutely refuse to deal with junk. I have all my engines "specification built" and they know that if they send me junk they'll never get another order. A company that won't build what you want isn't worth dealing with. Satyajeet has been very good about building me the best engines available. For example, my flywheels are graded castings that are dense, close grained iron. I can tell the difference when I machine them for starter ring gears. There are no hard spots, blow holes, sand inclusions, ect in them. Just a fine grade of iron. Just for curiosity I'm planning to test a flywheel to destruction in the spring and see what rpm they will withstand. I'll take my traxcavator and dig a pit so when it goes it'll be safe to be around.

Mike Montieth

[justsomeguy]

Wow.  I think you should video that thing flying apart!  Mount the camera looking parelell with the shaft of course!

[Listeroidsusa]

Actually, for safety reasons, I'll have the flywheel mounted inside a concrete well casing and buried about 10' in the ground with a drive shaft coming up through a piece of pipe to drive it with. This is potentially very dangerous so we'll take all safety precautions with it.

Mike

[DirtbikePilot]

It will be good to know the self destruct speed for one of the gm-90 flywheels, but there are SO many different flywheels being used. There are also probably many different strengths for each single type of flywheel due to manufacturing differences, metal qualities, etc. You would have to explode hundreds of flywheels to get a good idea of minimum explode speed for each, but at least we will have some idea if you just do one or a few. I'd love to be there for this!!

[Listeroidsusa]

I have my flywheels specially made of high grade iron so they should do pretty well but once the test is done I'll know more. I don't fool with the average cast iron in such a critical part.

Mike

[hotater]

The *best* Indian cast iron I've seen (angle mounting fixture for a milling machine)  still doesn't come up to 'average' if compared to American and Japanese machine tool parts.

  Flywheels are scary as a pile of mad rattler when going faster than design speed.  I've had a couple MP run-a-ways and time seems to slow and danger seems close by......
 

[sid]

jack is correct/ when one of the mini petters run away/ time stands still for about one second then the fear sets in/you do not know where to run or try to shut it down/ if you run ,it my blow apart and catch up with you/so there is no safe place around a run away diesel/before i start one I all ways crank it over with the fuel rack in the off position and listen for the squeak/ if you hear it in the off position, you know not to start that little sucker/ I also check the linkage and make sure it moves freely. I also keep the air cleaner loose enough to pull off/ I have had to stuff a towel in the intake two times to stop one..I also had a 5 hp witte gas run away when the detent latch broke/ that could have been a huge problem except it was belted to grits mill and it could not speed up too fast tuning a 20 inch granite stone in the mill/remember //think twice and start once.sid