Diesel Engines

[Dave]

I am in the process of cahnging all my vehicles, lawn mowers, etc over to diesel, WVO, WMO, etc. I have an Airens ZTR mower with a gas engine. I would like to find a diesel engine replacement for it. Does anybody know if they have NEMA-like standards for gas or diesel engines like they have for electric motors? Then the mounting holes and shaft sizes would match up to minimize the finaggling to get this to work.

[lev-l-lok]

Dave, check the Dixie Chopper site and see what diesel engine they offer. You may be able to source one of them, uh thats assuming your ZT mower is of similer construction. Happy holidays.

[unimogr]

This guy sometimes has Chinese horizontal and vertical crank V-twins for sale from time to time, I think they are rated for 18HP but you'll have to contact him since he doesn't have any listed right now.

http://myworld.ebay.com/motors_generators_and_stuff/

I have an 18 HP mower with a tired engine and I thought about a swapping one of these engines in.  You could probably buy a new  mower for the price of the diesel engine but the cool factor would be a lot less.

Another option is the Yanmar V-Twin, similar to the above engine but it's liquid cooled and it's is not a Chinese knockoff so it will cost a lot more,

http://www.yanmar.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=94&DEPARTMENT_ID=60

The bolt patterns may not be exactly the same, but I would think you can make the engine fit with only slight modifications.  My biggest concern would be if the frame can take the abuse a diesel engine can put out?

One option I was thinking about is find an old Wheelhorse to Case lawn tractor with a blown engine and fit a diesel into it.  They were built to take a lot more abuse and last a lot longer then anything you can buy today that's under $10000.

Jason

[Dave]

I have a 17 hp Yanmar tractor. I can vouch for the engines. It was built in 1979. When I got it it had 296 hrs on the meter. I thought for sure the hour meter was disconnected or something. I went to relube the wheel bearings and I noticed the brake pads looked brand new.

[Firebrick]

No there is no standards for the engine themselves, shaft diameters and lengths vary widely, but there are SAE standard bell housings, of course you dont have a clutch so that doesnt matter.  Not being familiar with the Arens mowers, are the mowers hydraulic drive? Do belts or a shaft run the pumps if so?  Either should be very easy to adapt as there are many different sizes of belt pulleys(outside and shaft diameter) and a machine shop could easily fab up a new shaft or mount for the hyd pumps. 

Unimog-  I would use a pre MTD cub cadet before a wheel horse. They had the stoutest frames and transaxles.  99 percent of the garden tractor pullers use the cub cadet frame and transaxle even if they put another brand body on it and paint it diffenent colors.  They stand up to  50 plus horsepower.    A case/ingersoll rand(case sold out to them) would be a good choice to however although most of the case models can be very hairy going down hill as the hyd motor freewheeled in that direction.  Most of the ingersoll rand models had a flow valve to prevent this and a few of the later cases did.