6 cylinder air cooled lister

[tommy]

Right then fellas,

I have recently bought a 6 cylinder air cooled lister engine and, knowing very little about listers, am wondering if anyone out there knows how I might successfully convert the thing to run on SVO without causing long term damage??? Are cylinder sleeves and tapered roller bearings inevitable or is there an alternative? Without a cooling jacket how would you recommend heating the oil for example??? Is she suited to run on SVO???

any advice much appreciated

[MeanListerGreen]

I'd liketo see that!  How bout some pics?  As far as heating the oil you could wrap the fuel line a few turns around the exhaust or maybe route it through the cooling fins?  I'd recommend using a diesel fuel additive to the svo.  I think Stanadyne is a good additive.  It would help keep the injectors clean.  I also believe any diesel is suited to run on vegatable oil,  it's what it was originally designed for.

[dieselgman]

What model 6 cylinder do you have? Most of the Lister air-cooled stuff needs to be run "hot" under heavy loads to keep the carbon under control so I bet that will be a factor. In addition, some of the research has been done with direct injection engines where various fuel volumes and pressures were manipulated to change the combustion results to more efficiently match the alternate fuel. This can be done with various injector nozzles and fuel pump combinations.

Gary
diesel-electric.us

[tommy]

thanks for the swift replies to my original posting a few days ago.

According to the plate fixed on the runners it was built in 1964,  Plant No. 70269 NA. ENGINE 112 HA614 and another, AL No. 289050.
Will provide a photo as soon as I can figure out how to use the software You mentioned running her hot on a heavy load to keep the carbon down. With a 3 phase output of around 36.5KWs I'll have to find some heavy duty industrial machinery to keep her busy. Would you recommend steel or copper for a fuel pipe. What size nozzle would you think most suitable given the existing size of the pump on a lister of this type? At a push I could probably find out what size fuel pump it has on it.

thanks for any advice you might have 

tommy

[biobill]

Tommy,
  The guys around here will yell at you awful if you use copper fuel line . It has a tendency to workharden and crack if flexed and, it seems to be minutely soluble in fuel (pump diesel and biodiesel - don't know about SVO) which can lead to injection trouble in the long haul. 
   Yea 36.5KW is a lot to keep loaded. Could probably bring a swimming pool up to hot tub temps with that. Good luck
                                                       Bill

[dieselgman]

The HA6 is not too common but luckily most of the HA2 and 3 parts will interchange with that model. Lister officially orphaned that unit in 1991 so very few parts are available through them, You will have to go to aftermarket sources such as diesel-electric.us. This model does not use cylinder sleeves or TRBs but is a relatively modern and sophisticated design as far as having a very good oil pressure and main bearing setup. The individual cylinders can be serviced seperately and bored to many oversizes for long service life.

Definitely use steel fuel lines for the fuel ring but we also often use rubber fuel-rated hoses as well at all flexible couplings.

The HA is direct injected and thus carbon buildup in the combustion chamber (top of piston) can have an immediate negative affect on the performance of the injector nozzles. I can get the pump specs and nozzles details for you but it will still be a matter of trial and error to see what various fuel types do to the engine performance. You can manipulate injection pressure via simple injector adjustments if you have a test stand handy. Worst case I can see for this model will be carbon and combustion residue sticking the upper rings and exhaust valves causing loss of compression. A simple decarb job will normally retuirn the unit to health as long as it is not run long-term with a low-compression problem. Take a look on the web for some of the experiments done with copra oils in the Pacific Islands, some of those were done with Lister HR models ( very similar to your HA).

For load bank ideas, take a look at adding resistance-type electrical heating elements, baseboard units can add the Kilowatts real fast.

Best of luck and keep us posted on your testing and results!

Gary,
diesel-electric.us

[tommy]

so then, decoking the engine is going to be hard to avoid if I am to run this type of lister exclusively on SVO (my only readily available carbon neutral fuel here in blighty) because elsbett technicians reckon that any distributor-injection-pump made by CAV, Lucas, Stanadyne, RotoDiesel or Delphi is unsuited (too delicate) to pump SVO. However I've just read this scientific study conducted in Europe somewhere, which concluded that if you make a bioblend mix, the fuel will behave like diesel at 80 C. Moreover, according to the findings, it will burn a lot cleaner, producing a lot less soot. I've found a 340watt fuel heater now all I have to do is get the thing loaded up to the hilt....

keep on truckin

tommy

p.s. thanks for all your advice.