Making a New Lister

[Doug]

I knew that superior roid crack would come back at me.....

I'm not building anything, at least not just yet. This more of an exploration of what is possible.

Out of the box thinking in dealing with the EPA problem.

Now I have to admit I have thought a lot about it:
A GM 90 20/1 will cost on the order of about 3,000 USD when the dust clears.

For than kind of money I think I could fabricate a lot of parts myself, and probably much better.

 

[Doug]

Is a new Listeroid a practical possibility?

What this man is doing sure makes me think so....

http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/20hpse.htm

[mobile_bob]

ok Doug

so we don't build a diesel,, but a producer gas engine should be doable
lower compression, no injection system, spark ignition is easy enough

still build it as a big single cylinder thumper,, but fuel it with a gasifier

aught to be able to get up to 6 to 8 hp, with a 6 inch bore and stroke

after the day i have had today,, i have to have something to believe in.

i am so tired of folks telling me it can't be done,,,

can't never did nothing

(is that a double negative or what?)

bob g

[wrightkiller]

Someone told the Wright brothers they could not fly either...and look what happened!!!!! 

[Doug]

I'm already trying to find people in the reprodcution part buisness that would be willing to talk about, as well as searching for good Indian foundries...

Doug

[mobile_bob]

"Someone told the Wright brothers they could not fly either...and look what happened!!!!!  "

and they scratch built their inline 4 cylinder as well!

bob g

[SCOTT]

Doug
If you are serious about having parts made, go to China.  You can get anything you want made to your spec, just provide a drawing.  The issue will be in order quantity, it is likely not cost effective to set up the tooling for a small run.

Scott

[Andre Blanchard]

While it is possible to build your own engine and if what you are after is the experience of designing and building an engine is what you are after have at it, just make sure you have fun doing it because it is going to be a long and/or expensive process. 

If what you want is a big thumper to run on wood gas or some such thing just buy and engine and get to the fun stuff.
Here is a 1908 25 hp pattin bros oil field engine all fixed up, hot tube ignition but that is easily changed to make en break or sparkplug, running and new paint for just $3000, $5000 with the trailer.  You are going to have more then that in money and time building one any ware near the same size.
http://www.enginads.com/classifieds/showproduct.php/product/1331/cat/5
More.
http://www.enginads.com/classifieds/showcat.php/cat/5

[Stan]

Yup, what he said!
Stan

[listerdiesel]

I haven't read all of the responses on this one, so forgive me if I repeat what someone else has already mentioned.

There are enough single-head multi-cylinder diesels out there to find a decent head, cylinder, piston, injector etc etc.

Scania, Volvo, MAN, Deutz and so on, all made engines with individual heads. The 14 litre Scania V8 is a typical starter for 10.

ALL early engine crankcases were fabricated, so don't get involved in big castings at all. A lot of modern-day engines had fabricated blocks, including the big Sulzer double-6 diesel, the Paxman engines and so on. There are no great mysteries there.

The expensive bits will be things like camshafts and gearing and enclosures for same.

Injection pumps are still being made.

Crankshaft has to be a fabricated job, but could also be turned out of a billet and heat-treated.

Oil pumps are no problem.

Flywheel ditto, can be turned out of a solid slice on a vertical borer or a wheel lathe.

Most of what is needed can be taken from existing designs.

Lastly, to see what can be done in the way of a fabricated single-cylinder diesel, look at the Caterpillar 1Y73 research engine:

http://www.oldengine.org/members/diesel/Caterpillar/CaterpillarMenu.htm

There are some castings in there, but it is still a pretty neat bit of fab work.

Peter

[fattywagonman]

I agree that building a new 1 cylinder engine  is likely more doable than most folks think it is...
one thing I like about the indians is that all the manufactures make pretty much the same engine... I like the concept of borrowing as many off the shelf parts as possible... the parts are proven... they are available... and they really don't cost that much..
I have a 722 20 or so HP 3 cylinder kubota sitting on my shop floor.. I look at that engine and wonder why it need 3 cylinders to make 20 HP when the 4 banger in my TDI makes 20 HP per cylinder...

But the problem with diesels is vibration... and generally when you concentrate a bunch of HP into one cylinder this becomes more of a problem... adding more cylinder increases the complexity and decreases the efficiency but helps solve the vibration problem.. 

about 20 years ago I started thinking about counter rotating crankshafts and their ability to cancel vibration...
You see I'm a piledriver by trade and we often use vibratory piledrivers to shake the piles into the ground... the way this devise works is that there are 2 counter rotating shafts which have a counterweight to produce an oscillation... when the counter rotating shafts are timed to have the weights at the top and bottom at the same time they produce a violent up and down movement.. but nothing side to side... a lot of the diesel vibration comes from the compression and power stroke... as the engine starts to compress the gas with energy stored in the flywheel the energy is transfered to the block... then when the power stroke is happening energy is being transfered from the block to the rotating mass and load...we'll call this energy transfer vibration  and this is where a great majority of diesel vibration comes from..... energy transfer vibration often becomes more violent when the engine is at low RPM...  . having 2 counter rotating flywheels and crankshaft of equal mass solves the energy transfer vibration issue... for years I have thought about building an engine like this... and then one day I stumbled onto a diesel motorcycle that has this type of engine.. it's called the Neander... made in germany .. home of the diesel cycle...

[mkdutchman]

Speaking of castings, for what it's worth there's a small local foundry here in Lancaster County that does quite a bit of small time custom castings, I know a lot of the antique engine rebuilders and collectors go to them for their needs..........It's owned by an Amishman so they don't have a website or email that I know of.......but here's their phone number and address

Cattail Foundry
167 W Cattail Road
Gordonville PA 17529
(717) 661-9172

I have never bought anything from these guys, but they seem to have a good reputation among the engine circles

[okiezeke]

I wondered what a lister type engine made to american specs would cost.  Emailed my local
arrow dealer.  They start at about 10,000.00 new.
Zeke

[SCOTT]

The user “Stone tool” posted the following on another message board.
I do not know if what he proposed is viable, but it certainly sounds good.  The relevant portion is below in blue:

A friend of mine is preparing to set up a naturally aspirated 855
Cummins on a 15KW belt driven generator. The reason for that choice is
the higher baseline compression ratio used in the naturally aspirated
engines...... which will equate to better fuel economy, and the modular
nature of the the Cummins PT fuel system where a rocker drives the
injector which is fed fuel at relatively low pressure from a common
rail. This means that each injector is independent and you can remove
as many as you want with no effect on anything else. Cummins injectors
are cheap, rugged, and reliable....... This system is ideal for veggie
oil for that reason. It is his intent to run two cylinders only, and
remove the rest of the pistons and rods from the crankshaft plugging the
oil holes in the crank. Engine RPM will be set fairly low..... at a
point where the load will work the engine a bit. He will probably end
up using two adjacent cylinders on the 6 cylinder Cummins. The result
will be an odd firing order like a Harley or something, but less
vibration than a two cylinder setup with both pistons running together
so they fire opposite. I've done this before... eliminating pistons
and rods on an engine and running it in an odd fire mode. The most
recent example was a Subaru engine which I removed two pistons and rods
from (one side), machined out the area where the cylinders had been, and
bolted on a plate to make it serve as the oil pan when the engine was
tipped up. The resulting engine had one piston at top dead center
while the other was at bottom and balanced out very well and ran
smoothly, but of course fired oddly.
You can do a lot of interesting things with engines, and the big
Cummins diesels are about the best candidates out there with their
separate heads, and cheap rebuild parts....... Dropping cylinders will
make the remaining cylinders work harder which will be beneficial. You
can get various pistons to raise compression ratio, and various
injectors so you can go to smaller tips and get better droplet size
(smaller). Take a 290 HP engine at 2400, drop 4 cylinders and you are
down to just a bit under 100 HP. Then drop the RPM down to 800 and you
have a slow running 30 HP engine that will idle along on very little
fuel and last a long time. You have 4 extra injectors, 4 extra pistons
and rods and sleeves, two spare heads complete with valves, and an oil
sump with enough capacity to break you up in business when you do an oil
change. A huge flywheel, and over a ton of iron to smooth things out.
It could be an interesting and very satisfying project.

If the above is possible it could be an ideal platform with known quality, and readily available parts that should run for a good number of hours at low speeds.




Scott

[kltrider]

2 adjacent cylinders will likely not work, unless they are opposed like your subaru.
By that I mean 180 degrees out of phase with a piston at TDC and one at BDC. I would
also look VERY carefully at balance in this thing. Remember, just removing pistons
and rods from an even number of cylinders doesn't mean it's in balance. Even at 600 or 800
RPM there is a huge amount of mass swinging inside that thing. Don't forget to put some
thought into the oil system. Leaving the con rod oil holes on the crank throws uncovered / unpluged
is a certain invite to 0 oil pressure and failure.
Just my 2 cents, Wayne.