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Author Topic: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?  (Read 26574 times)

Bluecometk

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LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« on: August 09, 2007, 02:08:28 PM »
Has anyone tried to modify and install two flywheels per side on a lister/oid crank shaft?
 My thinking is that the added stored energy would help in the sudden high load areas.I'm thinking this should cause less of a dip in the voltage/hertz levels.
What are your thoughts?

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rmchambers

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2007, 02:24:51 PM »
Interesting idea, but wouldn't you worry that the bearings would wear more quickly under double the weight being supported by them?

xyzer

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2007, 02:57:12 PM »
I wouldn't be worried about the added weight but if it is an externialy ballanced flywheel you would be waaaayy out of balance! I believe the added rotating weight would be less of a load than the pressure applied with a tight belt.
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listeroidsusa1

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #3 on: August 10, 2007, 12:24:03 AM »
A far better solution is to add a heavy flywheel directly to your generator. Think about a wood chipper. All of its loads are sudden and the engine only adds power to bring the extra heavy chipper flywheel  back up to speed. Heavy flywheels on the engine is good for engine regulation but the load still has to go through the belt. With the flywheel on the generator, like the Lister SOM, the stored kinetic energy is immediately available. The flywheel running at 1800 rpm can have more inertia than a comparable weight on the engine flywheels due to the stored energy increasing with the square of the rpm.

mike90045

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2007, 01:37:46 AM »
With the flywheel on the generator, like the Lister SOM, the stored kinetic energy is immediately available. The flywheel running at 1800 rpm can have more inertia than a comparable weight on the engine flywheels due to the stored energy increasing with the square of the rpm.

Whats a safe diameter for the load side (1800 rpm) flywheel, and how best to make a safe one ? Billet cut from steel stock ? Cast lead into the existing gen pulley ?

xyzer

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #5 on: August 10, 2007, 02:57:33 AM »
Mike,
Billet cut from steel stock. Or even an automobile manual trans. flywheel.
Dave
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listeroidsusa1

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #6 on: August 10, 2007, 03:38:16 AM »
I build my flywheels from ductile iron,or as some call it, semisteel, like the iron used in automotive flywheels. I make them  13" diameter and 2+ inches thick. They weigh 90 lbs + with a serpentine pulley. We built a flywheel `for a Pontiac Fiero conversion with a 3.8 Buick grand national turbo engine out of this material several years ago and the engine was regularly turned up to 7000+ rpm with no problem.

Can you say "G" force? It was the most fun car I've ever driven! 0-60 times were very short and coming out of second gear at 70 mph was when you could get your head off of the headrest and grab a breath! Every gear was better than the last. Man, what a ride! At 90+ you had to be careful as the Fiero wanted to pop wheelies at high speeds at gearshifts if you goosed it too much. I was afraid to let the air get under the nose too much!It would fly but it doesn't have wings!

rcavictim

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2007, 11:41:32 AM »
I build my flywheels from ductile iron,or as some call it, semisteel, like the iron used in automotive flywheels. I make them  13" diameter and 2+ inches thick. They weigh 90 lbs + with a serpentine pulley. We built a flywheel `for a Pontiac Fiero conversion with a 3.8 Buick grand national turbo engine out of this material several years ago and the engine was regularly turned up to 7000+ rpm with no problem.

Can you say "G" force? It was the most fun car I've ever driven! 0-60 times were very short and coming out of second gear at 70 mph was when you could get your head off of the headrest and grab a breath! Every gear was better than the last. Man, what a ride! At 90+ you had to be careful as the Fiero wanted to pop wheelies at high speeds at gearshifts if you goosed it too much. I was afraid to let the air get under the nose too much!It would fly but it doesn't have wings!

A couple of questions.  Where is a good source for slabs of such ductile iron and how do you balance the end result?  I can see static balancing something like this in my own shop but that is not as effective as a finer tuned instrument dynamic balance.

Is it true that cast weight lifting weights make acceptable blanks for turning flywheels?
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listeroidsusa1

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2007, 12:59:53 PM »
I would be very cautious about barbell weights. Anyone in the iron industry recognizes that the weights are made from the poorest grades of iron such as used brake drums, sash weights, ect. The properties of this iron does not lend itself to strength, ease of machining, lack of material defects such as hard/soft places, porosity, blowholes, inclusions, and a plethora of other low grade characteristics.

True ductile iron is made by a special process. It is specially formulated , aged, and heat treated to acquire its special properties. As a result it is much more expensive, which is why some manufacturers cut corners and use less costly lower grades of iron.

Semisteel is a similar product but is made by partially converting the pig iron into steel by oxygen blowing to reduce the graphite content.  It still has the machinability of cast iron but with the improved properties more resembling steel. Once again , it is much more costly than low grade iron like barbell weights. Cast steel is a very difficult product to produce and once again , is costly to produce compared to cast iron. A lot of marketing is being done claiming to use these grades of metal but upon examination fall short.

I don't use foreign materials in my parts. I only use the best grades of US manufactured materials in my pulleys. Compare the iron in my pulleys and flywheels to cast items and you'll see a marked difference in the lack of defects, improved grain structure, ductility, ect.
The iron I use is not actually cast but is made by an extrusion process called continuous casting. It never touches sand and therefore never has inclusions in it. It is fed from a furnace that has controls to continuously monitor the key specifications of carbon, graphite, alloying materials, casting temp, ect. This all goes to produce a superior product. My parts are as affordable as I can make them consistent with quality materials. I absolutely refuse to cut corners on quality. Anyone can make a lower grade product for less cost but quality holds its value over time, every time.

jtodd

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #9 on: August 10, 2007, 09:34:38 PM »

As far as dynamic balancing goes: I found a flywheel balancing shop that did a lot of large electrical engine work and supply.  They had several balancing kits, which seemed to be just a set of roller bearings mounted on "floating" plates (more roller bearings, I'm sure) that were free to slide a few inches on the horizontal plane (90 degrees away from the plane of the shaft.)  Then they just put the flywheel on a shaft, strapped a belt to it, and spun it up to speed.  As the imbalanced portion of the flywheel would cause a horizontal "slide", which was detected by some sort of pickup on the horizontal components.  Then, it would fire a strobe light at the maximal point of imbalance.  The tech just painted a line on the flywheel as a reference point, and fired up the strobe.  Then by looking at where the mark "appeared" to be on the wheel versus the horizontal plane, he could re-position the wheel after spin-down and apply some sticky tire weights on the inside of the rim of the flywheel.  He did this on both sides of the flywheel, since each side has it's own balance.  (this was overkill in my opinion, but he was used to doing very high-RPM stuff and wanted it to be perfect.)

Now, after all that hassle, I found out that the flywheel on my original 16/2 isn't actually balanced by itself.  It needs to be attached to (I assume) the crank and the other flywheel, since when I put it back on the engine with the wheel weights it was REALLY out of balance.  So I took the weights off, and now it's just slightly out of balance again.  <sigh>  So, in a week or so I'll use the chalk-on-a-stick method to see if I can get it closer to pefect.

(So why did I need to balance it in the first place?  Because we installed a "wagon wheel" of steel around the edge of the rim to cover up the three grooves of the original casting which was intended for V-belts and not a serpentine belt.  This made it slightly out of balance, since I'm sure our welding steel additive wasn't perfectly distributed or equal.)

Here's the guys that did the balancing for me in Oregon (Wilsonville):
OTS
503-682-7050

JT

Andre Blanchard

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2007, 10:30:51 PM »
I have not understood the hang up on dynamic balancing flywheels for these engines.
There have been one hell of a lot of 24" grinding wheels spun up a lot faster then a lister that have produced very good finished parts with nothing more then a static balance.

On something as narrow as these flywheels there is not much difference between a static and dynamic balance as long as both are done to the same level of balance, at least nothing significant in view of that big piston pounding up and down.

The only thing I can think of is that people tend to have a dynamic balance done on a machine that is more sensitive then what they would have done a static balance with.

Static balance being defined as single plane
Dynamic balance being defined as multi-plane

http://www.dynamicbalancing.co.uk/whatis.html

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ronmar

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #11 on: August 11, 2007, 03:37:16 AM »
And static balance works great for a single spinning mass that runs true on a single rotating point.  In terms of "Dynamic' balance on these engines, you are not balancing the flywheel, you are actually unbalancing it to counter the weight offset of the crank pin and rod big end.  You can't really do this accurately with static balance as it is difficult to determine the exact weight of crankpin and rod big end and bearing. Now you could assemble the crank, wheels and a bob weight where the rod goes on a rotating balance jig. But that bobweight calculation percentage is open for debate.

  IMO it is far easier and easilly as accurate to spin up the whole mass in place in the engine block(with compression and crankcase pressure forces removed) using an external motor and balance for the least ammount of movement.  This accounts for all the actual spinning forces in their actual operating environment.

Now for an internally balanced engine, you could quite easilly static balance the flywheels as they would not have counterweights and would need to be balanced to the center of the hub hole for smoothest running, just like that grinding wheel is.

Ron
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Doug

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #12 on: August 11, 2007, 03:51:51 AM »
not realy related to ballancing but I'd like to point out a flywheel modification....

I don't know if Willy is still using a Gib head key as well but the fly wheels apear to be modifed for a grub screw as well. I just wonder if its BSF?

DOug
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GuyFawkes

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #13 on: August 11, 2007, 08:53:46 AM »
There are several issues here.

1/ Dynamic vs static.

Depending on who you talk to, dynamic either works in more than one plane, or dynamic means "working with the motor as a working whole", while static always means spinning the flywheel or other object on its own, usually by hand, to find the dead spot. Dynamic "usually" means, TO THE BALANCER HIMSELF, smoothing out the motor over its operating rev range, whereas Lister CS was not an engine built to run up and down the rev range.

2/ What are you trying to balance?

here is where shortcuts get taken, and people do what is easiest, and don't do what is harder or what they can't figure out how to do.

Balancing and engine, complete, that is not running under it's own power but is being spun by an electric motor is wrong, because we are talking about engines with big impulses of torque at low frequency, one stroke every tenth of a second, two tenths just pumping free gas through open valves, then one tenth compressing then one tenth power in the opposite vector, then two tenths idling again.

In this sense "30% dynamic balance" was often used to mean "balanced at 30% of rated horsepower", so about 2 bhp on a 6/1.

You have purely rotating parts, crankshaft and big ends, *theoretically* purely linear parts, piston, THEORETICALLY because 100% of engine torque (action and reaction) is thrown against the barrel, where do you think ovality comes from, and complex gyrations, the con rod and in reality to a lesser extent the piston assembly.

the old fashioned rules were right, vibration is a function of the relative magnitudes of the actual forces developed inside the engine, to the total rotating mass (not eccentric mass) of the flywheels...  with 3,000 lbs of flywheel per side a Lister CS 6/1 at 650 rpm will feel like an electric motor..... my original s-o-m with 300 lbs per side will run smoothly down to around 55 rpm, at which point there is no significant torque / time impulses to make it vibe, esp flywheel mass / (torque / time) point of view.

so..................

a/ you need to up your flywheel mass, 300 lbs a side minimum, the extra weight does not need to be eccentric, just weight.

b/ you need to up your gen head flywheel mass, another 150 lbs minimum.

c/ you then need to run it under load, drawing 1.5Kw per 6 bhp rating, and balance it as smooth as you can, so it will vibe more at zero load and at full load, but mainly you'll be at or near the sweet spot, because few will run at zero load or full load all day.

how much is too much?

In terms of wind resistance losses and bearing losses, 3000 lbs is probably the point of diminishing returns for flywheel mass for a 6/1....  remember, constant RPM engine, so lack of throttle response as required in a vehicle ain't an issue, we aren't waiting for the revs to drop to engage the next gear.

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ronmar

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Re: LISTER FLYWHEEL QUESTION?
« Reply #14 on: August 11, 2007, 08:36:15 PM »
Balancing and engine, complete, that is not running under it's own power but is being spun by an electric motor is wrong, because we are talking about engines with big impulses of torque at low frequency, one stroke every tenth of a second, two tenths just pumping free gas through open valves, then one tenth compressing then one tenth power in the opposite vector, then two tenths idling again.

You are never going to be able to "balance out" the compression and power stroke torque impulses.  The power stroke will ALWAYS vary as a factor of load/work being performed and ammount of fuel injected. IMO trying to balance an engine while they are occuring is folly as they will confuse and mask the real forces being imparted by an out of balance condition.  The torque pulses are what the ton of concrete and rigid steel frame need to be built strong enough to endure.  If the rotating parts are true and balanced correctly, the torque pulses should be ALL the mount structure should have to cope with.

If you call up a balance shop and inquire about balancing the spinning parts of a 6/1 listeroid, they are probably going to ask for the following parts to be brought in:
Crank
Flywheels
Rod with cap and oil dipper and bearings
piston with pin, clips and rings
all associated hardware these parts would use when assembled to each other.
They are going to weigh the complete piston, the rod, rod little end, rod big end and mathematically come up with a weight for an add-on counterweight/bobweight to be attached centered on the rod journal.

They are then going to assemble the crank with bobweight and flywheels into a high point balancer and add counterweight to the wheels at the high point where it stops untill it no longer stops at the same place. This is what I have always refered to as static balance. If they are really refined and have the equipment big enough to handle a 24" flywheel, they will then put the whole assembly into a lathe like device holding the crank at both ends. the machine has sensors in the heads to measure radial forces and the degree of rotation at which they occur.  They will then spin up the assembly, slowly at first fixing imbalances as they go untill the desired running RPM is reached. This I would call dynamic balance and works really well, as long as the calculations of the bob weight were made correctly.  If not, it will have issues when re-installed and running with all the pieces attached.  What you are paying for is their skill at making that calculation and the use of their fancy machines. You will note they do this without any torque pulses involved...

Having done this, IMO, spinning the crank inplace with an external motor without compression or torque force inputs is a VERY viable means of improving balance on a listeroid. and accounts for all the spinning forces as they occur in operation.

GuyFawkes
  You said you had a SOM...  I agree more flywheel weight would be desireable and was done by those that engineered the SOM for smoother power output, but did YOU ever have to balance yours?   

Ron
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