Little Perkins Diesels

[M61hops]

Hi everybody!  This engine looks very Japanese, it practically screams Kubota at me !  From what I've read it could have been made in Japan, Georgia USA or England; but I think the one I've got was made in Japan.  The manual Ted found gave some letter codes for country of origin but I can't tell where the letter is located.  The letter for Japan is in both the engine family and type strings on my engine but there is a whole alphabet spread around the label and the manual that explained the codes wasn't at all clear about where the letters were  .  The motors are probably the same wherever they are made.  These ones seem to have a larger sump and alternator than the photos in the manuals show  !  It'll take me a few weeks to get my motor ready to start and probably longer to get it belted to a gen head  .                   Leland

[Doug]

Here's another one for you to hate then hwew

MK power makes all the Kubota engines that are not in machines that move by their own power. They are still Kubota by any other name

[mobile_bob]

i have been kicking around getting a pair of the little red perkins engines for sometime now, but
i have one nagging issue with their use

they are likely going to need to run at around 2400rpm in order to make any decent power, even then maybe
on the order of 9or 10hp so maybe 4-5kwatts max output from a generator, and

the genhead will need to be belt driven, which poses another issue
that being belt side loading. i worry that the rear main is not designed for and likely not of sufficient capacity to handle
much overhung weight/belt side loading, so
one would need to build up some sort of auxilliary drive assembly to get an outboard support brg assy to take the loading off the
rear main of the engine. this adds complexity and cost (time and money)

the other alternative is to go direct drive, at 1800rpm the little engine might make 7hp or so
which might make it capable of making 3.5 kwatt, but

with light casting technology would one want to run the engine at 100% loading to be able to make 3.5 kwatt
or derate to a continuous rating of maybe no more than 2 kwatts.

when one thinks of these and other factors, maybe this is why the engines are so low in price
maybe they aren't such a good deal if you have to factor in added costs for a secondary drive and get a continous
rating of maybe 4 kwatts, or settle for maybe a continous rating of 2 kwatts with direct drive.

and what happens when the time comes for repair parts? surely they are available,, but at what price?
i can see a new head going for nearly what the price of the engine is from surplus center, surely the injection pump
would bring at least 400 bucks if not more, so what do you have? a run it till it blows and dump it in the scrap pile?

cute little engine, but maybe one ought to really think it through well in regards to how one might actually use it and what
it will really cost to impliment it and maintain it over the long term?

i still want one, but there are "red" flags telling me not to get one.



bob g

[nobby]

These ISM's are getting around with the better name Manufacturers, heck even Northern Lights are using them in their small end gensets.  Seem on the face of it to be good units.

Bob outboard bearing is the only way to go IMHO, thin shell engine mains just were not made for the side load, to be honest I've always found it slightly cheeky using the rear main as a bearing in the standard norm single bearing gensets anyways.

I've done a few 2 bearing generator side drive setups when de-rating larger listers and its not so bad plus you get to run multiple auxillaries fairly simply.

Cheers
Nobby

[roverjohn]

I'm going to disagree with Mobile Bob a bit. I've seen these engines in use twice now and both of them use belt drive outputs off the flywheel. A salt spreader that used a V belt and a truck APU that used a toothed belt. I don't think side loading the crank is an issue. It would be of course if you went crazy with belt tension and it was unbalanced. The front pulley on these things is clearly designed to have something connected to it so I would have no qualms driving things from both ends. My plan is to make a CHP unit using two automotive compressors as heat pumps and then having a small gen head to provide back up power. It's the only way a CHP makes sense to me because I use way more heat than electricity so the electrical output is more of a byproduct for me when in use. I would never use resistance heating powered by a diesel unless the temperature was very low and then I would use wood heat anyway.

[mobile_bob]

then i will defer to roverjohn on this one

not knowing how much side loading the engine will handle i would hesitate putting a bunch on it
with a cog drive you really don't need much tension at all, i suppose if one was careful in engineering the v drive
so that belt tension wasn't excessive maybe they are ok with it?

i do know some engines don't like alot of side tension, perhaps the oem specifies how much side loading the engine is
designed to handle?

if it can handle enough for a well engineered V drive i would be all over one of the little red engine's
as a cogen project they might be pretty cool, er warm

driving a climate control (formerly york) 10cu/in compressor with r22 i think you can get 40kbtu's capacity maybe it is more
i don't remember, using heat exchangers for the exhaust and the cooling systems one compressor might be enough to harvest
most all the waste heat the little engine can muster?  might be close?

that would be a really neat use for that little engine in my opinion

i have long been a proponent of viewing an internal combustion engine as a furnace rather than a producer of rotary torque
it is twice as good at making heat as it is at making mechanical power, so harvesting the heat and viewing the electrical output as
a waste product opens up one's thinking to other interesting options.

bob g

bob g

[nobby]

Sure I've seen as built side loads without a pillow block bearing on thin shell too, still do not agree with it in the general sense.  For the extra minor hassle in setting it up it's far less troublesome replacing a pillow block bearing than a main.  Then again having said that done this way both pillow block and main will last for mucho hours so in the end no worries and you do not have any worries at all re over tensioning etc.

Of course we are talking fairly low horsepower so in the big scheme of things no doubt it can be got away with, however up the horsepower of drive and it becomes necessary as far as I am concerned.

Cheers
Nobby

[M61hops]

Hi guys!  What got me into my CHP project is that since I was a kid I've wanted to use a internal combustion engine as a furnace because they make more heat than anything else!  Also since I've paid for the fuel I want to get all the BTU's that I've paid for out of the fuel so I think that by using an auto AC compressor or two I can capture all the heat from the generator shed; my goal would be to have the exaust gasses leave the building at 33 degrees F or whatever I can get without freezing the moisture in the exaust.  You get a lot of heat when you condense water vapor back to liquid, hence the need to run a compressor.  I figure that mounting the compressor on the oppisite side of the engine from the generator will even out the side loads on the crankshaft; I would do that on a listeroid or any other type of crankshaft anyway.  I'm quite skeptical about the rebuildability of any of the little asian engines, until personal experience proves otherwise I'll consider them to be sorta like Briggs&Stratton type lifespan motors  .  Might last a long time, might have to chuck it after a bad bout of overheating.  I decided to take a chance  , time will tell.                Leland

[carlb23]

if you take a old automotive AC system and hook the compressor up to you engine then put the evaporator (that part that goes in  the car) inside your engine compartment with a blower fan and take the condenser and put that in the house with a fan blowing through it you will effectively have a heat pump. the cold/expanding refrigerant going through the evaporator will  cool down the temps under the engine cover and the air blowing through the condenser will add a lot of heat to your home.  Most automotive air conditioners do not cycle the compressor.  All you need to do is apply 12vdc to the compressor clutch to engage it.


this would really be a win win since the warmer it is under the engine compartment the warmer the air coming out of the condenser. I use an electric heat pump as my primary heat source and I can tell you that it will produce 3.5 times as much heat then a resistance heater using the same amount of electricity when the outside air is 40 degrees F.  The warmer the outside air the more heat the heatpump will produce for the same amount of electricity used.  It still has a performance factor of 2 to 1 at 17 degrees F.

 
carl.

[roverjohn]

I have never really thought of using exhaust heat to heat an evaporator but it would certainly allow the use of a heat pump into very sub freezing temps. If you did and removed heat from the coolant via the same pump you could control the heat output very simply with the throttle. I'm not sure how linear the heat produced and removed VS RPM would be  but if it was close that might be an interesting approach.