Speed/Governor Issues

[KellyR]

Finally, after a year of dicking around trying to get parts ordered, made, welded my Listeroid 6/1 ST-3 gen set went into operation today.  After numerous fuel problems (due to the hoses being made of some sort of cheese), the engine is firing up with no trouble.  I'm running a serpentine belt to the gen head ala an Utterpower pulley. 

Now, the problem is after about two minutes of run time with a1.8kW load, the governor seems to slip, decreasing speed and the error light on my power panel comes on.  I really don't know how fast the engine is spinning since I don't have a tach.  I also don't know how to measure the hz. 

Anyone have any suggestions for keeping the rpm of the engine constant at 650 so that my gen spits out 60hz?  BTW, my inverter can only handle 20amps.

Kelly

[lowspeedlife]

A $20.00 Kill-a-watt will do most everything you need, it plugs into a standard 120volt  house outlet, will measure volts, hertz, amps of a connected load & power factor. You can find them on E-BAY, my local harware store sells them & Lowes has something similar but I have no experiance with those.
If you do a search on this forum for "govenor" or "govenor problems" you should come up with lots of stuff to check on your govenor like painted over linkages, binding, slack in the linkages, loose pins, ect.. also on the utterpower site (and here) you should be able to find info on a modification to the govenor spring location that is said to help govenor response.

 Scott R.

[Stan]

I agree with Scott, most people on here have had good luck with the kill o watt style  meter to keep an eye on rpm.

They also have had many discussions here about loose pins causing slack in the system although I don't know why it should take a couple of minutes for it to start decreasing in rpm. 

Stan

[KellyR]

I've got a Kill-A-Watt meter that I've used to check how much juice my various appliances use.  How do you use it to gauge hertz?  DO you just stick it in a socket when the generator is running?

I've also done a search on governors and haven't had luck.  I'm still very much a newbie with the listeroids and would appreciate the "Idiot" version of ideas why I'm not getting the correct output.

[lowspeedlife]

Yes your kill-a-watt will display hertz (frequency) when plugged in & set to that mode.
here's a link to utterpower's ite about listeroid govenors http://utterpower.com/governor_kit.htm  it lists a kit george used to sell, but tells  how you can make it yourself.
I'll do some searches & see what I can come up with for you.

  Scott R

[KellyR]

Thanks for the info.  I've checked out Utterpower's governor mod.  George doesn't sell it anymore?  I don't really want to dick around with the governor until I find out what the problem is.  I'll break out my Kill-a-watt tomorrow, plug it in and start the generator.  One problem there might be that once the speed goes off, my inverter disconnects the connection to the generator.  It'll stil show the error until the engine is powered off though.  Guess I'll have to do some experimenting.

Kelly

[lowspeedlife]

Here's one guys situation http://listerengine.com/smf/index.php?topic=584.0  No george does not sell tham anymore but the article tells how you can make it yourself.
  Scott R.

 Here's another http://listerengine.com/smf/index.php?topic=3895.0

I've had to alter the search request to get info from the search feature like "governor problems" "governor fix" ect. I even miss spelled governor on purpose to see what came up.

[Stan]

I've got a Kill-A-Watt meter that I've used to check how much juice my various appliances use.  How do you use it to gauge hertz?  DO you just stick it in a socket when the generator is running?

Some Kill-A-Watt "style" meters don't have the capability to measure hertz.  Make sure you either have a genuine "kill-a-watt" brand meter or check very carefully to see if you have another brand that has the capability.  I've got one that doesn't so I had to get a second one.
stan

[KellyR]

I've got the REAL Kill-a-Watt meter, so it would measure hertz.  That is, if I could find the thing.  Guess I need to clean out my tool shed.

I'm not sure I really want to run the generator connected to the power panel so that I can measure the hertz though.  That stuff's expensive and I'd rather not fry anything.  ANyone have any experience with this?  Or perhaps an alternative idea?

[cgwymp]

Or perhaps an alternative idea?

How 'bout something like this?
http://www.instructables.com/id/Tachometer-made-from-a-bicycle-speedometer-cycloc/

[Stan]

Find someone who flies toy....er, ahem.."Model" airplanes.  They usually have laser rpm indicators to measure the speed of their propellors.  If you can borrow one of them, you'd have to paint or stick a small white line on your flywheel and aim the thing at it.  That will give you a very accurate reading of rpm without touching anything.
Stan

[KellyR]

That instructable is pretty cool.  I think this weekend I'll build a breaker box with an outlet that I can use to test the governor speed/hertz.  I just wish I could find the kill-a-watt meter.  Maybe I'll clean the tool shed, THEN build the breaker box.  Now where did I put those outlets?

[Stan]

Have you been watching me over the fence?  That's exactly how I do everything!!!!!!   
Stan

[KellyR]

I ended up having to borrow a kill-a-watt meter (still can't find mine) and put together a box with a 20amp breaker and outlet.  Fired up the generator this morning (it was only 25 degrees when I did it and it fired up well), let it warm up, and then checked the output.  I adjusted the governor so that the meter read 61 amps, but the voltage read 137.5.  Tried hooking it up to my inverter panel and it worked okay until the batteries started drawing power, then got the error light.  Tried decreasing the governor until I got 120 volts, but still had the error light.  At that point, the hertz reading was around 56 (no load). 

Any suggestions?

ps Stan, I think the old saying goes that great minds think alike.

[ronmar]

Got a diagram of how your setup is wired?  That would answer quite a few of my initial questions.

Probably the most important questions I have is that when the engine starts to loose RPM, what does the exhaust look like?  Or more importantly, how do you know that it is only 1.8KW of load at that point?  Is that 1.8KW a 120 or 240 load?  If from the inverter that is charging batteries, it may be very inductive, and therfore be far greater than you think it is.  How is the generator wired/configured, 120/240 or 120 only?

First rule of effective troubleshooting:  Always start from a know condition/situation.  You have a lot of unknown conditions here.  Will the engine support it's full 3KW of generator load?  How long has this engine been run to break it in? Will the generator? At what operating output does this full load span?  IE: My 6/1 starts at 62HZ and droops to 58HZ at right around 3KW of electric load, this on a 6/1 turning a ST-5.  It has teh utterpower spring mod as well as a few other linkage refinements.  The voltage also droops as it interacts with generator RPM and load. 

Worried about doing damage to operational circuitry?  You need an electrical load bank to test the output of the generator safely under load.  Electric baseboard heaters are excellent for providing test loads on a small generator.  They consume about 250W per foot for a 240 V heater, and are readilly available. Surpluscenter.com has a bunch of them in stock  https://www.surpluscenter.com/sort.asp?UID=2324021415085939&catname=electric&keyword=EHHE

This is what I have hung on my generator room wall, seen in the background of this pic.  Using them I can fully load test my genset without ever connecting to my power panel.