Author Topic: maybe we should make our own engines ?  (Read 14763 times)

38ac

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #15 on: March 23, 2011, 02:53:04 AM »
My gut tells me that by the time all is in  the Lister hungry will wish they had some some of those junky, sandy Indian engines to tear apart and make well :-\.  Ya'll aint goen to like the price of an American cast and machined engine sold in parts and pieces, take it to the bank.
 
 My opinion and Im stick'en to it. ;D
« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 02:59:47 AM by 38ac »
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injin man

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #16 on: March 23, 2011, 03:29:11 AM »
My gut tells me that by the time all is in  the Lister hungry will wish they had some some of those junky, sandy Indian engines to tear apart and make well :-\.  Ya'll aint goen to like the price of an American cast and machined engine sold in parts and pieces, take it to the bank.
 
 My opinion and Im stick'en to it. ;D

So your suggestion would be to...............................
« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 03:33:58 AM by injin man »

38ac

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #17 on: March 23, 2011, 01:03:45 PM »
My gut tells me that by the time all is in  the Lister hungry will wish they had some some of those junky, sandy Indian engines to tear apart and make well :-\.  Ya'll aint goen to like the price of an American cast and machined engine sold in parts and pieces, take it to the bank.
 
 My opinion and Im stick'en to it. ;D

So your suggestion would be to...............................

Shoot EPA  inspectors upon site. >:( 
The answer is there is no answer to the good/cheap/ legal engine of this type.
It is my opinion that it is pure fallicy to think that some western world person or group is going invest the time and money to design, cast, machine, and properly assemble and engine to western world standards, all the while dodging the EPA  AND do it for the sport of it financially,,, it just aint going to happen. Put some money into the equation for the people doing the work and some kind of return on the investment and you will quickly find out why they quit building them a Dursey. I think a person would be looking at $8000.00 engines minimum,  Put a living wage and insurance and EPA regulation into the equation and they could cost $15K or more given the limited market.  How short is the waiting line going to be for 15K 6/1 Listers? Going back to my post #1 it sure makes an Indian clone parts set, 2K and a couple weeks of my time an attractive option to an American built engine. Those that have not the skills, time or equipment to rebuild and Indian engine are SOL,,again,, in my opinionated (slightly) opinion
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injin man

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #18 on: March 23, 2011, 02:57:55 PM »
My gut tells me that by the time all is in  the Lister hungry will wish they had some some of those junky, sandy Indian engines to tear apart and make well :-\.  Ya'll aint goen to like the price of an American cast and machined engine sold in parts and pieces, take it to the bank.
 
 My opinion and Im stick'en to it. ;D

So your suggestion would be to...............................

Shoot EPA  inspectors upon site. >:(  
The answer is there is no answer to the good/cheap/ legal engine of this type.
It is my opinion that it is pure fallicy to think that some western world person or group is going invest the time and money to design, cast, machine, and properly assemble and engine to western world standards, all the while dodging the EPA  AND do it for the sport of it financially,,, it just aint going to happen. Put some money into the equation for the people doing the work and some kind of return on the investment and you will quickly find out why they quit building them a Dursey. I think a person would be looking at $8000.00 engines minimum,  Put a living wage and insurance and EPA regulation into the equation and they could cost $15K or more given the limited market.  How short is the waiting line going to be for 15K 6/1 Listers? Going back to my post #1 it sure makes an Indian clone parts set, 2K and a couple weeks of my time an attractive option to an American built engine. Those that have not the skills, time or equipment to rebuild and Indian engine are SOL,,again,, in my opinionated (slightly) opinion
« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 06:35:55 PM by injin man »

38ac

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #19 on: March 23, 2011, 04:44:23 PM »
He asked why not an American, or more properly Non-Indian built engine and took all the Indian made parts out of the equasion, "no Indian junk castings" That to me means making all parts in the western world to our standards or maybe using some NOS Lister parts to assemble and supply a ready to operate engine.  And to that question I offered my opinion.

 As to why you are taking my answer to his question as an attack upon your reply and intent to cast up a crankcase and weld up some flywheels and let people build their own finishing up with indian parts I have not a clue?  ???  

Perhaps It would have been better for you If I had been poster #2 instead of a half a page down and  under your reply?

You are correct in that I have no background in Mfg on a large scale however  I do run a machine shop part time and have more than a triffle of knowledge about that side of your deal. I also have dealt with custom made castings some of which are close enough in size and scope to use as a comparison and thus am fully aware of the total cost of a similar item designed, cast, machined and out the door,,, but what I have experianced is not to be argued here, I wish you well with your project and the proof as they say, will be in the pudding.

« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 04:49:23 PM by 38ac »
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injin man

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #20 on: March 23, 2011, 06:03:25 PM »
I guess you succeeded. I'll just keep the project to myself.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2011, 06:31:53 PM by injin man »

oldgit

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #21 on: March 24, 2011, 01:41:46 AM »
There was a divorce going on when he died. She has locked everything up. Even the kids cant get to the stuff. I am considering getting at least my computer out of the shop my means I can not say here. The designs are in catia V5.

veggie

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #22 on: March 25, 2011, 02:45:29 AM »

Two reasons why (IMHO) these engines can't be made in America.

1] All American engine manufacturers must now comply with EPA regulations (very expensive process to get approval, $20,000 + per model). Not enough market volume to justify the cost.

2] An engine based on the Lister CS design would have to sell for $5000 to $6000 just to cover the cost of small production runs. Again, not enough market volume.

veggie
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Apogee

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #23 on: March 25, 2011, 03:44:37 AM »
Well, I for one would love to see what you come up with Injin Man!

I do hope you continue to share info as you progress.  I respect that you're taking a stab at it, and thank you for being willing to try!

Thanks in advance,

Steve

injin man

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #24 on: March 25, 2011, 11:06:11 AM »

I'm from TEXAS and I'm here to help ;D

Guys, never give up, once you internalize defeat by the Government it's
all over. Fortunately we only have 18mos of this stupidity from the Regulators.
I'm very polically active here and will do everything in my power to squash
the activists that are attempting to kill off small business.

I'm not building an engine either ::)   to be continued..................................

MachineNLectricMan

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #25 on: January 02, 2022, 04:37:15 AM »
This older topic may be more relevant now that all the Covid shortages are going, no matter whether they are artificially staged or real.

Casting iron requires a lot less technology than one would ever expect. The melting can be done in a cupola furnace, and the molds are "green sand". Many modern folks have built cupola's in their back yard from scrap yard materials. In the old days of steam engines, cupola's were also often assembled from locally scavenged materials. They can be run on coal, coke, or wood charcoal. Coal can be used directly but is internally converted into coke during the run. Lime or limestone is often used as the "flux". You can bet this is the technology most of the Indians are using on the listeroids. It is interesting to note that in the steam engine days before coal came into use, England nearly destroyed it's forests casting iron from charcoal. It takes a lot more charcoal than coal or coke to cast the same amount of iron, although charcoal is a renewable fuel. Charcoal is also easy to make for the backwoods folks.

Green sand casting is also an old art. The sand often scavenged locally and purified with simple water processing. Horse manure was once used as a binder and is believed to be the process used to cast the Liberty Bell. There are many other binders such as starches, cereals, molasses, and natural substances used. The only real requirement is that the binders and additives do not create an oxidizing atmosphere when the molten metal hits the mold. They also must decompose a "limited" amount so the mold can be easily broken away from the casting but remain solid enough to contain the molten metal before it solidifies. The used sand is recycled with limited additions of new additives.

The sand molds are made from patterns that in the old days were usually made from wood, and often hand carved. The wood is usually varnished or painted with something to make it last longer in production. The mold frames can be made from wood or metal. There is a lot of manual labor involved in making sand molds. When duplicating an existing casting, "shrinkage" must be added, so does all machining stock  allowances. This prevents direct pattern making by reverse molding processes unless the duplicated object is "built up" or coated thick enough to allow for the shrinkage and machining. Yes you can make a mold pattern with nothing more than a pocket knife and wood cut off from a tree!

The cupola's are made from metal casings lined with refractory materials. This is the most challenging part for the back woods craftsman. Ordinary concrete will not work and is dangerous. Ordinary firebrick will likely melt as most is only rated for 1800 deg. F. or so and you will be hitting 2500 deg. F. or even a little higher in the cupola. High alumina is what you use. Kaolin clays can be used to DIY make these refractories. The easiest thing to do is order some high alumina castable or rammable refractory from a foundry supply or industrial supply.

You will also need some type of blower. The size depends on the size of the cupola but they are easy to find and can be DIY built and run off any electric motor that has the right HP and RPM.

All of the material handling equipment can be DIY assembled as well. Cupola's can be run as long as you feed materials into the top of them, or in batch runs if you single load them.

There use to be a lot of books about cupola furnaces available. They essentially won the west here in the US. Simply put, if they were not reasonably easy to build and use in "backwoods" type conditions we would not be getting Listeroids from India.

Now the "formulas" for cast iron are very well developed in today's world as metallurgy is a very mature science. However, they were not in the days of the original Lister engines. Back then cast iron "recipes" were more like secret moonshine making formulas, and some of the foundry men likely did make shine on the side in the moonlight. They usually read something like "add x amount of scrap from x metal yard, x amount of pig iron from x source only, x amount of wrought iron scrap from x source" and so forth. Use the wrong materials and you will have hard brittle cast iron that is fragile and not machinable but will last forever if not broken. Use the right formula and you get ductile and machinable cast iron you can make crankcases, cylinders and rings with. Today, cast iron can be made from low carbon steel from scrap yards. Enough carbon to change it to cast iron is naturally added in the melting process. Adding old cast iron castings (broken up) helps too.

I have actually built aluminum, steel melting and heat treat furnaces. They are really not that technically difficult. Casings are welded together, and anyone who has worked cement can deal with installing the refractory linings. Also keep in mind that you need at least 2450 deg. F. to get a minimal casting quality and you can't get that with natural gas, or propane and just a blower. You can get up to about 2300 but that wont work here. You can get that temp if you use a regenerative system like the foundries use but that is more complex than most DIYer's want to deal with and requires expensive high temp aerospace metals, or a large brick chamber switching system. Fuel oil might work theoretically, but again more complex. Most modern steel melter's use arc or induction. While induction is within reach of some of the more educated DIYer's it requires a substantial power source for Lister sized casting work and is not likely well suited for backwoods settings. My goal here is to present some methods that can be used in non-modernized "bush" settings.

And Please, NO TROLLS accusing their intended "prey" as being a troll.

38ac

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #26 on: January 02, 2022, 06:39:19 PM »
The India Listeroid problem hasn't changed in the 10 years since this topic was posted, and It is not the castings.
 While not perfect all but a very few are usable when properly cleaned and prepped.  As of now the supply of engines and parts is quite adequate almost to surplus.

While I admire the spirit and intention of this topic it is far fetched.  There is no other way to look at it from both a practical sence and an economic sence as evidenced by the fact that nobody has proceeded. 

Then as now a person can simply purchase an India engine new or used and tear it down. Then clean and correct it and in the end will have FAR less money and man hours invested than trying to reinvent the wheel with homemade pieces

,,,,, in my opinionated opinion,, does that make me a troll? :D

« Last Edit: January 02, 2022, 09:26:44 PM by 38ac »
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gadget

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #27 on: January 09, 2022, 07:41:27 PM »
Using as many off the shelf parts as possible, piston, rod, valves, etc... would be key. Then, sell only pieces for your "air compressor"

32 coupe

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Re: maybe we should make our own engines ?
« Reply #28 on: January 11, 2022, 12:38:20 AM »

"the fact that nobody has proceed "
38ac said it best.

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