Watts in the box?

[cgwymp]

Strip the crankcase down and clean out the sand. In the last photo, I think I see a pocket of sand in the lower left-hand corner of the picture. I'll bet if you hit that area with a needle scaler, you'll be alarmed at what you find!

[buickanddeere]

Yes that would be me.

Mid Sept. is the time to plant. We also should have some soybeans this fall.

The new toy will get a steady diet of home brew.

  You must be way south to be planting beans in Sept?

[Thob]

Since it's almost completely apart, I'd take it the rest of the way apart and go over the castings with a screw driver, needle scaler, pressure washer, or whatever to get every last bit of sand out.  I'd also carefully inspect every bearing surface and check the backlash on the timing gears.  If you don't already have it, get the CD from George at utterpower.com.

[fuelfarmer]

Yes that would be me.

Mid Sept. is the time to plant. We also should have some soybeans this fall.

The new toy will get a steady diet of home brew.

  You must be way south to be planting beans in Sept?

Winter canola is planted in mid Sept. and harvested mid June the next year. Although I do have a little southern accent, I am not that far south. Live in Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley.

[piperpilot3tk]

I would do exactly what Thob said.  You don't have to strip the paint off of the outside if you don't want to, but you should get down to the clean shiny metal on the inside with a wire wheel of flap brush.  Having said that the pics do look like the engine is cleaner than most.

Why do you guys say jatropha is labor intensive?  Is it because you have to pick the seed pods by hand?  I do not have the equipment to harvest soybeans or sunflower.

[dieselgman]

Our experience with these is fairly wide-ranging, even within the same batch. Most are well above average in quality and cleanliness, but every once in awhile we get one that has numerous problems to resolve. If your approach is to come out of the process with the finest possible results then take the time to do a very thorough internal examination.

A lot of people just do a general inspection and assemble these as-is and have acceptable results as well. The Indians run them as-is "out of the box" and use much worse quality than what we are getting. The beauty of the design is that it will run and perform reasonably well even with major internal and mechanical issues. As a matter of economics, it must be remembered that in comparison, our costs of labor and procurement of spares for these things are huge.

dieselgman