Lister Single Cylinder Generator

[ronmar]

UUUH , the picture of the end of the alternator(all orange inside) clearly shows the brush holders and sliprings...

[magnicon]

I meant BRUSH of Loughborough England,the manufacturer, not the fact it has brushes.In a part of my life that I'm not very proud of I was rather fond of spraying all internal parts of electrical machinery with 'Ultimeg' to impress potential victims.

[Diesel Down-under]

UUUH , the picture of the end of the alternator(all orange inside) clearly shows the brush holders and sliprings...

not knowing there was a manufacturer called Brush, I initially thought the same thing.

 And Magnicon

...I am yet to confirm the maker of the generator, someone has sprayed this orange crud all over the inside of my generator  

although the wiring that I can see matches the wiring diagram DGman has posted so its pretty much confirmed from where I sit, [bear in mind that it is a 1991 Model ST1 so that makes the gen. a fairly late model as well.]

 anyway I have some oil, a sump plug, an oil filter, an air flilter, some fuel-line, some heavy starter cable and a stand alone battery so one way or another we should see some smoke or at least sparks later today!

[magnicon]

BRUSH and LISTER were part of Hawker Sidelly in the '70's and gensets were sold under the name of Hawker Sidelly Power Plant,BRUSH also made locomotives many of which are still in service.Back to your ST1,you have a virtually bombproof engine there,keep it fed,lubed and well ventilated (most important) and it will last a lifetime.

[magnicon]

Your alternater differs from the diagram in having no DC winding on the rotor and no visible means (removed ?) of voltage regulation.I would first check that it actually will work. Check the insulation is ok (megger),connect a voltmeter to the brushes,disconnect the two leads from the field coils to the rectifier and connect to a variable DC source or if not available a car battery in series with a headlight bulb works well.Run the engine up to about 1500 revs and see what output you have (I assume as you are in OZ your looking for 240 volts).Note down the results of this test and any resistance readings (ie field coil resistance) then you have something to work with.

[Diesel Down-under]

   Yes you are correct in your observations re the regulation (I thought the DC may have been an 'optional extra' when ordering)

  By well ventilated, you mean for external cooling air?

 Can you please stick with me on the testing of the generator side, although I have a solid background in electrics and industrial electronics I have had little to do with excitation coils and the like, I would really appreciate it if you could 'hold my hand' on this one

 I will be running the Lister in about 5 hours and I will have a good look inside the gen and do some preliminary measurements with my Fluke 87, I no longer have access to a megger (though have repaired a lot of the English ones in my time, all had been used in underground coal ahhh that's it! Evershed and Vignoles? has just come back to me!)

[dieselgman]

Your ST is surely not from 1991. Production stopped in early 80's.

A lot of the Lister SOM sets had an additional control box involved... Lister also put their brand on some of the Brush designed sets. So a bit of detective work might be in order to properly identify yours.

dieselgman

[millman56]

Never seen one like that either, the starter motor is familiar though, 12 volt inertia type neg ground, look after the armature as they are pretty well unobtainable due to being a bit longer than standard 60s car starters armatures, brushes are available though.

Mark.

[Diesel Down-under]

Your ST is surely not from 1991. Production stopped in early 80's.

A lot of the Lister SOM sets had an additional control box involved... Lister also put their brand on some of the Brush designed sets. So a bit of detective work might be in order to properly identify yours.

dieselgman

       Well on the dectective work, I am doing my best, however information is hard to come by except what I can pickup from you fellas

  ....it can also be somewhat contradictory as the following data, is  information verbatum that I received from a "Lister Expert" in the UK whom I emailed directly for information.

     "4119ST130-03

41 is the year of manufacture, 1991

19 is the serial number, so January build

ST is the engine type

1 is the number of cylinders

30 is in the Rotation box, so not sure, but it should be anticlockwise for a
genny.

03 is the build number."

PS thanks for your input Mark re the starter.

[Diesel Down-under]

    The wiring and lack of wiring and/or control circuit is a puzzle to me

 It had 4 wires coming out of the generator when I received it,


If you look closely at the relevent picture on page 1 of this thread you can see the wiring that I cut off to remove the shroud, it was as follows


 One wire on each of the brush termals

 One wire on the bridge rectifier (cant see which terminal of the rectifer but I will look at it today)

 One wire on the frame earth

  These four wires were flying loose at the other end and no other components were delivered with it?

[millman56]

Just a thought, in the pic of the slipring end of the alternator it doesn`t look to have had a NDE bearing fitted and the rotor is a bit too long to be of the overhung variety, it may also explain the missing control gear as transformer regulated alts this size would commonly have the transformer mounted on the NDE bearing carrier frame. Does the tin end cover look to be a proprietory item?  To me it looks like an electric motor fan shroud.

Mark.

[millman56]

Another thought, the 4 wires coming from the top of the case may well be for connecting the output either parallel or series 110/220v or 55/110v depending on the alt voltage.

[Diesel Down-under]

      Mark, re your last 2 posts, I take on board what you are saying, I had not looked at it from a 'mechanical angle' with respect to that rotor being overhung. However I believe all that section and the end cover are original.


 Now for today's run report


 *after connecting up the bare minimum to get the engine running, this included a small volume gravity feed fuel supply and then finding the bendix on the starter was a little bound-up (....now serviced) and then taking a while to prime the injector pump, she fired up beautifully. No scary noises or heavy vibrations and  the RPM's were steady (though havent measured exactly it sounded about right)

 * I shut her down after a short run and then it restarted very easily

* the AC at the brushes was measured at 0 volts

* I then put 12v DC on the field winding circuit and measured an AC output of 93volts (I didnt use that series 12volt globe after the initial test as it wasnt alight and I couldnt see the use of it)

* I then put 24v DC on the field winding circuit and measured 180v AC output which I used to run a 700Watt drill and the AC dropped to around 174vAC

          I then decided to stop for the day as it was getting late and with the whole assembly 'walking' across my concrete floor (need a heavy rubber mat) and the DC wiring getting dragged along with it, I decided some tidying of my test rig is required and that should be done on a fresh day!

         The other noteworthy points are, with respect to the following pic


 *The large cylindrical resistor is in parallel with the 4 field coils and that part of the circuit is fed from that bridge rectifer, the top left terminal of the B.Rectifier is the positive output and the bottom right (negative) goes to the other end of that large resistor

 *The bottom left term of the Rect. is AC in and you can see that short length of cut off wire that went to some external connection

 *I took the positive and the negative wires off the bridge, and then hooked my external  DC supply to the field coils at this point. Also it should be noted that the total resistance of the field winding in parallel with that cylindrical resistor  was measured to be 33 Ohms

  Any further advice on the next steps would be greatly appreciated

  

[Combustor]

Hello DieselDownUnder,
                                     Your ST-1 has the second Lister

                                      numbering system, not the more recently used third system. It is decoded thus-

                                     4119,  Serial No. in the year of build
                                     ST        Engine model or series
                                    1          Number of cylinders
                                    30       Year of build added to 1950 = 1980
                                    -03      Build No.  (options fitted, presume 1500 rpm governor, heavy flywheel, elec start etc)
           They are one tough motor, best kept loaded near capacity, Will not like running cold on light loads.
            Good luck with your project.     Combustor.                               

[magnicon]

Firstly your question about cooling,Lister had a pamphlet entitled 'let me breathe',this was later incorporated in all operators manuals,perhaps dieselgman can oblige with the relevant pages.I do agree with Millman about the construction of your alternator as the only overhung rotor construction I have seen is on low output traffic light generators.
The reason I suggested a lamp in series with the battery is to use it as a current limiter and in the event of a short circuit you don't get a facefull of molten copper.
Your tests however seem quite promising,have you any way of checking  engine revs ? try and set about 1550 rpm .
As regards the missing control gear the best way to go would be to fit a 'one size fits all' AVR, Measure the residual voltage first,most AVR's will pick up at about 5volts.