Speaking from first hand experience on working on both original Lister engines and the CS clones that I saw made in front on me while at several Indian factories, I can let you people in on a few facts.
The Indians made these engines for their own market and for third world countries such as Africa. The main markets for them is home, Africa, Iran, Pakistan, South America and China. The engine they make for all of those countries is the same one you order. There are not different engines for different countries available because it is not viable for them.
They DO NOT make special engines for anyone.
They will all tell you their engine is the best.
They will all tell you they make castings and machine all parts.
None of them will give you a straight answer on bearing life. Nor can they provide historical data on bearing performance.
None of them will give you the bearing manufacturers name, this prevents you from finding the 'source' which is very secret to them for all parts. It also prevents you from getting answers.
You can buy higher grade internal parts, you MUST ask for these, and you must KNOW what the grades are. It is difficult to know what to ask for, when you dont know what to ask for!
I have some high grade parts here and they are as good as Lister made!
It was a guess on my part as the text meant nothing to me (I dont speak Indian) so I was flying by the seat of my pants and went be feel and bought a few spares to bring home.
You can buy higher grade castings, but I doubt anyone will spead the money on buying the minimum quantity. 500 pcs is typical for most parts.
The quality of stock parts on every clone I saw screamed utter junk. Some say JKson use CNC, they do not. None of the engine builders use CNC. While talking of JKson, do not buy their blocks with the chrome finished liner for an original Lister. The chrome wears very quickly and is rather cheap grade. All the factories used blunt tools, big hammers and bigger hammers for setting gib keys. If a bolt is not going in as expected, it is beaten in and a long pipe used for additional leverage to make it move. I stood there dumb struck as this build unfolded in front of me.
You must ask for the engine to be broken in on new oil, there is a fee for this (i.e cost of the oil).
The engine build manual is a laugh, a child would have more in it for the builders attention. I was given an english translation, it was less than one page!
If you wish to buy a quantity of high grade engines you better be prepared to buy 500 pcs. This is the minimum amount of parts they must buy. how western orders will they see for 500 engines?.........I doubt they will sell that many in year and they must sit on those parts while weatern orders come in. It simply will not happen.
Hmmm buy the all the parts and build them yourself?......sure if you have the funds and the time.
The engines are ran in and tested (did I say tested? I must have been dreaming) before paint is applied. Ok, its a combination of thrown onto the engine with a great big dirty brush. The odd fancy factory had a spray gun and sprayed everything, even the shipping case they were sat on. The floors in these places are filthy, dust is always blowing around and people run the gauntlet between spinning flywheels and lunatics driving small trucks through the place.
My experience with GTC and Anand has been good, it has not been good with Lovson who buy from Anand. The main supplier to all these people are Field Marshall. Forget contacting them, they dont like responding to western people and prefer to deal with the home market. They didnt return my call even while in the country. I guess I need a name change.
It is a simple question to answer. The Indians are not really interested in us and there is no compelling reason for them to tool up, build with higher grade parts and casting, only to be left with engines they cant sell anywhere else. EPA is another reason why they are not keen on doing other builds. These engine wont pass EPA in a fit.
From our prespective, we want high quality engines, we are preapred to pay extra for this. We must accpet we are a small market in the eyes of the Indians than any other of their customers. Therefore if we insist on the best, most people wont like the price tag that comes with genuinely high quality engines. A new genuine CS Lister today I think would cost 5,000USD easy. How many will place an order now?
We must be reasonable and either build ourselves with sourced parts, or accept the problems and fix it ourselves which means buying parts anway. I see the key is getting good castings.
I looked at the Kirolstar engines too and was much more impressed with those. It is not based on any single Petter design, but two. aluminium pistons, gear oil pump and an easy starting engine. The casting quality is far far better and it runs pretty smooth. Most of the extras we want on the CS engine is there, oil pressure switch, electric start, alternator and so on. Some petter spares fit these engines and even the genuine parts are far cheaper than the original CS parts. It is also easier to get high grade parts for that engine. In my workshop, it will have a twin cylinder Kirlostar engine and not a twin CS clone.
Finally, I visitied our Chinese friends and saw the ST and SD heads being built. China was my first stop on this trip and it was not my first time there and knew what to expect. It is a world apart from India. The facories are spotlessly clean, highly organised and motovated work force who take pride in their work. The heads wwre built to an exact spec at every point on the line. QC was everywhere to be seen. Computer controlled machines for dynamically balancing the rotors, slots milled via CNC. It was a joy to behold. How the hell they make money on this stuff is amazing, but when you see the trucks coming to take load after load you get the idea, make a few bucks on each one rather than screw the guy.
There is only one part of the design I could critise, the slip rings are neevr checked for run out. I have one here I brought back and its a few thou out. No biggie but enough to cause the brushes to hop a touch. A simple 60 second skim on the lather and its sorted. The Indians have gen heads too but are very costly. They make a more modern type of head and is modelled on a current European brushless/self exciting head and has higher grades of insulation and SAE type coupling. They are good quality though.
I was not allowed ot take pictures so I hope my description gives you all some idea on what it was like. It opened my eyes and closed my wallet. Oh nearly forgot. Buying a kit engine is a big problem for the Indians. They get tax breaks by building engines and if you wish to buy a kit (which is available) it will cost more than a fully built engine because you have prevented them from getting the tax break. Only fair you make up their loss of earning. One way to ensure they wont screw your engine, is ask for it NOT to be started at all. Then we you get it imported you just swop out the parts and not have scored cranks and wrecked cams. You will get some strange looks/emails as I did when I asked for this. But they will do it for you no problemo.
Westerners are such strange people
Emerald
P.S ALL Indian Taper Roller Bearings are junk, toss em out and replace with quality US/EU manufactured. Same goes for the Chinese bearings in ST heads.
