i have to speak up here on a couple of subjects,
one being the listeroids in general, the other being george at utterpower.
first of all these engines have to be looked at as an assembled kit, a 95% finished kit at best, that has
been hastily assembled at best, sloppily and dirty assembled at worst, and no way to tell for sure out of the crate.
these engines have to be torn down to every last piece, and thoroughly cleaned, inspected and blueprinted!
what i mean by this is to really tear them down completely, hot tank the parts, and then visually inspect every friggin part.
at a minimum i would do the following.
1. have the crankshaft finished properly, if need be reground to perfectly round, concentric and polished to a quality finish. this is not going to be done by most folks by hand, in an hour with the crank still in the block in most cases.
2. the oil system needs improvement, it need some form of filtration, and positive lube to all brgs, and a quality non detergent oil of the proper viscosity.
3. the cylinder bore must be rehoned to not only the correct crosshatch pattern but the proper finish, then "properly" cleaned
the rings must be thoroughly inspected with high magnification to get good ones, and then gap them properly and install them properly( there is an up and a down side, don't trust the marks if they have them)
4. the lifters will have to be reground and polished, and the guide clearance will have to be made correct, the cam lobes should also be polished
5. the head will have to be made to be flat as well as the cylinder deck, either by scraping (not something most folks are going to either do or be able to do well). also a proper valve job will need to be done, not just lapping them in.
6. the rocker system will have to be addressed for proper geometry, and polished out to work properly.
7. all brgs will have to be replaced with a good quality brg (if such a thing exists in india) timken for the tapered and the best you can get for the plain brgs, the clearances will have to be verified by plastigage at a minimum.
8. the rod will need to be checked for being true, and hopefully in the twins they match in weight.
the list goes on and on,, but you get the idea.
the problem is most folks either don't understand the importance of the little details that have to be addressed to get the engine from 95% finish to that of an engine that is closer to 100% finished.
as the old saying goes "you get 90% of the result with 10% of the work, the final 10% of result will require 90% of the work"
if one is to run and depend on one of these engines long hours per day at near full load, then these concerns will have to be recognized and dealt with, if not you aint going to be happy.
if on the other hand you only need a couple hours of run time every other day at part load, perhaps you can cut corners and get a few years out of the engine.
when taken in proper context these engines are a bargain, in that where else can you get a 95% engine for such a small amount of money? you certainly cant cast and machine these parts yourself for the money.
years ago i used to do alot of detroit work for the oil field, detroit diesel sold reman engines for the oil patch that had a 30 day warranty, you can bet they cut all the corners on these units, i have seen aweful shit done on these engines and sold in good faith as a replacement engine. they did things with those that you would not even think of doing on over the road trucks. cut corners to cut cost, you get what you pay for.
now for george at utterpower
i have met george and find him to be a sincere man, yes he is a proponent of the listeroids, but..
he is clear about these engines being kit engines, i find alot of reference on his site to thise fact.
i don't think for a minute he would sell a guy anything unless he knew the guy understood what he was
getting into. if he had a doubt we would steer the guy away from using one.
when he says you can overhaul one in an afternoon, it is one that has been properly blueprinted to start with!
i have never known him to allude to the fact that one can take an engine out of the crate and overhaul it and put it in service in an afternoon.
once one of these engines has been properly rebuilt and run until the need for overhaul, i think one could do an overhaul on a 6/1 in an afternoon easy enough. but certainly not a dirty as delivered example.
if one does not want to go thru the trouble to do one properly or is unable to, then perhaps he should look into the yanmar, kubota, or whatever.
a good alternative is the isuzu, from a thermoking unit, these engines can be had cheap, overhaul cost isnt bad, hp is in the 25 hp class and they run at dual speed, either 1300rpm low or 2300 high.
they have full flow and bypass oil filtration, primary and secondary fuel filtration, excellent govenors, glowplug systems etc. and are made to run for thousands of hours.
you can pick one up in good running order for around 300 to 500 bucks, and they run fairly quietly.
they also have electric start, engine protection/shutdown systems, rubber motor mounts etc.
to recap, it comes down to pay me now or pay me later, if not in money certainly in time spent.
bob g