New Listeroids for sale

[Bolton Power Equipment]

Hello All,

        We're ramping up importing new Listeroids configured as compressors. These will have all available upgrades including bronze idler gears, water pumps, thermostats and Bendix gear starters. We will be offering custom steel "C" channel frames and ST or Stanford power heads with control boxes, if requested. We are located in Massachusetts in the US. We will deliver locally in New England and drop ship anywhere else in the US. We are looking at the next load for delivery in mid-July this year. This forum is active with folks looking for Listeroids so I thought I'd post and see if any forum participants are interested in ordering from the next load?  http://www.boltonpowerequip.com  Please feel free to post here or drop us a note on the Website.

Best
Graham
Bolton Power Equipment

[mike90045]

What will the change-over kit consist of ?  new camshaft?

What is the oiling system  Splash or pump & splash ?

What grade sand is included in the internal paint pockets #20 ?  #40 ?

[broncodriver99]

Here is the correct link.

http://www.boltonpowerequip.com/

[broncodriver99]

Hmmm. 50,000 hours?

[Bolton Power Equipment]

Mike 90045


What will the change-over kit consist of ?  new camshaft?
          Same Cam. "Accessory" kit includes pump, lines, tank, injector etc.

What is the oiling system  Splash or pump & splash ?
          Pump and Splash

What grade sand is included in the internal paint pockets #20 ?  #40 ?
         The interiors of the crankcases are steam cleaned and painted with epoxy paint before the build. Haven't found any loose sand yet,    

[BruceM]

Bare crackcase is better still, since slapping chaulky filler and epoxy over sand filled voids is well within Rajkot standards. Nothing you are attempting regarding Rajkot has not been tried before.  They are incapable of maintaining any sort of quality control from one batch to the next.  An honest seller would sell them as a kit of parts to be inspected carefully during the build, and replaced as needed.  You should remove the 50,000 hrs, it makes you seem either naive or a con man.

[Bolton Power Equipment]

Bare crackcase is better still, since slapping chaulky filler and epoxy over sand filled voids is well within Rajkot standards. Nothing you are attempting regarding Rajkot has not been tried before.  They are incapable of maintaining any sort of quality control from one batch to the next.  An honest seller would sell them as a kit of parts to be inspected carefully during the build, and replaced as needed.  You should remove the 50,000 hrs, it makes you seem either naive or a con man.

I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I know what works when importing equipment from the developing world. You are correct, delivering on specific quality metrics is a problem with hand built machines. That’s why I’m not asking for specific quality metrics. I’m asking for simple procedures during the build that embed the quality factors I’m looking for. That can be consistently done. If the inside of the crankcase is cleaned and painted with a heavy epoxy paint you aren’t going to have a problem with sand. I haven’t found a sand problem with a Listeroid in the 5 or so years I’ve been doing this. As far as communicating my needs to the vendor, I ask for consistency with a clear and honest understanding that the next order is always dependent on the last order. In the 25 years I imported diesel engines and other equipment from China, that was the understanding and I was never disappointed. If however you are a one-off buyer that understanding does not apply. I’m not a one-off buyer. Indian businessmen are as pragmatic as anyone else. They want repeat business.
As far as being an “honest seller”, my products are warrantied. If you have a problem I’ll make good on fixing it, whatever it takes.
As far as the 50,000 hrs. These engines are built like tanks. I have Chinese diesels that I bought back in the 90’s and they are still working hard. Not only have none of them broken, they hardly even leak. These engines were designed mostly in the 30’s while Listers were designed even earlier and are even more over-designed for durability. I’ve read that Listers were designed for a 50,000 hr. MTBF and that wouldn’t surprise me.
Most customers don’t want to build from parts, that’s why they buy pre-built and tested units like mine. It’s my belief that doing what I do yields the same or better customer satisfaction than building from a bare crankcase would with a lot less time and aggravation.

[BruceM]

We all look forward to hearing from your customers and wish you success.  Rajkot has been a serious challenge for larger volume US importers who had plenty of experience with China importing.  I hope you can crack them, as yes, a ready to run system has a much bigger market. I wonder how you plan to get around the EPA issue?

[Bolton Power Equipment]

I'm hoping to replicate my success with importing from China. Another thing I will do as things ramp is make regular visits to the vendor(s). After more than 30 years of working with and in Asia I've learned how important face time and personal relationships are. I traveled to China once or twice a year to maintain the relationships. The units will be built and tested in India but delivered here as compressors with parts kit from the full build in India for EPA requirements.

[BruceM]

Others have gone to Rajkot as well. Best wishes for your success.

[guest23837]

Are they Chinese Listeroids?

[Bolton Power Equipment]

No they are Indian but the question was raised about how I would manage consistency of quality and how I came to mention the design reliability. I imported Chinese 70 - 80 year old technology for 25 years where there are a lot of similarities. My point was a similar approach.

[Bolton Power Equipment]

I haven’t sold any yet, hence the “ramping up” in my first post. I wouldn’t use a customer as a test bed. I don’t sell equipment unless I’m comfortable with what it is and what it does. I’ve spent the last 4+ years testing to make sure these machines are reliable and what I get from the factory is repeatable. When I started importing the Chinese tractors I didn’t sell them for 3 years because I wanted to run through 2 growing seasons to see how they performed in the fields, plus a couple of winters for cold starts and plowing. 20 years later I still have most of the spares I ordered because they were so reliable. For the Listeroids I wanted to run them at no-load, partial-load and heavy-load for extended periods, 24-36 hours continuously with at least 100 thermal cycles over time. The heads are big and have a lot of mass. I wanted to heat and cool them many times to test the head bolts and make sure they were consistently well within their plastic range so they didn’t lose the head gasket as the parts expanded and contracted. What I found was no leakage, zero. I also wanted to measure oil usage under different load conditions. I wanted to check the particulates in suspension in the lube oil after “X” hours of runtime. Which oil seems to work best?  I wanted to check hot starts and cold starts in the winter, in humid conditions and in summer. The only issue I found on one machine  was an oil pump that wept about ½ teaspoon of oil every 10 hours of run time or so. It was a bad stem seal and being an external pump took about 30 minutes to replace. After 4+ years of testing not a single critical failure, No seal leaks (other than the one pump), no fueling system issues, no abnormal clearance wear (bearing lash), no valve gear issues, no need to adjust the valves, no issues with the transfer valve leaking, no visible smoke at no or low load after break-in and warm-up. They do take 10-20 hours of run-time to seat the rings. Until they do, they smoke a little but after break-in they are remarkably clean. The only issue other than the oil pump was the leather “V” belts which stretch so I replaced them with green stripes. That was about it. So I’m comfortable that these things are pretty much bullet proof and I’m ready to sell and support them.  I’ll tell you one thing I did not expect was the stability of the governors. I expected that the “K” factor of the springs and the masses of the centrifugal weights would be all over the map and the speed would drift a lot under varying loads when used as an A.C. generator. That didn’t happen. I loaded the generators to 50% and only lost about 40 - 50 rpms on a 1,000 rpm engine. That’s only about 2 Hz drop. So setting the governor to run no-load at 62 Hz is well within electrical tolerance and speed limits for the ST alternator head and any residential load. I was amazed at how well the governors worked. I did not expect them  to work that well. Bottom line these Listeroids will make incredibly reliable and stable off-grid and/or emergency power generators.

[BruceM]

If you think Rajkot can put consistently ready to run engines in a crate for you with typical China tractor quality...you are heading for a rude lesson.

Rajkot has not been in the same ballpark as China in consistency; we all wish you'd find someone in China to build Lister CS clones.  Rajkot is even infamous within India, as we learned here from a native many years ago. 

Sample pieces for evaluation will always be the finest they can manage...but not much like the following containers.  Competent and technically skilled people I respect have spent a great deal of time and money hoping to pull up Rajkot standards, and largely failed in getting those new stardards consistently.  Things like cam lobe placement, cam straightness, tappet alignment/binding, casting quality and material, weight of con rod and piston , flywheel key location and mass of counterbalance, finish of machined parts, valve placement/spacing in the head/rocker arm placement, voids in the head casting, idler gear location/lash, finish of cast parts, and cylinder liner protrusion all vary WIDELY.  These are all things the skilled builders here have to check and fix, and I've missed some other common ones.

The CS is a great engine and I'm glad for my Rajkot kit of mostly usable parts with rework, machining and some replacement.  With a reputable dealer like Gary at DES, bad parts are not a risk.  I would have gladly paid more for a China quality product, but that doesn't exist.


 

[dieselspanner]

Hi Graham.

Looks like you've done your homework. Maybe there will be a resurgence of interest in the CS, in the States, best of luck, keep posting!

Cheers
Stef