Author Topic: Thinking about buying this Lister Petter TS2 with Marathon Head. Thoughts?  (Read 1597 times)

giannid

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Hello everyone.  I'm new to the forum and have always been intrigued by the Lister Petter engines.  Found a guy selling one with a Marathon head on it.  Used to be a light tower and was converted to a generator.  Went and took a look at it and it seems to run pretty good.  Started up pretty quick in freezing weather.  Only listened to it run for a half hour or so and we hooked up a 220 welder to it to test it.  Didn't seem like it even felt the load at all.  Seems to be in pretty good shape.  I'd have to rework it if I bought it and put some casters on it to push it around my shop. 

Don't really know much about these  engines and generators.  He's asking $1500 for it but he's been trying to sell it for two weeks.  I'd like to use it for backup power for my workshop, power for camp and backup for my whole house generac, if it ever dies.  Anything I should look out for?  Are the Marathon heads considered good units?  He said he believed the light tower had 1600 hours on it when he dismantled it.  Thoughts?

dieselgman

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Excellent little setup there. The air-cooled Listers will last a very long time and the Marathon generator head is top-shelf for sure. Price seems very reasonable for a good running set like that.

It will be noisy and consume quite a bit of fuel whether or not any load is present. Load her up!

dieselgman
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BruceM

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+1  Just look up the retail price of a Marathon generator head in that size and you'll see the asking price for the whole set is a bargain.  The waveform on a Marathon head is so (low THD) perfect it's typically described as "voluptuous" sine. 

As Gary noted, you'll kill a diesel engine if you have it running for hours without a significant load.  Sometimes that makes for a bad match to an application when an inverter generator or small LPG generator might be a better match.