Micro CoGen.

Thanks Bob, We will put these requests into the pressure cooker and see what comes out.

dieselgman
Diesel Electric

Remember the business model in India is "Cottage Industry" - the main difficulty remains in achieving some form of consistency from any of the suppliers. We use an engineering firm (with generations of experience behind them) to do Quality Control for products we import but their suppliers remain erratic and inconsistent at best. This is especially true for procurement of items in less than 1,000s of piece counts. The largest and most capable firms do not seem oriented to retail level business for export. The quality for our imports is significantly better than what is retained for domestic use in their country and we still cannot achieve anything close to the Dursley originals. There are also Indian government controls and incentives that are very hard to overcome... for instance their tax situation for exports to insure that key castings and components are not exported individually but always as a completed engine. We have no real financial incentive to try and procure the perfect clone engine, especially in light of current US politics and restrictions. Now, if we want to discuss development of high quality individual pieces, there is substantial interest and investment available. We have done this for the modern Lister Diesels across the board and continue to refine this market. The same could be done for the CS types if there was sufficient demand proven. A complex and thorny puzzle involved here!

dieselgman
Diesel Electric

Crankcase vacuum is the standard "test" in a Lister to determine engine condition. It is measured in inches with a manometer as suggested and is often included as standard equipment in a generator room to indicate when service is required. I am not certain about the specifications on the original CS product line but on newer 1800 rpm machinery it is from 1 to 3 inches...

We have an interest in developing quality parts... an induction hardened bore is of interest - we can investigate. Some input has already indicated that the Lister hard chrome bore lining did not survive WMO. On the alloy pistons, much has already been done. This develoment includes LM13 high silicon alloy in the piston body, a steel top ring-land with keystone fire-ring and chrome moly on SS for that important wear part. Most of this has been done for the higher speed Lister industrial engines, piston wear is a much higher issue with many of these - especially pump-jack applications. Our results have been proven in the field, but only with clean diesel fuels in DI engine types.

dieselgman
Diesel Electric

I used to live off-grid on an Alaskan mountaintop... ran the old Listers 24-7 and learned to love them. One thing leads to another... pretty soon I've decided to apply this knowledge and operate a business. So, for the past 15 years I have been working on power generation - mostly Lister stuff - in Alaska and in the past 5 years expanded the operation to include warehousing in Kansas for easier distribution. Over that time period I have developed parts sources and quietly built inventory in Alaska and Kansas to the point that we now have some very substantial stocks and capabilities. We buy up old inventories and have purchased a number of Lister dealerships, one of which we maintain and operate in central Kansas. Why this forum? Not just to develop business but mainly to learn as much as possible about good ways to utilize the technology and provide better support for our clients. LEF being down prompted my most recent move to the cogeneration forum. I am all about Lister equipment but share an equal interest in small self-sufficient systems, this is a great place to learn and develop my own ideas.

Gary - dieselgman
Diesel Electric

Right, the W designation in any of the Lister model numbers usually means water cooled. The STW uses the same block/pistons/displacement as the air-cooled counterpart but has a water jacket around the jugs and heads as well as water pump and sometimes a water-cooled exhaust manifold.

Dieselgman
Diesel Electric

How recent? If the STW units were on lifeboats, we could be interested. Otherwise they can be ruined from the inside because of corrosion - sea-water cooling can be brutal over time.

Dieselgman
Diesel Electric

Those guys can be pretty difficult to work with, we usually flash a lot of cash and have our local guys pushing through the usual layers of intermediate people involved. Most deals are spur of the moment kinds of things. It is possible to buy some pretty nice equipment there, especially off of the lifeboats and that tends to be the best equipment they have available.

dieselgman
Diesel Electric

Lister used a hard chrome liner in their originals - they called the process "Listard". As I understand it, the chrome would wear off after a time and had to be re-processed to renew the cylinder. Special softer iron rings were used with this style cylinder. The regular plain iron cylinders are just sacrifice parts that are either bored or tossed once worn beyond tolerances. They were not hardened nor specially heat treated as far as I can discern. We can specify the chrome bore in our current parts available for the 6/1 and 8/1. To my knowledge, this is the only way to get a hardened bore for these engine types.

dieselgman
Diesel Electric

Wow, that is a far cry from our old buried oil drum trick. We have installed a lot of Alaskan power systems where the folks wanted to lose the generator noise as much as possible. The buried oil drum would hide about 99% of the exhaust note and cost next to nothing except labor to get it buried. I would think that the biggest associated problem would be keeping track of your engine condition, especially fuel injection, a clean burn would never clog the system - however, we have seen a stuck nozzle completely clog up a system with heavy soot before the problem was identified and fixed.

dieselgman

Diesel Electric - gsj@gci.net

I did a project a few years back involving on-disc (CD) archival and retrieval of web-site content. I don't see why this could not be done for the LEF content at least. I have always referred all my contacts this direction for the wealth of experience and different perspectives that abound around the hobby - and sometimes profession.

I for one, would invest in keeping the resource available even if the ongoing discussion was shifted elsewhere.

Dieselgman

Diesel Electric - gsj@gci.net

Yep, I thought them fairly interesting. We buy up old Lister originals from the ship-breakers in India, sometimes get some pretty good stuff. I will be checking these out and will try and post some pictures and details once we get into those units. They are based on the venerable ST2 diesel - same exact footprint, horsepower equal to a single at 1200 rpm.

dieselgman

Diesel Electric

Did you know that Hamworthy made a nice little air-compressor out of a 2 cylinder Lister? They basically set up one cylinder to power the thing on diesel and the second cylinder for compressing air. This has been proven technology in marine applications for decades. Compressed air starting has long been common in many marine propulsion engines. I have a few of the Hamworthy/Listers around in our stocks and might play a bit with this to see how much modification was actually done to make this work. Anyone interested?

dieselgman

gsj@gci.net

Did you get the needed details for your ST1 Terry?

That unit should perform from 1200 to 2500 rpm and be capable of approximately 8 horsepower at the top end. Feel free to contact me if you would like more detailed data.

Dieselgman

Diesel Electric gsj@gci.net

clone engine parts kits 6/1, 8/1 and twins. All components available - midwest location. Diesel Electric - authorised Lister Dealer. Largest stocks in North America for all original Lister engines, large engine inventory and used parts depot.

Best Regards,

http://diesel-electric.us/

Dieselgman - gsj@gci.net