Micro CoGen.

Hi all,

Some might have read a thread or two about my involvement with Lister slow turners in the Bahamas, I just wanted to point out to folk down here that I have a pretty large stock of parts here to help with the repair of RA Lister CS and VA series engines available. In stock, in Abaco. I also have 3 VA engines with SoM beds that will require checking over and new fuel systems available. Sheet metal is in semi rough shape, but nothing that cant be repaired.

Parts were imported direct from India and are reasonably priced, duty paid of course.

Send me a private message for more info.

Rom

Hey All,

Been thinking about auto shutdown systems. I was wondering what everyone has been doing. I have seen a few with murphy switches and such, and I have one here that hasnt been installed. I have seen a few systems on here, but cant seem to find much at this time. Can someone provide a link with photos of the mounting of these systems and such? Hell I have 8" of bronze fittings to just make a mount for the sensor for the radiator fan, where is the murphy sensor going and such, without having 15 pounds of bronze hanging off the end of the water jacket manifolds?

Thanks
Rom

Hey everyone,

Started a new thread on the Lister Engine forum about a VA that my brother and I are bringing back to life.

Click http://listerengine.com/smf/index.php?topic=6366.0 see some photos if you are interested. Image heavy.

Rom

Ok, I got bored just now and called my dad over. I figured, after running 50 - 60 gallons of crap WmO through my simple centrifuge I would check n see what kind of build up we have had.

Well, poor Mr Lister is quite well, I am on his power right now, just cause I can. How can you argue with someone that says that!?

Neways here is a vid with it thumping away, and me scraping a bit of crap out of the centrifuge bowl. If you cant tell by my horrible Iphone recording, it is almost 1/4inch thick of crud from about 55 gallons of WmO from a outboard service shop on the next island.




Rom

Well they have restored power to our house now for the second time since Irene passed through. We had power back since Sunday 11pm, and Monday around 4pm a lightning storm came through and blew a fuse to our transformer leg. Do to more lines being down on the next island, they left it to this evening to come and finally restore power.

Just a couple of notes. One, do not think you can run a centrifuge on the same line that you would normally run the battery charger that charges the battery for the rad fan.
I ran the centrifuge on Monday afternoon for an hour to make a batch of fuel, and when I came back I saw the overflow bottle pissing a bit. I must say I didnt pay it much mind beyond that, just plugged the charger back in and set it to 20amp charge.

A couple hours later, after dark, I went to check the fuel level with my trusty iphone 4 flashlight app, and as soon as I aimed the light at the shed you could see the smoke bellowing out the door! I ran inside to find what looked like the paint flaking off the exhaust sides of the heads, and smoke rising off of both exhaust valves. Well being that I am not the government run electric corp and I hate turning the lights off on my customers, I poured some 40w oil on each valve set(I know, I know...), nearly drowning uhm, and ran across to the street, up the road to where the tranferswitch between generators and the Broadcrown, started it up, threw the switch, ran back to the Lister and shut it down.

I let it sit for an hour or so with a fan blowing on it. Opened the crankcase and let the smoke outta there, poured in some 40w. Heated some water and filled the radiator, and swung her over and fired back up.

Well it turns out it didnt cook the paint off, just discoloured it and the decals on the front of the cylinder blocks. Still runs like a champ.

Well that was the exciting bit, I have put almost 60hrs on Mr Lister, and just as my fancy 110v hour meter hit 100, it reset to zero! Pain in the butt I tell ya.

Last I fiddled with the governor, I ended up with some hunting, like an old jimmy 671 or 871 would do on startup. Well after 60hrs of near constant running, that has gone, along with excessive dip when a load comes on.

I havent mucked about with machining the tappets yet either, Only the exhaust on cylinder one would somewhat spin when I received the engine. Well now both on that cylinder are spinning like crazy and exhaust on number 2 has started going once and a while. That inlet will have to be machined me thinks to sort it.

Quick Vid of all the fun we were having.


My condolences to all affected.

Rom

Edit... Sorry for posting in the RA Lister Section... Changed title to suit.

So after many delays and general slackness on my behalf, and in response to 6.20 a gallon on diesel in my Broadcrown genset, I have finished the twin version of a fabbed SoM frame. I must say I didnt take any photos, but here are a couple of the rig running again. A very temporary rig and not even close to a clean install as the many I have seen done by the fine folk on here.

I have a problem with doing things twice, so thats why until I feel the shed out and decide on how best to run the system, it will just have dangeling wires and such layin about.


Here he is, Mr Lister running, minding his own business. Running somewhere around half load, I managed to install an old KwH meter and forgot an ammeter. I must say they came up with a better way to mount the water pump nowadays. I have seen them mounted on the crankcase door, which would save a load of plumbing for a start. Rocketboy (who's website about his set put me on this lister road) and Cujet use those fancy powered pumps, grunfos, which i will eventually swap the old Indian rig for.
No thermostat so when first started she huffs and puffs smoke. but by the time I throw the house switch and come back to the engine to throw its breaker, its cleared up.



Quick ugly setup of the Centrifuge, I currently mix in 5 gallon batches, so the jerry can it drains into doesnt overflow. Somewhere in the range of 4 1/2 gallons WMO to 1/2 gal of diesel. I havent setup the raw power oil heater yet, so I suppose the oil is not as clean as it could be, but hell, for the price of diesel, and the price of parts that I have directly imported from India, it doesnt really upset me. If I made 2000 hours as our friend spencer did on the same set of gear I would be more than happy.

Very primitive work right now. I pull that alloy tank off its mount, throw a funnel in the top and pour the misc gallon milk jugs of oil that people leave in my driveway in, along with enough diesel to wash the oil out of the funnel. Then lift the tank back to place and open the ball valve to start flow to a running centrifuge.

After that oil is cleaned, I pull the lister tank down from its place and fill it up. It is a plastic clubcar golfcart tank, with a sender that one day I'll modify to have trip the Murphy gauge set that I havent installed yet, and shut the engine down by the system I have not installed yet.

The engine is still not quite right, as it sits, the number 2 cylinder is carrying the engine atm, running about 50* hotter than the main cylinder, and hunts with load changes. I have been experimenting with utterpowers governor mod, and havent got in right yet. I believe the spring is part of the problem, I have a few spares and shall go through them during testing.

Another one of those things, not enough time to sort everything out. But it runs everything I want, and the UPS units take care of the important things.

A little PS. In the centrifuge pic you can see the solar pump for the hot water heater, lil Laing pump that runs directly from a panel. Great pump, been there for nearly 3 years and I havent messed with it. You notice the soldered lines, it does come threaded female aswell, and I order one, but alas it came sweat type. It was in a box labeled threaded so I did not complain to the vendor, nor did I return because of the cost being in the Bahamas.

Rom

Rereading some old messages and topics, I ran across some requests by WGB for photos of the island I live on. Well I am not there atm, and do not have any photos on this machine, but I found these ones to get started.

http://marinas.com/view/overview/318_Man-O-War_Cay_AB

Rom

I was following along with the troubles with the CA Epa, and after looking through Veggie's site, I was wondering about the Eccentric plunger oil pump for the GM90. How reliable is this unit? And can we use the crank from a GM90 in a standard listeroid to pressurize the crankpin? Can we get them for twin cylinders?

Just a thought
Rom

So, being that we are getting to the summer here in the Bahamas, with a government run power company, and with 50% of the national budget going to the civil servants, the power outages have begun!!

So I went down to start the primary backup genset, a Broadcrown 19KW, and the battery is flat! Oh the joys of computers and all those status lights always on on the panel.

No jumpers, not that prepared. Went down to the Lister shed and ripped off the rest of my experimental powersteering pump driving a OC-20. Checked the levels, squirted some oil, swung her over and away she went! been sitting for 6months, no draining fuel or treatment, just shut her down.

Been running for about an hour, and knock on wood she is still holding together. I have a few UPS units in the house so if something goes wrong, They will carry on enough to get me down to the engine.

Running a 1hp well pump on n off, 4 fridges n freezers, a 2 ton A/c, and 2 tvs. Not to mention of course the laptop.

Rom

Morning all,

I hope everyone did well over the holidays.

I am looking for a couple pics of a VA cylinder barrel. The part itself would be best.

The engines here have been assembled so I cant get a good shot of one atm.

Many Thanks
Rom

I was having a look around the net and on our various forums and have read many people talking about safety shutdowns on the Listeroids, but I have never seen a photo of how people did it. Anyone interested in posting a photo or a lil blurb on how their system works?

Many Thanks
Rom

Taking Mobile_Bob's advice, I figured to post something.

I live on a small island in the Abacos, in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. A very small island, maybe a mile and a half long, and a 1/2 mile wide. I had been visiting here for a while now, and moved here a few years ago.

Maybe 10 years ago, JT, the diesel mechanic came home from another isle with a Lister VA with the cast iron startomatic base, no alternator. It came from a semi famous bar and grill on the next island called "Nippers". www.nippersbar.com. Anyhow, this thing had run nippers pretty much since it opened until mains power was supplied, which I guess is 7-8 years, and its ultimate demise was the A/c slip ring coming loose in the alternator. It went to a shop and was never seen again.

I saw it run once when it arrived, and it was in a lil trouble, compression was low, injector was on the way out and such. They had been running it on old veg oil filtered through a sock. He basically through it in the corner and it sat... through hurricanes and all the weather mother nature gives us.

Fast forward to this time last year.

A cousin of mine was doing some generator repairs for a fella on another isle... when what should happen? The power goes out, which is nearly a daily occurance. This older lady comes out of her house to my cousin and asks him to start her generator... which happens to be a Lister VA with a 4.25 SoM head and the C-channel steel base. SoM assisted starting isnt working so he hand starts it.
He heads back to his job jabbering about how he got it going on the first try, and the bloke says that he has one aswell, and it was outta service from a flywheel coming loose, and would my cousin want it.

Needless to say this engine appeared by his house a week or two later and he wanted me to inspect it. Rusted and crusted, hadnt been fired up in 5-6 years, and a torn up crankshaft with a hourglassed drive flywheel, we realised she was in a bad way.

Back down to JT. I asked about sourcing a junk engine or some parts for this old thing. He starts off with 'very expensive' and gives me a number of a fella named John that collected them all as they were removed from service. As people started with central airconditioning, many of these plants were replaced, which many regret now I'm sure. After weeks of trying to contact him, I found that he had a crankshaft, the last one imported into the country by the Lister dealership. He couldnt/still hasnt been able to locate it.

I started looking on ebay and just general google searches where I found Power Anand, utterpower and the listerengine.com forum.

After reading the forum from the oldest post to the newest, reading all of the utterpower site and their CD, and discussing with JT and my cousin on their needs, I made an order from Power Anand for a 16/2 and enough parts to save it and the 2 VAs from the scrapheap. Also made an order from Joel Koch for a 12kw and 5kw ST head. Ordered the serpentine pulley from George at utterpower.

At this time, I have the PowerAnand 16/2 driving the 12kw with a powersteering pump from a Mitsubishi driving a Dieselcraft OC20. It pumps the used motor oil through a copper coil on the exhaust and then through the centrifuge. Except for my nerves being shot over a blown oil line for the centrifuge, all is well on that system.

The VA that JT owns required its sump scooped out, the oil strainer was almost completely submerged in crap from a lifetime with little maintinence. The Bryce injector and pump were frozen and ended up replaced with the Bosch Mico units from Power Anand. We did manage to free up the orginials though. The head was packed tight with sand, that was blown into it over ten years of hurricanes. The valves were replaced and seats were installed in the head, for they had sunk more than an 1/8th of an inch into the head. A new alloy piston and ring set and a hone and the engine is running., and is in the process of having the ST5KW fitted to the SoM base.

The Va of my cousin was torn right down for painting. New bush bearing housings were installed with modern oil seals, new crankshaft and an oil filter. The hourglassed flywheel was machined to a taper bush for a rediculous amount of money and is ready to be reinstalled. He is restoring on weekends so it is still not running.

And that is the short verison of that story. 

Rom