Woo hoo!

[mbryner]

Berks & Queers, if you're in the UK

Man, if only we had such interesting names in the states.   Forget "Home Depot".   

[Henry W]

I think I will just sit back and see what other intresting comments will be posted.

Henry

[rcavictim]

Berks & Queers, if you're in the UK

Man, if only we had such interesting names in the states.   Forget "Home Depot".   

I remember a large retailer we knew as Pimps'n Queers.  Had a good warranty on good wrench sets.  I've heard of Home Despot being called Home of Pot (using the English translation for the French 'de') and also Home Dumpo.  If you purchase American made audio visual equipment it might be made by Hell and Bowel.  There are more.

[Tom Reed]

Interesting report on the flicker. Must need the weight on the gen shaft too.

[AdeV]

Interesting report on the flicker. Must need the weight on the gen shaft too.

Tom,

I do have an alternator flywheel (from the SoM) - I'll have a look at the feasibility of mounting that on the ST head...

I've taken everything apart again for the moment, while I have my alternator bracket fettled & finished off; and the starter plate/bracket added. Then I just have to decide whether to paint it or not... 

Hopefully, the starter will be able to pull the engine through compression from a standing start. If it can manage that, then I don't need to worry about controlling the decompression lever, other than as an emergency shutdown item. Normal shutdowns I can come up with a mechanism that pushes the rack shut.

[AdeV]

Wooo! Another red letter day on my journey towards CHPdom..... Today, for the first time in untold years, my Lister started with newfangled ELECTRICKERY! Yay!

In honour of this moment, I shot a short video.

Again, runtime was around an hour, raising the water from 13^oC to 41^oC, I shut down at that point mainly 'cos I'm hungry & wanted to go home & have some tea.

I plan to add some instrumentation over the coming week(s), so I can get a feel for what temperature the coolant is actually running at, & so on. Of course, it'll take a couple of days for the water to cool down again (the one downside of using an insulated tank!), so probably not much running tomorrow.

[Tom Reed]

Very, very nice tidy setup and seems to work well too.

[AdeV]

Thanks Tom - it's getting there, I've got a pile of work to do on the electronics side yet, plus I have to work out how to close the rack. I may just mount a solenoid in the same place Lister put theirs, which will operate the decompression lever at the same time as shutting the rack. I do have a genuine solenoid, on the other engine, but that's a 24v device and I'm currently only using 12v components.

I need to do more with the water tank as well. I think it's stratifying quite significantly at the moment. For testing purposes, I may add another pump to simply circulate & mix the tank water, so it's at a more or less uniform temperature.

[lowspeedlife]

Nice Ade, the starter mounted to the gen flywheel seems to work very well. How fast do you think the engine is turning over at start?

  Scott R.

[mobile_bob]

i bet the starter turns the crankshaft faster than i can crank it by hand!

or course that isn't saying much



bob g

[AdeV]

Scott & Bob,

An unloaded test on just the alternator suggested somewhere between 200 and 300rpm; which would translate to about 120rpm at the crank shaft.

However, it must have been faster than I was cranking it by hand, because today it started on the 1st compression stroke, from a standing start, with an air temperature of no more than 5^oC... Had I been hand cranking, it would have needed 5+ compressions and I'd have been really hauling it round as fast as I could go to get her to catch.

I already love my electric start.... 

[rcavictim]

Adev,

That electric start works really nicely!  I did notice that the starter motor itself appears not secured as rigidly as it could be and the downwards deflection motion of the nose end I saw looked like it would take out gear teeth in short order because they appear in the video to go quite a ways off of being parallel.  Other than that all looks awesome.

What wattage is that pilot lamp in the generator head?  It sure seems to draw a lot of power  The engine really hunkered down and started working when you turned on that little light!   

[AdeV]

RCA - you're right, there does look like there's a lot of deflection on the starter; but if you look closely (and _I_ had to watch it closely too), you'll notice that it's the entire generator/starter assy that's moving.

The reason for this is because the generator is still only bolted to the base with 2 bolts, both between the engine, and it's actually floating on the other side. Simple reason, I can't get fit the bolts through the slots until I dismantle it all (again!) and widen the slot out a bit.

That'll be today's job I think.

I don't understand that little light... there's an on/off switch. When you turn it on, the light comes on (if the genny is spinning, obviously), turn it off & the light goes off. However, it makes no difference whatsoever to the output of the generator, which is on regardless of the position of the switch.... What gives?

[rcavictim]

RCA - you're right, there does look like there's a lot of deflection on the starter; but if you look closely (and _I_ had to watch it closely too), you'll notice that it's the entire generator/starter assy that's moving.

The reason for this is because the generator is still only bolted to the base with 2 bolts, both between the engine, and it's actually floating on the other side. Simple reason, I can't get fit the bolts through the slots until I dismantle it all (again!) and widen the slot out a bit.

That'll be today's job I think.

I don't understand that little light... there's an on/off switch. When you turn it on, the light comes on (if the genny is spinning, obviously), turn it off & the light goes off. However, it makes no difference whatsoever to the output of the generator, which is on regardless of the position of the switch.... What gives?

Glad you have a handle on that mechanical deflection.  As for the little light and toggle switch, your question is not the first time that has been asked on a discussion forum.  It appears on all of the ST heads there is a totally separate 6.3 volt winding to run this lamp and running it or not appears to have no difference on the operation of the generator. Having a pilot light that can be tured on or off may be a cultural thing that escapes us here in the west.

[AdeV]

Having now corrected the bolt width on the far side of the bracket, so I can tie it down properly, I discover that the deflection is actually in the plate after all I've "temporarily" cured it with a piece of wood. I won't take bets on how permanent that "temporary" fix is...

Just got me some antifreeze, so finally I don't have to drain the coolant every damn night. There would, IMHO, be nothing more stupid than getting frost damage on an engine which, so far, appears to have none.