New Lister Project

[Startomatic]

this is one SL3 old gal i found in a warehouse recently.

this was her first run after top overhaul.

during this test run, she was just sitting on the temp trolley unbolted and unrestrained in anyway. smooth and well behave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqB6yNJO58

hope you guy enjoy her sweet voice at 1200rpm.

[rcavictim]

You lucky bugger!  

Another piece of treasure rescued from some stupid person who would sell this to the scrapman in a hearbeat for worthless fiat paper to be shipped to China for melt down. This is as good as it gets from here on out folks.  We all need to pay attention!

[Startomatic]

yup...i count my lucky stars.

just look at her sad state of affair when found. with all the corrosive fertiliser!

[rcavictim]

You did the right thing saving that engine!  Now the PO has more room for fertilizer! 

That's quite a V-belt shieve on the engine shaft!

[Derb]

Hi Fellas. After trolling through utube checking out all the listers and in particular one purporting to start on LPG or Propane, I decided to give it a go. After warming the old girl up and placing it on idle, I introduced LPG via a propane type plumbers torch. Sure enough - up went the revs and it ran nicely without any odd characteristics. Shut down the injector pump totally and the engine would stop running. I suppose if the price of LPG is really cheap and diesel is expensive, it would be worth using the diesel as a catalyst to fire the engine and use the LPG or natural gas to do the work. I have no idea what the minimum diesel/LPG ratio would be for extended running - heavy trucks are using this technology on-road in Australia today. Bit of a laugh though to play with it. Cheers.

[Carlb]

Derb,

this is my listoroid running on diesel/natural gas.  It is currently setup to run at 15% Diesel and 85% natural gas at 1.5kw which is about what we need normally just to run most stuff in the house during a power outage (this is a backup generator only and will not run our central air conditioning).  If the load increases the amount of natural gas remains the same and the governor opens the rack  adding more diesel as need to make up for the additional needed power.

Carl 

[camillitech]

Hi guy's,

been visiting this excellent forum for a while now and just 'lurking' and I hate to be controversial on my first thread, but when I read this I nearly fainted 

No not concrete,   don't do it!  The vibration will produce stress cracks in manifolds, mounts  and other castings  in short order, and will telegraph through the earth no matter how many tons of rock you try to bolt it to.   You have to let her shake a little.   Use rubber engine mounts, or put it on a little trailer on pneumatic tyres.  Solid mounting is bad news.  Great little engine BTW. I have one here as my standby set. Mine is a 1976; it has 1500 hours on it. 

Whilst rubber or any kind of flexible mounting is fine for standby, occasional, intermittent or mobile use it is MOST DEFINITELY a big no no for 'off grid' long term use and must be avoided at all costs.



This is how it should be done according to RA Lister and this is how it must be done if you want decades, not years of trouble free motoring out of your Lister. One ton of concrete for a single and two for a triple or twin.

Trust me, I speak from experience of living 'off grid' for 25 years and from having personal friends who served with Lister for decades. Rubber mounts may be fine in boats or for 'mains failure' sets in shopping malls, hospitals and police stations where noise is an issue but if you don't want your manifolds to crack, your internal injector pipes to leak and your wiring to work harden then it has to be concrete.



This is my 1978 ST2 generator running with a coin on the rocker cover, not a glass of water  Before I bought it 15 years ago it had run 12 hours a day 365 days a year and has still not had the heads off, it has never cracked a manifold, broken a wire or been rewound. The only things I've ever replaced are the AC and DC brushes. This I know for a fact because I know the man who installed it new and serviced it from day one.

Having said all that my main set, Harry, a HR2 is rubber mounted but he only ever starts infrequently since we installed wind and hydro some years ago. If he were run daily he's be firmly bolted to Scotland via three tons of concrete 

Thanks for a great forum and sorry to disagree but this is a really important issue for LR's, SR's, ST's and HR's, of other models I have little knowledge.

Cheers, Paul

 

[Jedon]

My SR2 came with an 800lb concrete block and aluminum and hard rubber washers, I've been using the washers although the rubber has cracked, should I remove them?

[camillitech]

Morning Jeddon,

most definitely if you run your SR daily, and judging by your previous posts I think you do, unless you got the Harris turbine sorted 

You can try a little experiment once you do, harden up the mounting bolts and start her up, you should be able to put a wide coin on the rocker box like mine when she's running, though 800lb me be a little light for this test. Either way as your genny is running just back two of the mounting nuts off a quarter of a turn and watch your coin fall off, or at least you'll notice the vibration increase noticeably.

PS, love your video and SR2Tims 

Here's mine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdkcO9tz4dg just bought it for £700, only 50hours use in 39 years. After having lain idle for ten years it started first time, it can be forgiven for being a little smoky as the fuel inside the injectors could have been as old as the genny 

Cheers, Paul

[TimSR2]

I used to have a little Ducati Diesel single genset that I built...  I put it on a wooden frame initially;  it always loosened up the frame bolts after a couple hours.  Then all the wires loosened; I had all these random vibration failures.  So I put it on a massive steel mount and bolted it down to a concrete base---and the exhaust pipe broke off, and then the gen end failed from a worn through field wiring insulation. Then I replaced the gen- end and the Starter generator failed from a rubbed through winding, and the motor mounts broke.  Then I welded the motor mounts on and they broke again, the fuel line cracked and fell off...  it got pretty overwhelming.  Then I found out about rubber mounts!  And I have never looked back. 

[camillitech]

That's a Ducati Tim, different beast altogether  Mate of mine has just bought a TS2 for his 'Off grid' property and was phoning me for advice. As it's a model I know little about I phoned up 'Mr Lister' another friend of mine who's been working on Lister's since he left school and they were still making ST's

What's 'the beef' on the TS says I, "great engine, good for 80,000h, keep loaded or the bores will glaze and it will pish out oil" what about faults, "later ones prone to rear oil seal failure, the charging system they fitted on some of them was cr4p and the nylon governor bush is prone to wear" what about rubber mounts says I "this model was designed for rubber mounts but after a couple of years they go soft get covered in oil/diesel, the copper work hardens and the exhaust snaps, PUT IT IN CONCRETE"

If it works for you Tim that's all that matters.

Cheers, Paul