The dawn of a cogen system

[Tom Reed]

Amongst the listeroid crowd the lack of flywheel mass on flywheels of electrical plants is fondly known as flicker. Looks like a real good choice for co-gen. How deep is the spare parts supply that your friend has? You might want to stock up while parts are available.

[Equine]

Looks like the head is bin very hot ,ore run on very old oil.
In the pics of yhe flywheel is there a crack in the flywheel ore is it dirt?

I noticed that too, but when I examined it it turned out to be a flaw in the painting. I was rather relieved

[Equine]

Amongst the listeroid crowd the lack of flywheel mass on flywheels of electrical plants is fondly known as flicker. Looks like a real good choice for co-gen. How deep is the spare parts supply that your friend has? You might want to stock up while parts are available.

Thanks!

And yes I have considered it, though I was told he has plenty of parts. But one never knows...Better to be safe than sorry I guess!

[Equine]

Just a little additional info:
I'm planning on using a microcontroller based control system, probably based on the Arduino platform. I plan on having a web-access option for the control system. Most of the engine's "input parameters" would be controlled by the system, to maintain a stable RPM.

As mentioned before I'm planning on extracting heat from both the water cooler, and the exhaust. Both would transfer heat to a common hot water tank. To assure that the engine doesn't overheat, there would be a three way valve in the coolant line, allowing the heat to be transferred to an automotive heat exchanger, disposing of the excess heat into the atmosphere. This, of course, would also be controlled by the microcontroller.

While this digital control is nice and practical, it's not without flaws, so I'm also planning on incorporating "hard wired" safeties, to prevent the engine from self-destructing. I have found some rather nice ideas here on the forums.

A very effective muffler system (for both the engine it self and the exhaust), and preferably a way to reduce the smell of the exhaust gases is an absolute must because my neighbors are...let's just say they are sensitive and already think (even though I never started the engine...) I'll intentionally disturb their peace and make their life miserable . I'm considered a bit stupid for doing this project .

[Tom Reed]

Welcome to the club! How's the wife taking it???

I was thinking about your hopper and wonder if there is enough room inside to put a heat exchanger inside of it? That way it would not need to be sealed and in case of an over heat condition the water/coolant in the hopper would just boil off as designed.

[Equine]

Oh no wife yet! Just two mares, and they don't mind!

I'd rather seal the hopper to be honest, because the evaporation of the water in the hopper would take a lot of heat away. I was thinking of a safety pressure relief valve.

[Equine]

Hey Folks!

I took the cylinder head off to see what shape the cylinder, piston, valves are in!

Here is the result. LOTS of scale all over the place! And of course plenty of soot, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.






Here's what came out of the cylinder head:



I took a couple of pictures of the piston's surface and the inside of the cylinder.





Plety of soot, but not that bad! The valve push-rods also came out, they are in fine shape. Not that too much can happen to those! The piston doesn't "wobble" inside the cylinder, I tried moving it around (to the sides) with a screwdriver but it didn't move at all. The cylinder inside is nice and shiny.



I then took a couple of shots of the valve discs. The intake disc seems to have a nice shiny contact surface, but the same can not be said for the exhaust disc! It's covered in an uneven layer of soot. That can pretty much cause the loss of compression and the "suckback" through the exhaust, which I discovered last time. (top picture is the intake, bottom is the exhaust)




I reassembled the whole thing again, so it's not in pieces (and humidity doesn't start rusting things). Didn't fasten anything too much so when the time comes to clean it, or to take it to a shop, it'll be easy to take apart.

I'll of-course need a new head-seal when I'll be putting it all back together again after cleaning/fixing everything. The old one looks rather worn .

That's all for now!

[billswan]

Well looks like you have lots to clean up.

It looks to be direct injected into a cup in the piston.

Is the piston cast or aluminum?

May be all you need is a new injector and a valve job to get the compression up?

If the cylinder is in good shape that is.

Of course there is so much filth every where a full clean up down to the bare block is in order.

Good luck Equine!

Billswan

[Equine]

Hi!

I don't know what the piston is made of, I'll have to ask around for that...or simply test it with a magnet .

The cylinder looks to be in a fine shape, but after I clean everything I'll probably try to do a compression measurement. If after the valves and everything are in order and the compression is still low, then it's probably the piston/cylinder, or the seal rings.

I intend to get all this crud out of the engine. I'm gradually taking it apart, checking the parts, etc. Taking the flywheels off will be bit of a challenge. Then I can remove the fuel pump, the oil pump, the crank shaft, piston, etc... Lots to do!

Thanks!

[mobile_bob]

get as much of the scale dug out as you can, and after you reassemble and have it running
add some muriatic acid to the cooling water, and run it for a while.

drain and flush it, and probable repeat the acid

drain and rinse well with fresh water, and then add a box of baking soda
run and then drain and rinse twice

all that scale is very hard on the engine, an eighth inch of scale on a cylinder liner is the equivalent of 4 inches of cast iron
in heat transfer, easy to see how a liner can score from overheating.

the poor old engine has been road hard and put away wet, as they  say.

bob g

[Equine]

Thanks!

Aye, for a little while I hoped that scale is actually a protective layer, someone told me it might be (to prevent rusting) . But that's BS . That was before I opened it up and saw the chips. That's just plain ole' scale. I would've used distilled water to cool the thing if I was the one using it...Though I'm quite sure most of the people using these engines every day, back in the old days, didn't know the first thing about diesel engines, and related things.

Plenty of cleaning work ahead for me!

[mobile_bob]

preferably you want no scale, no deposits, clean cast iron in the interior cooling passages

scale should not be seen as a protective layer, thats what antifreeze and dca additives are for, they
protect against corrosion and rust.

i would acidize the crap out of that thing, until i thought i had it clean and they probably one more time to be sure.

before you put the head back on, you might take it all apart and set it down in a 5 gallon plastic bucket and add muriatic acid
and let it eat the crap out of the head passages, you could pick it out and dig around to help get it all loosened up, and when you are done
you could use a garden hose to wash it out well. inspect for clean and redip if necessary.

the spent acid is good for certain plants too, plants like rhodendrons love an acid soil, or you can dump some baking soda in it to neutralize it
the best you can and simply flush it down the toilet.  unless you are on a septic, in which case you might not want to do that.

i would want to be sure to get the scale out of that head, if it breaks loose and clogs a water port you can be assured that the head will have a hot spot and that is never a good thing.

bob g

[Equine]

Thanks for the advice!

My goal is to clean every part of this engine down to bare metal. After that maybe sanding (just the outsides of course), or something like that. I plan on giving it a new paint job.

Next thing to do is to get this baby on a proper wooden stud or something. Then I can drain the oil from it, and open the crank case, to take a look. I'm going to wait with taking it completely apart until it's spring, probably.