Bearing inspection

[fabricator]

It looks great, but I don't like to see the copper used in the fuel system...  Particularly on a thumper of an engine such as this.  Copper work hardens, gets brittle and cracks.  Would hate for you to walk in to your engine room after an unexplained shutdown to find the contents of your fuel system have found their way to the floor...  For fuel on or around an engine, I would reccomend steel, stainless steel, braided stainless steel covered hose, or just plain hose...

Oh believe me I know copper, and I make bio, so a 15 gallon spill is like a drip compared to some of the bio disasters I've had, I always have about 10 55 gallon drums of sawdust on hand, in case of just such an emergency.
I'm watching it very closely, hopefully since it's all clamped to the engine and all vibrating together as a unit it might survive, it also runs 24/7 so it's always at a constant temperature.

[sailawayrb]

Thanks Bruce.  Yes, the fuel valve switches to diesel if the heat rope fails to provide at least 150 deg F (either because the heat rope just fails or the 120VAC fails), if the SVO tank gets low, or if the 12VDC power supply used by the controller fails.  No, I have not experienced any significant carbon build up on injector tip or head.  I think you know that I also run light propane fumigation when burning SVO.  In fact, I think I can say that I get much less build up with this combination than when I ran straight diesel.  However, I only ran straight diesel for the first several months while the engine was breaking in so this might not be ideal experiment.

Hi Casey, I discussed this project several years ago before this Microcogen site existed on George's Utterpower site and likely on the Lister Engine Forum too.  You can see photos and read the system descriptions here:

http://listerenginegallery.com/main.php?g2_itemId=351

When I initially started preheating SVO, I only heated to 230 deg F.  Given that the injector line is under high pressure, I didn't see any issue going to 350 deg F since SVO will not vaporize at this high pressure and this has been confirmed by not having any issues after several years.  However, I am certain the 350 deg F SVO vaporizes very nicely after immediately departing the injector.

Bob B.