yanmar clone...slow speed water cooled conversion

[glort]

Hello focodiesel

Steve Unruh - multi-times the acquirer of the wrong engine at the wrong time for the wrong use.

Steve,
I always find your posts interesting but often very hard to digest or understand your overall point.   Not the case here.

I think you made some excellent points and while many fly in the face of my own, I think what you say is very poignant and insightful. At the intended level of engineering the OP is looking at, no use building something that does not suit the intended fuel source.

Wise words from a man of experience and Knowledge!

[glort]

yes a large portion of my fuel is wmo type fuels, I have had success with 50/50 in warm weather, and am working on fuel heating for cold weather and to try to run higher ratios, I currently have more wmo coming in than I can use.

I have played minimally with WMO and can also get an endless supply but in the face of also being able to get all the veg I want ( and got someone offering me 3-4000L a WEEK if I want it a few days ago) I prefer that simply because it stinks so much less, spills clean up easier and clothes are somewhat more recoverable from spills.

What I did play a bit with is "Cracking" the WMO. There are a lot of people whom have developed this where they make their own diesel ( or petrol) fuel as they are really just refining what is already in the stuff.
To cut it short, I got a stainless beer keg, tapped in a 1/2" copper line that came out the top, went back under the keg in the flame of the WVO burner I built to act as the superheater portion then bubbled the vapours out in a container of water to condense them.
The resulting output of this crude as it gets system was to produce what I could best describe as a petrol/ diesel mix.  It would light from a flame in a shallow dish but not burn for long before going out. The output worked really well in my 165 which is my main test engine.

You could Crack an amount of your oil and then blend it with the straight stuff to save you buying fuel to cut the straight oil. I think you would be able to use a lot more straight WMO than 50% on the testing I did.  The other possibility is if you can get something like tranny and brake type fluids. These tend to be a lot thinner than wmo and may help reduce the amount of dino you need as well.

Have you tried blending with ULP? My little engine wont start on SVO in winter but with 10% ULP , no worries at all.  I tested and found recently 5% ulp gave a power increase of using straight Bio which was a surprise. Needless to say the 5%  also had better power than SVO. I don't know about the fuel energy and it's irrelevant to you but the ULP May save you in the amount of blending fuel you have to buy to get the engine to work with the WMO.

Simple cracking of the oil would no doubt save you even more.

For outright heating, You could build a small Burner that will run happily on any liquid combustible.  You could scale down  this design

to output anything from 1 KWh to 100 and beyond.  There is also the " Uritz" type burner that is totally self sufficient and requires nothing but a fuel source and a good Chiminey draft.

[SteveU.]

Good Morning focodiesel
Thank you for the waste motor oil fuel fill in that helps a lot.
Your Yamar clones IF you actually can get cylinder bore/pistons and rings and replacement injectors and pumps then makes sence. This is the superiority of the wet sleeved German origin Yanmar/Kubota/Changfa water cooled horizontal single cylinder derived engines.
Very good statement of wny a fellow would NOT want to go grid dependent.  Sounds like from a man in-the-know. I speak as a fellow now locked into a radiometric digital tattle-tail meter. Even before these not a single person here was legally able to $$$$$$ challenge all of the hurdles that our grid supplier and there workers Unions would through up. And now with radio digetal meters they will hunt down all of the unregistered back feeders too as a 'war on drugs" Fed paid for program.
Well fellows wanting to still believe in grid connect "the Future" coming to you too. Mr focodiesel is absolutly correct about this.

YES on your reponse to Henrt's connecting rod length vs cranshaft stoke as related to piston side thrust pressure and friction/wear.
And these along with bore to stoke ratios determining actual piston linear travel distances per rpm are greater factors than just an overly easy mathmatical simplistic " wear rate squares with doubling of speed". THAT doesn not even account for the much better LOWER controlled wear rate that the more even heat distirbution your proposed to water cool convert will confer. ONLY the air-cooled manufactures like aircraft and Duetz industrial staying back to larger dispalcement  lower thermal stresses building can come close to matching the longevity that water coolingby itself gives.

On  the designed in geometical angles, thrusts and liniear wear fectors search up these actiual real world applications:
178 and 330 rpm big ships engines; many industrial large genrator sets IC piston engines manufacturers specs. Look at thier linear rated piston speeds. Compare thiers to calulated or quoted more common American V-8 eingine piston speeds. The SAME as in the longest lived V-8 engines. The hot-rodded racing engines and the factory hot engine all fall outside of this know best practices envelope. The engineeers know this - marketing/sales wanted what they wanted.
Other good examples of other wear fectors overriding abound all around you.
My visiting nurses wife's previous primary driving rig was a 1999 Plymouth mini-van 3.3L V-6 with now 250, 000 miles. Superior color change oil changes by me since day one. Still very quet and tight inside with no engine noises or visible cold exhaust oil smoke. Her bought new 2005 Hyundia 2.7L V-6 same oil change service. Same driving service doing exactly the load under the same conditions. Even very much the same cruising engine RPM's. Now at only 150,000 miles for the last 9 months blue oil exhaust smoke on cold starts and lash bled down hydraulic ticky-ticky valve lash ajusters for 2-5 minutes warming up time. And it now demands expensive 0-20 synthetic oil just to get those lash adjusters to fill and quiet down.
Why? #1 the American engine has a high flow actual postitve crankcase ventilation system. The Hyundia one of those PITA Asian "Tee'ed" overprseeure only flowing crancase ventilation systems the Do Not actually ventilate. So the averge oil running hours engine oil condition  has been worse with consensates and combustions acids.
The older Amrican V-6 has a single in block roller lifter camshaft. The needing much oil componets are all down inside flooded and direct suppled with oil and the rotating fling off oil sprays are contaned and isolated from the needing little oil valve stems.
The Hyundia is an actual direct over the valve multi-camshaft system. To give the same flooding oil to keep the camshaft lobes alive then "the game" is to keep from spray fling off and drain back oil flooding the poor valve stems. L-o-n-g ways for the just sarted up engine oil to make it up to the oil needing componets. Well now the worn degraded valve stem seals can't hold back this oil from being negative pressure sucked into the intake and even the exhust manifolds.
But this newer more sophysticaed V-6 did help this manufactur to meet the later imposed thigher fuel use and emmisions standerd for new vehicles in it's years of manufacture. Plus give sales and marking more "sex" to sell versus "old fashion" cam in block tech.

My points ARE take into account ALL real world factors. Never just any ONE overiding factor. This rpm wear factor as just being the tip of the iceberg of tripping rabbit holes to get lost into.

Direct to the point: as Henry says stick with 2400-3000 rpm down speeding your Yanmar.Chinese clone.
Then you will not need "ship in a bottle" "Eeee! Ha! I turned my B&S into a 650 engine!" four stroke carry through flywheeling.
By all means DO water jacket it. This will help tremendously to dampen the noise. This will give you a small potential farmable off board pumpable heat source. Do read member Jens recent heat exchanger done-it advice on this.
For engine wear reduction focus on a remort larger capacity ool resrvoir and getting an oil filter some how involed if only just a bypass flow type.

Here on the MCG there will always be a bogus called on anyone single Eureka thinking they have found "the solution". One fellow once declared this as compression ratio jacking. Another fellow with regular unleaded gasoline other fuels blending.
This is not what I think you did with your down speeding proposal. We just want you to be very aware of all of the other factors involed also.

The Law of Uninteneded Cosequenses IS Real and bites $$$$ expensive hard.
Regards
Steve Unruh

[focodiesel]

I have played minimally with WMO and can also get an endless supply but in the face of also being able to get all the veg I want ( and got someone offering me 3-4000L a WEEK if I want it a few days ago) I prefer that simply because it stinks so much less, spills clean up easier and clothes are somewhat more recoverable from spills.

What I did play a bit with is "Cracking" the WMO. There are a lot of people whom have developed this where they make their own diesel ( or petrol) fuel as they are really just refining what is already in the stuff.
To cut it short, I got a stainless beer keg, tapped in a 1/2" copper line that came out the top, went back under the keg in the flame of the WVO burner I built to act as the superheater portion then bubbled the vapours out in a container of water to condense them.
The resulting output of this crude as it gets system was to produce what I could best describe as a petrol/ diesel mix.  It would light from a flame in a shallow dish but not burn for long before going out. The output worked really well in my 165 which is my main test engine.

You could Crack an amount of your oil and then blend it with the straight stuff to save you buying fuel to cut the straight oil. I think you would be able to use a lot more straight WMO than 50% on the testing I did.  The other possibility is if you can get something like tranny and brake type fluids. These tend to be a lot thinner than wmo and may help reduce the amount of dino you need as well.

Have you tried blending with ULP? My little engine wont start on SVO in winter but with 10% ULP , no worries at all.  I tested and found recently 5% ulp gave a power increase of using straight Bio which was a surprise. Needless to say the 5%  also had better power than SVO. I don't know about the fuel energy and it's irrelevant to you but the ULP May save you in the amount of blending fuel you have to buy to get the engine to work with the WMO.

Simple cracking of the oil would no doubt save you even more.

For outright heating, You could build a small Burner that will run happily on any liquid combustible.  You could scale down  this design

to output anything from 1 KWh to 100 and beyond.  There is also the " Uritz" type burner that is totally self sufficient and requires nothing but a fuel source and a good Chiminey draft.

Those are fantastic ideas I will definately try them thank you for the idea of it. Instead of cutting fuel costs in half one could eliminate them completely.
What do you mean by ULP? unleaded petrol? is that the same as RUG?

[focodiesel]

Hello foco,
        Don't let everyones coments put you off, just pointing out the pitfalls , and there are many!!! As a suggestion read veggie's thread on a slow speed changfa , a very good read indeed if all you need is a modist output. All I'm after is about the same 1 - 1.5kw but constant and I'm curently trying a 165 same as glort.
        If you continue on this path you have my vote, as long as you keep us  updated with the good, bad and ugly.
        Lastly you are right, if we took our time into account $$$$$ just goto work and pay the power bill.
       Ian

Thanks for the encouragement, you know this may be a ridiculous and irrational idea, which is exactly why I want to test it against all of the experts who can give honest scrutiny to this idea to see if it is actually viable, so I am very happy with all of the responses, I am learning from them, but I can't learn from blanket statements like "it wasn't engineered for that use" because in order to overcome the obstacles I need to know what they are.

I will definately post very in depth write ups on this right here in this post, I am going to start by dismantling a 170 (l48) a 186 (l100) and my r170f side by side to see the differences in bearings, connecting rod lengths, and crankshaft sizes...

[veggie]

In my opinion you will have much greater success slowing down the 170 as compared to the L100.
The L100's are designed to run at 3000 rpm (up-rated to 3600 for the American 60hz. market).
I tried slowing down an L100 but the unit is very unstable below 1800.
Made for higher rpm's they have a light flywheel and a short stroke causing them to hammer at low speed.
The governor is quite unresponsive at low speeds of 1200-1500 also.
When I added small amounts of load, the engine bogged down without much reaction from the governor.

One key point with the 170 is the governor spring. Look for a spring which is about 1/2 the tension of the stock unit.
This will allow the engine to react at low rpms. If it does not react as needed, go even lighter.
I have a 175 which behaves quite nicely around 1100 rpm.
My 190 @ 1000 rpm would not react to load until I swapped the gov. spring for a very light one. Now it reacts instantly and holds 60hz. without hesitation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZS-nrk7Eh4

good luck,
veggie

[glort]

Those are fantastic ideas I will definately try them thank you for the idea of it. Instead of cutting fuel costs in half one could eliminate them completely.
What do you mean by ULP? unleaded petrol? is that the same as RUG?

Yes, RUG is the term americans have to be different to the rest of the world like every other term they use.  "Gas" to us is "propane" to you which is "LPG " to us.
Why can't you guys just speak English?   

Look up WMO Cracking or Distillation to see how the process is done.  Basically it's just Boil the oil and recondense the vapours which leaves the heavy stuff behind.  There is also a lot on turning plastic to oil and it's exactly the same process.  One uses a liquid, one uses a Solid. I have also cracked veg oil which was interesting and worked well and something I may re Visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxgHX0wTYzE

Oh, and if you come across ANYTHING on Diesel from WMO or veg oil or whatever by a Jeffery S Brooks,  Move on Immediately. The guy is a complete and utter nut Job that has been kicked off every forum he has been on ( and he's been through them all) for his psychopathic obsessions and pushing methods and practices that don't work.  He espouses that his blends are successful Despite going through I think it was 5 injector pumps in 2 years and having to remove and clean his injectors every second tankfull on his mad Max look alike truck.

He's good for a laugh but quickly becomes scary when you realise just how off his nut he really is.

[Tom Reed]

He's been here. I tried some of his recipes for making "translucent WMO" using RUG and acetone. It did settle some slop out of suspension, but it didn't solve the injector fouling issue.

[focodiesel]

No I just centrifuge filter, water separate and mix with an equal part #2. No failures over the last year or so except a few gelling instances when ambient temps drop below about 10 F. That's in my 6bt (ve pump).

[vdubnut62]

Be careful and don't blow yourself up with that motoroil pot still!!
If your"worm" clogs you won't have much time to shut it down before it lets go with a bang.
Ron.

[glort]

Be careful and don't blow yourself up with that motoroil pot still!!
If your"worm" clogs you won't have much time to shut it down before it lets go with a bang.
Ron.

I was wary of that and so used 1/2" copper tube so there could be no pressurisation of the keg.
The water bubbling as well as doing a great job on condensing ALL the vapours ( unlike many that seem to let about 60% just blow away) is a good visual indication that the tube is not blocked.
I think the chances of that happening are very minimal because all the rubbish is left behind in the bottom of the keg and the superheater section  is far too hot to allow the formation of carbon. It would be burnt off if it was there. After that the vapours are very light and the condensate is in a cool section which would not create any basis for blockages.

I would recommend either a blow off valve on the keg if one was available that would stand a suitably high temp or what I was going to do was try a blow off panel like used in racing circles on Supercharged cars. This would be a bit of aluminium can or other very thin and light sheet metal that was either just glued over a good size cutout section ( 2" or more ) with high temp  silicone or Muffler putty or maybe with some self tappers in the corners and some sort of sealant.
  The idea is to create a deliberate weak  spot that will let go easily and well before anything else if a pressurisation does occour.


On my first cracking run, I had a bit of Hydraulic hose let go I was using on the end of the output tube before the Heat exchanger.
I have seen home made smoke bombs on youtube but the amount of smoke that instantly came out of the keg put them all to shame. I have never seen a thick billowing stream of smoke like it.
I immediately pulled the burner out and with the nearby hose, doused the bottom of the keg to cool everything down. The hardest part was getting near enough and beingable to see what I was doing. It worked quickly and effectively and I am confident that an over pressurisation could be brought under control of picked up when it happened.
Of course it would be critical to keep the water out of the oil but if cooling the keg, no problem.

The other thing I do now is have an old electric radiator fan blowing from one side so if anything ever does let go again, There will be a clear air side and the smoke will be pushed in one direction.

In that instance, I  managed to stop the smoke plume before anyone called the fire Brigade which was a bit of a surprise given how it blanketed so much of the surrounding area in about 30 sec. Not to mention the smell wasn't exactly that of french perfume.

I would suggest if anyone is doing this to use something like I have which is a powerful burner rather than put it over a wood fire or any low heat gas ring etc.  Your "Turkey Burners" may be OK, we don't have them here so I have no idea of their output but you want to pump a lot of heat into the oil because it takes a lot of energy to boil 40L of anything ( which is the batches I do) and you don't want to be taking up an entire day for something you will use in 10 Min flat.
  One great way to bump efficiency I have used is to put the vessel you are heating inside another.  I just use a 44 gallon drum with the ends removed. By enclosing the vessel being heated, you force air from the heat source up and onto the sides of the vessel which has a far greater surface area than the bottom which is all you heat when the vessel is not enclosed. Normally all that other heat is just dissipated so you increase the efficiency of the heat source many times over.

I did some tests with this a while back and although I forget the numbers now, The improvement with shrouding was huge and unmistakeable.

[focodiesel]

I guess i do have a reluctance to do this because of the dangers presented, the fact that you need to burn fuel to distill fuel, and then there will be an even thicker oil left over. I think before I go down this path I will try and perfect preheating my fuels prior to injection.

[focodiesel]

IF this conversion is something you just want to try, fair enough. I don't think you are going to get much help with the tech questions because I think you'll be pioneering such a setup.
I think I'd be doing the water jacket, adding a flywheel and leaving it there. swapping the parts out sounds like there could be a lot of pitfalls. maybe just try the water jacket?flywheels first, run the thing some hours and see what happens before you invest too much in the project.

I may start by doing just what you describe, water cooled cylinder and flywheel, this would keep the variables down, leaving the factory rotating assembly balancing alone, though I have been reading up on balancing engines.

I am now the owner of an l48 clone and a l100. I have started both of them up and they seem to be great little engines. One problem I have realized is the cylinder is integral to the block, which will take quite a bit of figuring to part off to create the new water cooled jug... Anyways this project is mid level on my list so it will be a while before I revisit this. Please keep the suggestions coming.

Check out my r170f
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CogV_AKb_kk

and yanclone 170
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVRzIVl-mJs

[veggie]

Ahhh... Now I see. Your 170 is air cooled.
I thought your unit was a changfa type water cooled 170.

Those are fun little engines..
I have the 165... very similar to your 170
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT4q1Z8vfew

This past summer I built a small gen set using the same yanmar clone as you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKvT__sVzMI

The yanmar clones are not well suited to slow speed running.
I run mine at 2500 rpm.


I did use it to drive a  Leese alternator and for that test I ran the Yanmar clone at approx 1800 rpm.
Anything slower than that and the speed became unstable.
I was testing to see if  I could power an inverter directly from an automotive alternate with using a car battery between, acting as a voltage clamp/buffer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR57Hh611r0

What will you be driving with your engine? This may help in determining the best engine for the job.

cheers
veggie

[Dualfuel]

Dear Veggie,
Very nice looking generator! I like the paint...I think everything runs better with paint. Definitely something to aspire to! DF