Purchased a Changfa R165 watercooled diesel engine, question about flywheel play

[XYZER]

Jesse, I'm not sure without reading all of the postings but I have found it is to your advantage to find your belt first then fit the add-ons to it. Some belt sizes they make millions and a spare belt may be on the neighbors car if you need a replacement. If you pick an odd length the price will scare you and its availability is hard to acquire. I tried to get as much wrap on the pulley to help reduce belt tension and load on the bearings. I used a tensioner off a truck with the same belt width. I was going to post a picture of mine but have learned photo bucket has become a big pain to deal with!  Thanks HenryW for the how to!

[Jesse McB]

Im looking at the types of serpentine belt i need! Its all coming down to around 36" of belt lenght, I'm going to fully complete the alternator bracket right now and then decide my lenght by using string, and I also recieved  my torque wrenches in the mail! They are old school beam type which is what they used in the old days, perfect for an old school engine!  

[Carlb]

Jesse, I'm not sure without reading all of the postings but I have found it is to your advantage to find your belt first then fit the add-ons to it. Some belt sizes they make millions and a spare belt may be on the neighbors car if you need a replacement. If you pick an odd length the price will scare you and its availability is hard to acquire. I tried to get as much wrap on the pulley to help reduce belt tension and load on the bearings. I used a tensioner off a truck with the same belt width. I was going to post a picture of mine but have learned photo bucket has become a big pain to deal with!  Thanks HenryW for the how to!

XYZER

Long time no see how have you been?   I remember when you built that generator.

[glort]

Got to stop reading this.  I have a ton of things on my plate atm but the more I read this thread the more I want to go out and get the new engine and have a play.

I'd really like to use Micro Grove belts but getting the pulleys here is expensive and they are hard to find. I'm thinking the easiest thing might be to get brother in law to chuck up the original pulley in his lathe, get the harmonic balancer I have from a car, center them up and weld them to each other.
That way I would have a V and a microgroove pulley without costing a fortune.

I used a Microgrove belt off a car on my Lister to drive 2 alts. The car the belt came from is about the most popular one here and even though there are a few variations, they are not much and the way I have the twin alts set up, I could ajust everything to take anyone of them. Have a few spares already though.
I'd like to put 2 alts on the new engine as just having one would be overkill for the engine.  Also really like the pic above with the AC and DC alt.  I might look at hooking the engine up on a frame I have like that and use my 3 phase induction motor.  Miss playing with that. Why muck around with 12V when you can create 400+ and really live life dangerously!  :0)

[XYZER]

XYZER

Long time no see how have you been?   I remember when you built that generator.

Carl, doing good! Thanks for asking.  The generator is still doing fine at my off grid place. I'm in the process of building a shop trying to get a roof on before the snow. Waiting on other people at the moment. I have been lurking and visit site daily. I hope all are doing well out there!
Dave

[Jesse McB]

Well im gonna attempt to get the changfa type 1100 diesel engine, i just gotta find someone with a vehicle thats willing to do a 300 km round trip drive. The guy got back to me today saying its all mine if i make it over with the $400. Oh man i hope i can get it ill never find a deal like that again!   i was looking to buy one a few years back for over a grand !  

[glort]

300K round trip?
Pffft, you should be up early and back by lunchtime!  I normally do it the other way, Have dinner with my dad then leave about 8-8:30. He lives 312 Km from me  Roughly!  :0)
Seems a real bargain. Wish one would come up here like that.

I went out and played with my new toy today. Got it out, fired it up and let it run while I want thought the shed where I know where nothing at all is still being in the boxes everything was brought here in.  Going to have to make that a priority to clean and organize.

Jesse, being the parts and procurement master of all things diesel and horizontal,  do you know of anywhere that sells  Pulleys for these things or a Shaft setup?
The stock pulley is a bit on the small side for anything I want to do like run a car alt so I'd like to either get a bigger pulley, 5-6" would be ideal, or get one of the 3 stud fittings that has a 1" shaft. I'd get the i" turned down on the end to a 3/4 for good measure and to give me more pulley choices.

I got a bit of plate steel today that covers the stud size and I'm going to take it to the BIL tomorrow to see if he can make me something but I don't have any 1" bar. have to see if he does but either way, probably won't get anything back till Christmas........ 2019. The slow boat from China I'm sure would be faster.

Look forward to seeing a rundown of the new Big engine!
I'll just go check gumtree and fleabay to see if any have popped up here........ 

[Jesse McB]

Yeah its not that  far of a trip ! Just i dont have a vehicle yet!  Im thinking even a car would work lol, just thinking how the hell can i lift the monster, it weighs over 336 pounds! Maybe disaasemble it a bit flywheel and hopper, take off 100 pounds and then maybe me and my brother can lift it in the trunk lol. I coukd leave it on its gear cover side so it dont rock around. Im thinking lol, i loaded about a thousand pounds of concrete in a friends hybrid toyota prius just a few days ago, 14    66 pound bags, so mayby he give me a hand lol!!!!! I gotta figure a way to grab that Valuble chunk of iron !!! The prius did handle all the thousand pounds of concrete no problem hahaha!!!!!!



Glort,

Im gonna do a search online and look for pulleys and shaft adapters in china! I know we will never find a manufacturer in the Americas lol!

 So one thing i know that will work is to make one from scratch out of a serpentine crank pulley from a car engine. Thats my idea to make mine! Im looking for a crank pulley with a big enough center hole to fit through the flywheel nut with space for drilling holes for the studs. Its easy just make sure the studs or centred! Its the best way to get a serpentine pulley for these engines!

[Jesse McB]

Wel I torque all the bolts and nuts! Now I just gotta do a pressure test on the cooling system to see how sealed I have it ! You can see I have a small air pump attached to the engine to pressurize the system. So far I left it all night and this morning it's still got pressure! So I'm doing it again while at work! So far it's holding up great!!   

Reason for this test is I read a lot of stories of folks completing their projects, fill the engine with fluids and find its gushing outta the head gasket.  Same thing happened to me !! After I torque the head bolts to spec, I filled with water and pressure test it and it all starting to come out at the head gasket 

So I got frustrated, I gave the project a break for a few hours had a few beers with my brother, after a few hours I returned to the engine wondering if I gotta tighten the head bolts some more. So I did another pressure test to see were exactly waters coming from, this time is held pressure  So I assumed the gasket eventually sealed?! So I tightened the head bolts alittle more just to ensure !! 

[Jesse McB]

Ok so I did another pressure test,  I see water seeping out on one side of the gasket, it's very very little like minor sweating basically. You wouldn't notice unless you had a light on it and watching it. It's so slight of a seepage and minute that it's looking like it's bleeding through the metrial. 
I assume these head gaskets are not designed for pressure since they are made for hopper cooling.

Bob if your reading this I remember you had a similar problem with the original head gasket for your s195 diesel.

I know for sure that if I had a good gasket made it would work flawless with high pressure. I read some threads here and saw some pics of quality gaskets made from gasketstogo, I think I'll have 5 made for my engine, I'll send them one of my China gaskets as a templet. i should get in contact and see what they can do for me!  

[vdubnut62]

IIRC I paid $500 us for my Xing Dong S1100 About 10 years ago.   For what it's worth, your proposed engine looks exactly like mine.  Good luck and wishes!
Ron in TN.

[Jesse McB]

Well I'm very happy I finally completed my changfa R165 engine!!!! I will post pics tomorrow ! I'm all ready for its first test run soon hopefully tommorow! I have to get oil for it first! I will post a video on YouTube and post a link here. I'm gonna make a good video of it running. I have a 400 watt inverter I can connect to the alternator so it will be about 850 watts of energy for the engine to turn after energy deficiency losses. I would like to see if 400 watts is enough to keep the engine to be proper running temp! It's so small the cooling system holds exactly 1 litre! The serpentine belt arrive today in the mail and it fits perfect ! I have a analog temp gauge to see engine water temp and a laser rpm speed gauge to do some testing on the little 3hp diesel. I will have to buy a power meter as well !!

[mobile_bob]

the original head gasket for my s-195 is a steel core fiber gasket... gray sort of like the old asbestos gskts typical of headgaskets back before printoseal black, blue etc we see today.

the gasket held up just fine up until i forgot in testing to turn the pump on and ran the temperature up to about 260F after which the thing leaked horribly, of course upon teardown i found it blown.

oddly enough the engine was still running fine before shutdown without smoking or loss of power?

anyway i had a spare gasket and thought i would see if the guy at "gaskets to go" could come up with something better.

i contacted him and an associate of his over in malaysia or somewhere i don't recall, told him "i think i can provide that gasket without you having to special build one for your customer"

he provided me with 6 for a good price, they turned out to be s-1100 gaskets... the s-1100 is a direct injected engine, and the s-195 is an indirect injected engine.  the difference is the larger bore of the s1100 iirc has no step on the liner, and the s-195 does... so the direct injected s-1100 gasket will drop right in a direct injected s195.

the s1100 gaskets is of modern design, dark almost black, print-o-seal type that is much stronger and will put up with much more abuse than the oem s-195 gskt.

now having said that, i suspect the original gasket is likely good enough, and no one should be running their engine's up against the wall like i was in testing (near 15hp output at 1800rpm, on an engine rated at 12hp at 2000rpm).

one other point worth mention, when it comes to weeping head gaskets on the changfa types...

i have seen over the years just about every radiator repair guy dump powdered sealant into a recored radiator to stop up minor weeps in his work, as i have found those little brown nuggets stuffed into water jackets of many rebuilt gas engines, either in the blocks or the cylinder heads.   i asked about that and was told that it was used to seal up minor weeps in head gasket and intake manifold leaks once put into service.

me? i am not afraid of a bit of block seal and would certainly use it to seal off a minor seepage from a head gasket on any of these engines.   i just wouldn't suggest using a lot of it and not at all if i had anything other than a minor cosmetic weep.

of course one should use some sort of gasket sealant when using one of the old style gaskets like the old metal core asbestos types,  the newer style fiber "print-o-seal" types are much better at sealing off the water jacket ports in the head to block interface.

lastly torquing the heads...

be sure to seal the head studs, lube the threads and the nuts, washers if used and where the nut meets the head with motor oil (don't use antisieze)...

if for example your heads torque to 100ft lbs (likely more but this is an example) torque up in at least 3 steps.
start with 25lbs criss cross pattern, then ease off and retorque to 25lbs... then torque up to around 75lbs, then the final torque up to 100ft lbs... (its not important the exact values of the first steps, just the final of course)....

after you have ran the engine up to temperature and then shut down, let it cool down completely and then retorque the head...   the older style gaskets have more give and you will likely find the nuts down on torque 15 or more lbs.  the new style carbon fiber (printoseal) seam to hold final torque better, but i would still retorque.

one other thought...

if you look at the head you will see a rather rough crosshatch of where the flycutter surfaced the head... the chinese surface is a bit too rough, and this leads to some seeps... however don't try and sand this down smoother as this "tooth" is necessary to keep the head from working around on the gasket and wearing it out.

this surface finish has a spec that most manufactures have found from experience to be a compromise between being rough enough to keep things locked together and smooth enough to seal up with the type of gasket used.

over the years i have seen many many mechanics with their die grinders smoothing down block decks and head surfaces thinking that the rough surface was going to never be kept from seeping... only to get a better seal but early failures of the head gasket.

best to err on the side of being a bit too rough, use a good gasket and sealant, torque properly and then add just a bit of block seal/stop leak if there is a bit of seepage that shows up.

at least that is my opinion on the topic

bob g

[SteveU.]

Wow. Wealth of been-there, done-that, experienced based wisdom there MobileBob.
Too bad this forum does not have like-heart buttons.

On the leaked at first. Then after running and sitting, it no longer leaks; this is true of most old style fiber bases gaskets and seals. Even asbestos based with solid rod fibers. Think about it. No matter how compressed there will be spaces between the fibers. Dry they will weep trough these spaces. Once wetted with coolant, oil, heavy lubes these spaces fill and your weeping decreased to near nothing.
I have seen this time and time again on water well pumping systems using fiber gaskets, rope packing seals. You see this on carburetor float bowls that use/used fiber sealing rings.
IF always left wet, they do not leak.
Allowed to dry out, they will then leak until wetted "filled" up again.
Ha! being a 20th century modern, I too strongly preferred on use-once applications to pre-fill these inter-fiber spaces ahead of time with an appropriate sealant. Use-heat parts expansion movements; and then going cold contractions, even with sealant pre-filling you will have to re-torque tighten due to squeezed out "shrinkage".
21st century modern solid membrane gaskets are much, much better. How they got to no re-torquing needed. Folks would not bring back for post-manufacturing, major-repair inspections, re-torques and re-tightens.
As much as I and others have complained about the constant-pressure hoses spring clamps THAT was what that was about. The wonderful gear clamps did not change stretch - the underlying hoses did compress, and deform needing those clamps to be re-tightened later.
On my own processional repair jobs I learned to re-use, re-set constant-pressure hose clamps back into their original hose end indents and then stopped having clean concrete garages "since-you worked-on-it" dripping, come-backs.
live and learn by DOing
tree-farmer Steve unruh

[Jesse McB]

Thats nice to know that my gasket seepage is normal    thanks guys for the wise info! I had a feeling its normal for these poison head gaskets 

So i pulled the gasket and used another one, I oiled the studs and nuts just like how you mentioned bob, and the head nuts torque is only 60 ft lbs on this little diesel, i torqued the nuts in steps aswell so i did it all right!  I did another pressure test and it took half hour or so till i noticed a few minor weeps, so minor just the gasket changed a darker colour thats it. Yeah something tells me its all good and will run perfect!