Puting the 6/1 in the garage

[Halfcrazy]

I have had thoughts of putting my power line 6/1 in the garage seems like a nice easy spot for it and all the waste heat will heat the garage. my question is how would you hook it to the floor? I thought I had seen someone use a rubber horse stall mat and bolt down threw it?

[Ronmar]

Lay down a rubber stall mat(or 2 if you like) and build a wood form on top of that.  An inch or two inside the stall mat and 8-10" tall should give you 3/4 of a ton or so of concrete.  On top of the form, put a wood frame to hold the "J" bolts in the proper orientation to match your generator base.  Hang the "J" bolts and fill form with concrete.  After cured remove the wood form and bolt the genset to the base block.  IMO, this has several advantages.  1.  It raises the genset up a little bit to make it easier to crank and work on in general.  2. It dosn't do any damage to the garage floor, and you can always move the block/genset somewhere else using levers to lift it up onto pipe rollers.

This is how mine has been mounted for close to 2 years now.  It has been happily setting in the same place on the floor(but not actually attached tothe floor) in my gen shed ready to crank up whenever I wish...   

[sailawayrb]

Here's what mine looks like in my suburban garage:

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

I also posted the calculations for the resilient mounting stand.

[cujet]

I used helicopter blade dampers to mount an twin to a slab. It works fairly well.

If your garage is attached to the house, I'd reconsider. These engines are vibration monsters. Although, some of us have been successful in taming the vibes, none of us have eliminated it. 

Rocketboy had his single on a cart with pneumatic tires (filled with water). After balancing, the entire assy was fairly well damped and transmitted less vibration.

[sailawayrb]

If your garage is attached to the house, I'd reconsider. These engines are vibration monsters. Although, some of us have been successful in taming the vibes, none of us have eliminated it. 

Rocketboy had his single on a cart with pneumatic tires (filled with water). After balancing, the entire assy was fairly well damped and transmitted less vibration.

My garage is attached to my house and my wife's cabinet full of expensive china is in room next store.  There is no detectable vibration transmission to the garage floor.  I didn't make any attempt to balance the engine (that's not really possible anyhow or even required) and I only designed the resilient mount stand in accordance with well established engineering equations. 

[mobile_bob]

i don't have a listeroid, and don't play a listeroid owner in a movie
(however i would take the part if offered, for a very low price) 

i do have a changfa 195, and live in a house with an attached garage
with the engine frame sitting on the concrete floor and running under load
it would vibrate the dishes in the kitchen and you could feel in in your feet
anywhere in the house.

after building the floating frame and adding resilient mounts, there is no more dish rattling
and you cannot feel the engine running at all in the house, and you an barely feel it on the concrete floor
standing right next to it,, by barely i mean one is not entirely sure whether he is feeling it or thinks he is.

proper resilient mounts can make just about anything tolerable  to live with, in my opinion

bob g

[sailawayrb]

Well stated, in my opinion, Bob G

I think some folks just put rubber mats under the stand or fill tires with water, etc., without spending the time to work out a proper solution, then get mixed results, often more poor than good.

I also got to thinking a while back that "balancing" could actually make achieving good resilient mount results more challenging.  As we have discussed at length previously, balancing a lister type engine essentially only swaps vertical and lateral inbalance forces.  One will likely have much better results with resilient mounts if one has minimal lateral inbalance forces in favor of tolerating more vertical inbalance forces.  This is because resilient mounts are designed to reduce vertical inbalance forces (or at least this is how my resilient mount stand is designed) and not lateral inbalance forces.  In fact, my resilient mounts can not handle very much in the way of lateral loads at all.  It is very easy to make my engine stand move laterally with very little finger pressure.

As you know, I started with Quinn's excellent engine stand design, removed the cast iron caster wheels, and added the resilient mount design.  I would have to say that my engine was clearly "a hopper" (i.e., more vertical inbalance than lateral inbalance) because the engine had a tendency to jitter and bounce while on the stand with the wheels.  If I didn't tie the stand down with rope, I am certain it would have danced out of my garage and down the street.

[Crofter]

I tried a bit of resilient mounting but found that anything mounted to the engine frame got badly shook. Connections to radiator, fuel tank, exhaust etc. received and amplified the movement. It certainly did take the vibration out of the ground though.

I wanted my unit to be fairly easy to move with all accessories as a unit so used a very stiff (12' ship and car channel) frame and lagged it to the concrete floor with 6 6x3/4" anchor bolts. That made mounting everything to the frame much easier but for sure it puts more vibes into the ground.

If you are going to mount it solid, it has to be solid and strong; if you are going to soft mount it you gots to do lots more brain work in either harnessing up all the accessories or isolating them.

Even at 900 rpm the 10-1 at full load in the shop is more than a little distracting. 200 feet away at the house you have to listen hard to hear it. The 6-1s I have been around at 650 rpm are a lot quieter.

[BruceM]

I think it's wise to do a Mr. X method balancing before any mounting scheme.  Why subject your engine and frame to these forces when it's so easy to have a smooth runner.  Balancing the engine via this method did NOT increase lateral (fore-aft) movement on my engine, but it did turn an engine that would vibrate my whole engine room building audibly  into a smooth, quiet engine.  I have a wooden frame on 6- 5x5" soft rubber pads, NOT a resilient mount.

http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?topic=431.msg4460#msg4460

[sailawayrb]

Crofter, I would agree that with a resilient mount you are best to keep anything that can be damaged by vibration off of the stand.  That is why my radiator and all of my electronic control systems are not mounted to the stand.  My engine stand is also mobile as I can remove the resilient mount structure, attach the cast iron wheels, and roll the entire stand to another location.

BruceM, I agree, if I went with a rigid stationary mount, I would attempt to balance the engine by trading vertical/lateral inbalance forces so as to get the smallest inbalance force possible, even if this smaller inbalance force were mostly lateral.  Any inbalance force is potentially more destructive to a rigid stationary engine than one that is properly mounted on resilient mounts.  Fatigue life of metal engine parts is less if you transfer this destructive inbalance force energy to the resilient mounts in lieu of allowing this enegy to be absorbed by the parts.  However, lister engines were designed beefy to handle these inbalance forces with a rigid stationary mount and live a long life.

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

[T19]

Ok, I put mine in the garage.

Took if off the pickup truck, dropped it on the cement pad, drilled two holes in the pad to put in some of those metal threaded things into, and crowbared the whole thing over the wholes.  This allows about 1 inch of movement.

I put bolts in, not tight, just in so that the unit could not walk away.

Connected my 10/1 and started it.  Works great.  Have about 12 days run time on it.  My Rad and Fuel is mounted to a display cart on wheels.  The fuel lines are rubber and with enough slack to take up movement and vibration, the Rad is connected using long rubber hoses, again to make up for any movement

So the engine sits on the Pad, on IBEAMS, and has a hypnotic movement to it, but it does not walk, or vibrate through the house.  this is the second unit I have mounted this way, with no issues

[BruceM]

It's pure luck when a Rajkot engine has good balance, not that I'd be unhappy to be that lucky.  There is tremendous variation of weight in just the two conrods I have (both defective- 10 oz difference).  I expect similar gross variations in pistons, flywheels, cranks, etc.

The good news is that even if you aren't that lucky, the singles are easy to balance by yourself.

[bschwartz]

Bruce, I see how often you claim the singles are easy to balance with the Mr. X method.  This only works if your flywheels are round.    Ask me how I know.  I spent hours trying to figure out why adding weight opposite the chalk mark didn't help.  Turns out that my flywheels were out of round.  That and being a 6/1 with counter weights in the flywheels, I had a hit and miss and finally quit trying.  Each of my flywheels also had the keyway a few degrees apart from each other.  I clearly got the Monday morning special.  Balance is not a word that will ever be used with my engine.  One cubic yard of concrete and steel I beams are my friend.

[BruceM]

BShwartz, Do not despair.  You can still balance your engine, though obviously chauking won't work with out of round wheels.

The additional weight will normally be at or opposite the cast in wheel weights. 

Using 4 oz clay, try putting the clay opposite the wheel weights.  If that's worse, than add it to the wheel weights.  Keep adding until you don't see improvement, then go the the "around the clock" to see if further fine tuning helps.

It's going to take a little longer without the chalking, but knowing that most of the weight will be at or opposite the cast in flywheel weights should get you started.  Even without this, you can just use the "o-clock" method - which takes a lot more starts and stops but works.  My '85 MB driveshaft had a vibration at 65mph that I cured that way. 

The additional weight will normally be at or opposite the cast in wheel weights. 

[bschwartz]

Thanks Bruce.  That is what I finally did to smooth things out a bit.  I finally called it 'good enough' and bolted it down.  Kind of hard to balance any more right now as he is thumping along on several thousand pounds of reinforced concrete.