Lister diesel generator?

[MotorSeven]

Here's one:

Diesel Generator, Lister-Petter 15KW, low hours

 

[Ray2210]

That's a modern engine. The listeroids spoken of earlier look ( and weigh) like something from the steam engine era............because they are!

 

[Bill Barrett]

Update
Movie if anyone is interested!

http://www.youtube.com/user/WGBListeroid

 

[RonMar]

Looks good Bill. You want to watch your thermosiphon hoses though. That upper hose has a little droop in it(goes down then up). This will really slow down the coolant flow, especially at higher loads. Your first symptom of slow flow under load will be noise at the coolant outlet. That will be the coolant in the head boiling because the heat in the head is not being carried away fast enough.. Best to have the upper coolant line go upward as soon as possible, at as steep an angle as is possible...

The doghouse on the ST generator heads is pretty cheesy to start with. I would highly reccomend scrapping it and just bolting on a steel utility box and a solid state diode rectifyer. Here is a pic of how I did mine with a 8"X8"X4" box(I think). I added filter caps to the bridge rectifyer output to clean up the rectifier output to the field. This gives a much better AC output waveform, but it also upps the output voltage a little. I had a fairly long line from my genset to my house panel, so a little higher voltage at the generator was a good thing for me. This box was big enough to do this as well as add breakers on the two 120V legs and add an hour meter powered off of the field. The solid state rectifyer and hourmeter are commonly available at surpluscenter.com.

 

[Bill Barrett]

Looks good Bill. You want to watch your thermosiphon hoses though. That upper hose has a little droop in it(goes down then up). This will really slow down the coolant flow, especially at higher loads. Your first symptom of slow flow under load will be noise at the coolant outlet. That will be the coolant in the head boiling because the heat in the head is not being carried away fast enough.. Best to have the upper coolant line go upward as soon as possible, at as steep an angle as is possible...

The doghouse on the ST generator heads is pretty cheesy to start with. I would highly reccomend scrapping it and just bolting on a steel utility box and a solid state diode rectifyer. Here is a pic of how I did mine with a 8"X8"X4" box(I think). I added filter caps to the bridge rectifyer output to clean up the rectifier output to the field. This gives a much better AC output waveform, but it also upps the output voltage a little. I had a fairly long line from my genset to my house panel, so a little higher voltage at the generator was a good thing for me. This box was big enough to do this as well as add breakers on the two 120V legs and add an hour meter powered off of the field. The solid state rectifyer and hourmeter are commonly available at surpluscenter.com.

Thanks for the info Ron!
It is a on going project.
I do have a hour meter, bridge rectifier, and check temps all the time with an IR gun.
Know what you mean about the hoses.
I built a thermostat housing, my temps never go over 200F.
Check this out:
new set Thermostat install - a set on Flickr

It does have choppy sine wave, I was going to do a AVR, but may try the caps.
Thats a 12KW head, what capacitors are you using?

 

[schmism]

It does have choppy sine wave, I was going to do a AVR, but may try the caps.
Thats a 12KW head, what capacitors are you using?

can an AVR keep up with that kind of current output?

 

[Bill Barrett]

can an AVR keep up with that kind of current output?

The AVR will be used on the excitation current only.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I love these. Wish in the past I would have had a place for a project like this when I had the health for such a hobby project.

thanks for the the posts.

 

[RonMar]

I have about 5000 microfarad of 70V electrolytic capacitance on the bridge rectifyer output. This turns the rather spikey raw rectyfer output into nearly pure DC. This cleans up the output AC a bit, and the constant DC makes the field more efficient so it builds more output voltage. I have around 130VAC at the generator. After line loss this leaves me with around 123VAC at the house with the generator online.

 

[Bill Barrett]

I have about 5000 microfarad of 70V electrolytic capacitance on the bridge rectifyer output. This turns the rather spikey raw rectyfer output into nearly pure DC. This cleans up the output AC a bit, and the constant DC makes the field more efficient so it builds more output voltage. I have around 130VAC at the generator. After line loss this leaves me with around 123VAC at the house with the generator online.

Thanks,
I'll give that a try!