As I said earlier in the week, I came home from Military Odyssey with aWW2 German generator. I got a round tuit this afternoon.
It is an overhung crank, inverted, fan cooled two stroke of perhaps 35cc direct driving a 400 Watt dynamo with 12 & 16 Volt tappings, output controlled by a spring loaded switch and having a built in regulator. It is very nicely made and makes considerable use of aluminium die castings. Bearing in mind it turns out 100 Watts more than the ALCO Featherweight (a single cylinder 129cc 4ST driving a 300 Watt generator & weighing 104 lbs all told) it is a much better job altogether, weighing about half that
It has a strange carb that fits into the side of a die-cast aluminium plenum chamber, the inside of which exhibits the original Wermacht Field Grey paint. An air filter box clamps to one side & at right angles to it, a pressed steel panel with a cam-operating lever that controls the throttle. In the top is a spring loaded lever that blocks off the main airway when operated. This must act as a choke. There appears to be a governor too, the throttle setting the range, I suspect.
The Auto Union magneto bolts to the top of the crankcase & the conventional points cover reveals a set of points & a central cam. They have been ingeniously bodged up with car parts at some time & had a gap you could drive a bus through. And they didn't close together properly. A little judicious side pressure with a screwdriver mostly cured that & a quick clean produced a spark.
Although it fired just once, it refused to run, the plug being constantly coated in liquid petrol. There was also an awful clanking noise upon vigorous cranking of its built in handle, so I thought I should investigate. About half an hour exposed piston & rings & showed there was no big end play. The rings, bore & piston are also fine.
Next, the carb. Washed in paraffin & dried off, it proved to be fine & undamaged. The float (of thin steel) had a couple of rusty witness marks on it and this was gluing it into the bottom of the float chamber. Clean that out & remove the needle valve jet to discover a little filter blocked with rubbish.
Reassembly took perhaps an hour or so. A little TS mix in the tank & a few turns of the handle brought it to cheerful life. The clanking noise appears to be to do with the cranking mechanism & vanishes as soon as the engine is running.
It was approaching 11.00pm by this time, so I turned it off by pressing the button provided on the magneto & will check the output next time.
I notice the Wessex SEC has a crank up next Sunday (11th) at Camerton Village Hall & that will be its first outing, British, American & German WW2 generators all running together - deo volante!
Oh yes, I had the Coventry-Victor MA2 and the Norman T300 out on the back lawn this afternoon. The CV ran all afternoon without missing a beat, but the T300 marine engine was more intransigent. A little pilot jet twiddling fixed it & then it ticked over slowly until the petrol ran out.
Regards,
J. Kim Siddorn,