Homelite twin genny

Looks rather nice - I should have kept me gob shut and snaffled it for myself ;-)

Nick H

Here in Bristol it was a lovely English summer's day today, so I thought I'd give myself a day off & have a look at the Homelite. Rumoured to have run five years ago, it had no spark, but cleaning the points soon rectified that. It has one of they damned direct lift carbs, but it also has a manual priming pump - what a good idea!

pump-pump-pump. Wrap-tug-whirr. Wrap-tug-whirr. Add ten minutes of these cycles.

Nothing.

Poke about underneath & discover a petrol tap! What, on a direct lift system? Ah well.

pump-pump-pump. Wrap-tug-whirr. Wrap-tug-whirr.

Splutter, phutt, pop, run, run, run - hurrah!

It took rather longer than the words imply, but eventually it was going, roaring away at about 3,000 rpm, exactly like the Homelite single cylinder ex-B17 APU I have. It is well silenced, but you could never exhibit it, too bad a neighbour in the line up. It is obviously a single speed device & I mulled over fitting a proper Tillitson carb from another scrap Homelite I have, but that will mean fitting a tank as well. Hmmmm.

It drives a 2.75kva 110 volt generator which has both a commutator and a pair of slip rings. There is currently(sic!) no sign of electrikery & I think I shall let a Proper Electrician have a look at it . Probably the revs drop if it is loaded.

Nonetheless, I gave it a good clean, grey primered it and sprayed it satin finish WD green. I'm working on WW2 Canadian Army stencils this evening, but photos of it before and after can be seen at

J. Kim Siddorn, Regia Anglorum

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You must be well chuffed. The rather rustic (in the nicest possible way!) finish suits its military origins - my Danish army Villiers set shows signs of several layers of fairly roughly applied paint, though in that case the engine ID / instruction plate got the treatment as well. What paint did you use?

Nick H

It looks nice Kim. I did notice that it's reverse rotation. Is that normal for these engines?

John

I ran it over with a brass cup brush in an electric drill to remove the loose stuff and the rust. I Hoovered it and wiped out the crud I could reach, but didn't wash it down with hot Gunk as is my custom, wanting to retain the years of oily dust around the carb. To make the worst of the rust pitting less visible, I used a high build grey primer. The device shows two colour schemes, grey for the genny & control box & army green for the rest of it. I suspect it has been built up from two units & decided to paint it one colour. I chose a fairly green variety as it is Canadian built & not US & the vendor had been told it was ex Canadian Army who use a greener camo than the US military.

The magneto and fan intake were taken down to the metal, but much of the rest was only taken down to good paint in an attempt to preserve much of the war finish for future owners to discover. The final colour is simply most of a big generic green spray can from my friendly motor factor. Applied in the open air over unabraded primer gives the satin finish.

I need to clean comm & slip rings & replace the plugs now - oh, & see if it can be persuaded to produce electricity!

Regards,

J. Kim Siddorn,

# Whats the spec of this??

tim.

the genny may need to be 'flashed'. connect 12 volts dc across the commutator for a half second while the genny is at rest and retry the run. after time some gennys lose the remanent magnetism in the field and refuse to pick up. good luck. sammm

I'd try that normally, but upon investigation, I found various wires disconnected & reasoned that there was probably a reason for that. ;o)) Not being the most electrically-minded person in the world, I thought I'd ask a local club member electrician to have a look at it.

Regards,

J. Kim Siddorn,