As you do, various things have conspired recently to bring me back to looking at using an indian clone petter cs as prime mover in a combined power and heat unit, with the possibility of niche commercial offerings, bearing in mind I have yet to even see an indian cs clone much yet bought one as a sacrificial lamb.
Research I have done suggests the engine(s) should be shipped over here in parts as all components need a thorough QA strip and clean anyway, and many components need replacing with better quality parts, honourable mentions go here to casting sand still being present inside motors, weedy injection lines, and over all poor finishing and presentation. So pukka blueprinting and hand built aka Gardner.
The motors themselves are cheap enough to buy to justify the added investment of labour.
Similarly coupling them to suitable alternators and so on to produce a complete heat and power genset unit is no great difficulty.
These things _can_ be done, and we end up with a massively durable and reliable heat and power genset that will last generations of heavy duty use, quite unlike the horrid stuff you can buy today.
Here's the "problem", I think it's a viable idea, after all _I_ would have one, my mate is less than convinced, and thinks my arguments about initial higher capital cost being offset by reliability and ongoing fuel savings etc are likely to fall on deaf ears in a world where the bottom line is bottom dollar as it were.
Of course it could well be that someone out there is already doing this, but I'm hoping that "preaching to the choir" in a stationary engine group will give me some idea of how well received the idea of working rather than show stationary engines is likely to be received, because if we are just going to buy a couple for our own use there is no point going to all the extra time and effort to document everything and work up all the SOP etc associated with starting up something on a semi-commercial basis.
thoughts?