newb alert - petter CS clone queries

Ah. Is there anyone contributing to this list that has actual, hard, hands on knowledge of these engines?

OK then ................

So, we have reports from contributors to SEM that the timing gears are faulty and from another source that the main castings are porous from time to time.

Having ridden motorcycles for over forty years and spent nearly twenty years in the trade, I have a little experience of motorcycles of all types. This naturally includes Japanese and Indian made Enfields and it is my recollection that the latter were never much good until the home-based customer had been exposed at first hand to the former!

The active contributors to this list are erudite, capable, practical men, the majority of whom have spent (or are still in) employment of a nature involving engines of one type or another from live, working steam, Diesels of every kind and including the strange whirly things that shoved Concorde along. Their corporate opinion seems to me to be not against Indian made engines (or anything else) just because they came from the sub-continent, but is simply reserved in judgement according to reports.

I know you'll excuse me if I join them, but I would possibly be interested in buying your hundredth production unit. Please do let us know how you get on.

By the way, fuzzie-wuzzies were followers of the Mhaddi in the Sudanese campaign and the British Army had a very healthy respect for them.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Talking of said cave-dwellers, I've recently had a spate of enquiries with dud return addresses. An unusually high proportion of these enquirers had the surname of "Brown" :-) Jump to your own conclusions....... ttfn Roland

We also had a post from an american who was having trouble with one of these clones. It was something to do with the valve lifters not rotating and wear occurring at the single point of contact with the cam. There is a lot of interest in these engines, for their cheapness and expected low maintenance and longevity from both the survivalist alternative energy groups and people trying to provide basic amenities to undeveloped nations. If there are problems with these engines then I think it should be discussed in public.

AJH

ayem from what I can gather there are many different makers, and the quality and indeed range of quality of their output varies wildly between makers, none of this is a problem if you know this beforehand and do a complete strip and rebuild as a matter of course...

given that you can buy a brand spanking new petter cd 6hp clone for as little as 275 quid there has to be an awful lot seriously wrong with them before it ain't worth a damn good look.

£275? I take it that does not include shipping, Import Duty and of course VAT. Any ideas what the final price ready for collection at a British port might be - which is, after all, the bottom line ..........

regards

Kim Siddorn

roughly, if you take a mean CS clone price is US dollars and convert it.

from as little as 50 quid if you send it surface and collect yourself from port of entry

bugger all if you do it properly and import it in bits, as you are going to strip it anyway.

I've had ballpark numbers around 400 quid thrown at me.

Hi There Guy Fawkes,

As far as I can tell from this thread, no one has yet given you any first-hand feedback on the Caste Iron Curry Listeroids.

If, after the gutting that you've received offered up in leiu of information, you still are interested in talking to folks who actually OWN and RUN Caste Iron Curry Listeroids, please contact me off-list at fero snipped-for-privacy@city-net.com and I will be happy to put you in touch with a number of friends who own and run one or more of these critters.

See ya, Arnie

Arnie Fero Pittsburgh, PA USA fero snipped-for-privacy@city-net.com

check yer inbox

cheers

Or for a real treat you could join the SEL and discover world-class gutting :-) ttfn Roland

That's even a better idea! Bye!

Watch out lads, the colonists are getting hostile again, Stand by with the warriors Kim!!

Taking Arnie's point, but adding that this is the last time I will reply to anonymous posts, here are some thoughts. Since they are thoughts please do with them as you will and do not trouble to tell me I'm wrong!

As Arnie says there are CS copies running in the USA, some in CHP applications. However all the ones Google finds for me are hobby applications for the owner's interest and entertainment. A small market. I've no idea of your target market but a purely manual engine without something akin to the SoM controls may limit its appeal.

The original Lister CS was a well made engine with a richly-deserved reputation for reliable longevity. Modern machine-tools are capable of turning out parts far faster but not inherently to a higher standard of accuracy. As an aside I have found a good many examples of incorrect machining in Petters engines but none yet in Listers. Modern materials are theoretically better provided the right spec is chosen and QA ensures that the spec is consistently followed. If a slightly misplaced punch mark is enough to cause a failure it seems reasonable to at least question both the underlying mettalurgy and the QA.

There seem to be many offerings from several continents and no doubt all are different. The common feature however is that higher outputs are achieved by raising the rpm. Is the piston CI or Alu and have you calculated the mean and maximum piston speeds. Are they within recommended limits?

I do not understand the switch to TR mains. I presume it is because at the higher rpm the safe wiping speed of a white-metal bearing is exceeded. If that is so then what steps have been taken for the big-end? TR bearings require a high standard of machining and careful setup. I assume you have the facilities to confirm and correct both aspects. In my experience (Wisconsin engines) TR mains have one drawback especially in our climate. If an engine is allowed to stand for any length of time condensation forms in the bearings and the resulting rust swiftly destroys them.

Is the relatively simple governer able to give adequate control over variable load and cyclic variation at the higher speeds?

Oil is a vexed issue and I have no desire to re-open what can be acrimonious debate. However The CS design predates multigrade detergent oils and thus relies on detritus falling out of suspension into the bottom of the sump and a crude mesh filter. With a modern detergent oil I would have thought that a full-flow filter would be essential especially with those TR mains.

The original CS valve gear is heavy. Has it been lightened and if not how will it stand up to prolongued periods at higher than designed rpm?

How is a good balance achieved at the higher rpm and what is the effect of wear in the TR mains? It feels like a rapid downhill spiral rather than the slow gentle decline of a W-M bearing.

I have not done any calculations but if the engine is indirect injection then it might be more efficient in pure heat terms to put the diesel in a properly designed burner.

If it were my money I would not embark on the venture without a visit to the factory and independent analysis of randomly chosen material samples.

finis

well my post was hardly anonymous...

That's one of the problems, google tends to make people think if it ain't found by google it doesn't exist, in my experience google is now nowhere near as good / useful a search engine as it used to be (vivissimo is good) and in any event, the only things googled are those things placed online with a robots.txt allowing google, for some subjects this means the google version of the whole story only represents a fraction of a percent of the true global picture.

see above

nobody said it would be purely manual

That is a misleading phrase, modern tooling and techniques ARE inherently capable of producing work of greater quality and to finer tolerances that older techniques.

naturally "capable" != "will, every time."

clearly

not so, another misleading phrase, the indian clone petters I am aware of use cast iron square cut gearing, one should not use a punch on such items, ever, it will always induce stress in the material, drilling is safe, punching is not.

you can put this down to QA if you like, but since that would give a

100% failure rate it is really an Operations failure prior to QA

petter started this, bhp is simply a function of rpm anyway

I'm not planning on anything other than 600 rpm anyway, maybe 500 if I can get away with it and the torque curves allow

You're looking for problems that don't exist by assuming I'm planning on over revving them, if I or anyone else was planning on doing that then I would suspect that the first point of failure would be a flywheel bursting or the bottom end throwing a rod, or perhaps a valve bouncing into contact with a piston.

I'd assume it makes fabrication a much simpler task of line boring to lower tolerances.

nah, not even close, white metal bearings can handle in excess of

10,000 rpm with ease

white metal shells, look at it from the manufacturing point of view, shells are cheaper / faster / easier than rollers.

SOP would be throw away all the original bearings and replace with quality items

mm, doesn't take much

got a feeling they're spark ignition from memory?

yup, if you use open bearings with no seals in a poorly designed installation where they can drail down completely of lube this _can_ happen, but such conditions as are required to make it happen also mean you're getting regular condensation inside the block and therefore acidification of the lube oil so you have lots of problems apart from your mains...

governing a diesel to fixed rpm is one of the easiest things you can possibly do, provided you have sufficient rotating mass, it's trying to govern lightweight variable speed diesels that presents the technical challenge.

I don't know what other people do, I'm guessing from other replies than many people on here run engines for a few hours a year under negligible load at shows, that's not where I'm coming from, clearly the lube system is totally inadequate for continuous duty applications, but that is another problem that has already been solved multiple times in other arenas, so no big challenge there.

that's why it's tough

I dunno why you keep on about higher than designed rpm? It certainly didn't come from me and doesn't feature in my plans.... it's a dumb idea, if you want a 1000 rpm motor go and buy one, don't overwork a slower engine.

why always on about overspeed conditions?

if all you want is heat mebbe, go multi/any fuel boiler with superheat and plug into a steam engine to get your motive power, more complexity, more maintenance, more to go wrong and more expensive to build and run.

petter cs is a very efficient way of converting oil to rotating motive power, the idea is you use the __waste__ heat in a CHP unit

clearly there is a lot of footwork to be done, and it was only as a part of that that I asked the original question on here, naievely assuming that _someone_ would actually be running a clone or better still running one as a working motor and not some saturday hobby thing.

Original question! Rubbish, you asked for thoughts... Personally I think you should take more notice of your very astute mate.

"As for 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."

Given the ratings of these "engines", their output from a power perspective would have been well & good in the 30s, but in this day and age, not likely to run a modern home. I take it you are also going to use an "alternator" from the 30s, too, rather the "horrid stuff" of today?

As for power generation and heat supply, we tend to move forward rather than back:

Tom

I doubt that speed is the reason. The Lister JP, which started life as part of the CS range, has a standard max speed of 1200 rpm, on 3" dia journals, white metal, and some later versions IIRC went up to 1500. Admittedly the later fixed-high-compression JK version had something fancier, I think copper-lead, for the top half of the big end.

JPs seem to run quite happily with detergent oils and no proper filter, admittedly most marine versions have a dry sump system with a large area of gauze strainer. In fact the air-cooled small Lister diesels such as LD, LR, SR only had a filter as an optional extra and they had a well-deserved reputation for reliability and (usually messy!) longevity, with detergent oils recommended.

I wonder if it's any heavier than that on the JP, which as I said runs happily at 1200 rpm and more? I know one is external, the other enclosed.

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

I did indeed...

perhaps my own fault for not including world like "informed" in that phrase

Oh aren't you so funny and clever, give yourself a pat on the back.

You clearly know nothing, power is torque, it takes torque to spin an alternator under load, nothing else, if you knew ___ANYTHING___ about the relationship between brake horse power, torque and rpm you'd know this, if you knew anything about petters you'd know this....

1200 watts output, flavour of the moment stirling engines, it's a toy.

I'm talking about something that will work for a living and do many tens of thousands of hours of duty at full load, you want to stick with your toys be my guest.

and to ALL the snobs in here, yes I know I have a personality that can grate on people real easy, it comes from me not tolerating bullshit, bullshit like I've had from certain subscribers in here, a very small number who can be counted on one hand and who are totally unrepresentative of the group as a whole.

so basically when I get bullshit and attitudes from people I bite back, that's what you're seeing now.

you want to play smug bastards and start googling and find someone who has been forging me and libelling me and now finds himself as defendant in a libel trial and declare that this person is me and therefore I'm a troll, hope it makes you feel real superior.

I guess when the highlight of your life is running and old engine on tickover a few weekends in the year you need some other outlets for your creativity.

LOL, Power is torque? Yeah right! A troll trying to be technical and failing abysmally.

you utter fool

go back to night school and learn at least the MOST BASIC definitions before you start slagging someone else off as a troll when YOU are the one who needs a clue.

Guy Fawkes has been described as the only politician to enter Parliament with honest intent. I have followed this thread thus far as I am inclined to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but I doubt now that this Mr Fawkes has entered this NG with honest intent.

He does not speak from experience but from rote. He seizes upon chance phrases to be strident. He becomes abusive when challenged. His arguments are not based in knowledge, but in a desire to attract attention and gain a response - possibly of any kind because contention is better than the loneliness of silence.

Congratulations, Mr Fawkes, the Great Dark of my trash bin awaits your further posts, the very first in ten years.

Over and out............

J. Kim Siddorn

- who has just noticed that his spell checker offers but one alternative for "Fawkes" - "fakes".