Hey Mr Wayne
I wanted to pick up one next month with money refreshing then.
Problem is Feb is my wife’s birth month.
She will be claiming it then as HER’s.
Ha! Good gift. She’s not much on jewelry. Would match her OWN smaller Stilh weed eater and chainsaw she made me get for her on previous birthdays
She’s bought her own lawnmowers. (I only got to pick the engines)
Sigh. Problem is she objects mightily anymore me “murderfing”; “I’m IMProveing, honey” her things.
David Baille is correct. You have to buy her: her own. Then keep your damn hands offin’ it.
And I so wanted to de-couple split out the engine electric shutdown switch from the rotary fuel shut off valve.
These DO have a side of float bowl drain and hose. Not automatic. You use a flat tiped scewdriver to open and close. Engine switch separated from the rotary fuel valve then the carb could be engine ran dry. No more needed screwdriver. No fuel dribbling below from the drain hose.
Oh. 3-5 pulls to starting up from a dry carb float bowl. These have a crankcase, diaphragm pulsator fuel pump. Takes a few pulls for the pump to refill the carb bowl.
Also these at warm idle “eco” burble misfire maybe 1 in 20-30 strokes if unloaded. You can feel it. Smell the cylinder of un-combusted air/fuel out the exhaust.
500 watt loading evens that all out.
Ha! I pack boarded my rental unit running around 500 halogen watt lighting doing evening chores. Sweet exhaust then. Feels like packing the now 35 pound god-child around. Alive! Goodfeel.
Steve;
But the newer serpentine flat belt systems then a bit harder to work with. Need to build in the spring arm belt tensioner. Older Vee belts systems it was just use engine valve springs as pusher/tensioners.
Why can’t the methods used on V belts be used on serpentine?TomC
Years ago I bought a new lawn mower engine to run a hydraulic pump. Dang thing would not run and tried to bite me. I took a chance and bought a cast iron flywheel that was on a horizontal engine of the same family. Bingo… Just a looks sea at an aluminum flywheel turns my nose up…
I hope next month’s investment will be a nice storage battery. Leaning towards an AGM, maybe a Crown or maybe one of those rolled up AGM’s… If I have to drive too far to get it than wait till spring.
Well, gots to go out into the cold and snow to see if the tractor will start. No luck last night. Have been doing a lot of snow sweating with a shoval.
Hey Jeff,
Is your tractor diesel or gasoline? I was able to start my old IH340 @ -10° the other day. No preheat. I was really surprised. Didn’t need to use it just thought I’d try.
ray_menke
(Ray Menke (Lytton Springs, Texas))
#145
Jeff, I just replaced the AGM battery that came with our 2003 Buell motorcycle. It was 11 years old. Last year I replaced the AGM battery in my Harley Sportster after 8 years. I bought the replacement Harley battery at the dealer, and the parts guy could not believe I had not been using a battery tender. I also bought an AGM battery for my home-made Changfa powered diesel motorcycle project (on the back burner for now), so my vote is for AGM.
1 Like
ray_menke
(Ray Menke (Lytton Springs, Texas))
#146
Steve, my wife decided her almost septuagenarian shoulders deserved a nice new electric lawnmower, so she bought one and keeps it in HER storage shed. To top that off, she acquired my two heavy duty extension cords… Today, she bought some Briggs and Stratton 30 weight oil, declining my old dusty plastic jug of 30 wt, HD Diesel oil. (This is for her new WEN Inverter Generator.) She still wants her own gun, and I told her that Tom Collins recommended a .410, but she might be favoring a 20 gauge with home defense loads. No reason why she can’t use my 12 gauge…but if they want their own, it is o.k. with me, I guess.
I read most of those two articles that others have posted on BATTERIES and I am still dumb as a box of rocks. The one article was Farm Glass Batteries (?) and it sounded like something for a battery bank for solar or wind generators. Also, I didn’t think this was something that is used any more even though you can buy the glass gars on the net.
The other article was more modern and talked about a lot of stuff. Now you mention buying an AGM battery or an AGM rolled up batteries. I know (?) the AGM stands for a fiberglass separators. And they did talk about rolled separators, but they never said how I would know what was in a battery. I just go to my local parts store and buy a X volt battery with Y cranking hours which I believe they said that was the number of amps that would pull the voltage down to unusable in 8 hours. I’m lost.TomC
Hi Tom, I glanced at the article as well ;apart from a nice historical document it won’t help you much. When plastic cases became available glass battery cases disappeared. So here is my extremely simplified battery info. A lead acid battery has plates in it and acid. The amount of plates determines voltage the surface area of the plates gives you amperage. A starting battery has many many thin plates to give you as many amps as possible in a short amount of time. A deep cycle has fewer thicker plates able to deliver similar amps but not as fast. On car batteries the huge amp number is called cold cranking amps. It is not a measure of total amps just how many amps the battery can muster up for starting for a very short time measured in seconds. If you have a second amp number on your battery usually somewhere around 100 amps that is the total capacity of the battery if you slowly discharge it. AGM refers to advanced glass mat; a refinement on lead acid using more modern materials and usually longer life. A rolled battery is again a lead acid refinement where the plates are rolled around each other to give better performance for the same size. Hope that helps and remember that is bare bones info full of technical omissions for simplicity.
David Baillie
That article on glass jar batteries stirred my imagination. Could I make my own batteries? I’ve got lots of lead I could cast into plates. I once took apart an old car battery, and the plates were like grids with some other stuff filling them (Lead sulfate?)is this produced through the chemical reaction within the battery or something I would have to make or aquire?
Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM) the electrolyte is absorbed into the glass mat and not just free in the battery cells. Much less chance of spillage in the event of an accident
They also are less prone to vibration damage because of the way they are made
It’s all good David… I’ve sold lots of batteries in days past. Battery companies could build better batteries but if you don’t have to replace them they’d be outta business.
Gas tractor. Ran fine when shut down. Would not start at all during storm when I should be plowing, 8f temp. Last night same thing… Strange, took throttle (governor lever) to full low (and then MAYBE a tad up) and it fired right up… Four hours of sleep last night…
Now snow like sand, could only do upper part. Need chains for lower but have to drag up and chop to fit tractor… Gotta go…
I apologize for jumping up back out of the current info stream.
TomC I’ve tried the flat serpentine “microgrooved” belts with just armstong tension. Loading knocks out the alternator end ball bearings.
Some have tried just the valve spring trick pushing the alternators. Car/pick-up with serpentine belt systems use very small diameter pulleys to get the idling speed outputs up. To alt fans blow more cooling air.
The valve spring’ed tensions systems with rapid electrical load-on and loads-off I can here the serp belt chirping at the alt pulley. As a minimum this is flat spotting the belt underside in that pulley contact spot. Then I’ve seen the belt bouncing progressively increase.
I think it is because that the weight/mass of the alternator is not allowing for rapid enough movement changes.
The actual factory tensioner arms are usually aluminum with a light weight plastic pulley. Most even have some dampening resistance built into the tension arm pivot.
I hope this is clear.
Stomach flue. Wife first. Now me. And the god-child errping up this morning.
TimH thanks for the Honda generator feed back and decision tree.
Thanks for the gasoline fuel extender recommend. I do want to try something now different than the StaBil.
Ha! And thank for reminding me that we have actually met, talked face to face at a VictorygasWorks doo.
Yeah RayM, I know. Always been a 12ga fellow myself.
The last coyote and a Halk this morning could not tell the diffnerce with the 20ga though.
And a lot easier in aging shoulders.
I’ve used 3 different AGM spiral cells Optima’s in starting applications now for since 1995. They are O.K. The Ford pickup 2nd installed one did go self-discharging bad at 8 years. About the same as a GOOD flooded lead acid.
1st one installed went by-by with a vehicle change out on the Plymouth Horizon give-a-way at three years in service - so no history.
3rd one installed went by-by on the insurance company buy out from the Honda CRV wreck my wife was in. Whine! Only one year in service on that expensive battery.
Then I switched to a less expensive EverReady branded AGM spiral cell initially as replacement in the Ford pickup 2004. Swapped it out into the Plymouth mini-van before selling this last Sept.
Only 3 years on the Interstae mid-line flooded cell in that minivan. Been fighting a returning acid corrosion problem at the pos post since the 2nd year on that Interstate…
Van sold to a know grandmother doing raising grandchildren duty.
So she got the EverReady spiral cell.
Moral is they all will age, go bad at some time. The sealed lead acid in my Sun portable digital oscilloscope as the WORST. Sealed lead acid in the jumper box as second worst for low life needing changing out.
At least with the flooded lead acid I can dink some with the acid strenths. Flush if I dare. 50/50 on making it better . . . OR much worse.
My experiences
Steve Unruh
Oh, I should add that it was the Gates Tire and Rubber Company that had two engineers/designers develop the spiral cell batteries. This was in 1972. For 10-15 years to get spiral cells you bought Gates branded and manufactured batteries. Their market was military and unattended telecom/rail systems.
Optima Company was set up for the rest of us later. S.U.
