What I think I’m going to aim for is to have solar for the main part of the house, I can have the battery bank and inverter in this nook that sits right here. Since the indoor breaker has its own Main Disconnect that should isolate it from the rest of the boxes. We used to have Satellite TV so we still have some old cable routes in the ceiling for the solar panel wires. Or I could convert one of the old bedrooms into the battery room and route the AC voltage wire to the breaker without suffering too much resistance loss, it would be less than 100 feet I reckon after the inverter if I went this method.
This would make everything much more simple in all honesty. The house doesn’t use up that much electricity and it has the most sensitive electronics so the PSW inverter would be best served here.
I’m not positive about this but I think you can dig a trench and lay bare copper cable in it for a ground for areas you can’t penetrate with ground rods.
For my shop I’m going to hunt for a 220v single phase induction motor to power with an engine. I’ll probably have to use the Predator generator to use my inverter welders though to be on the safe side. The air compressor I can power directly with an engine.
I’ve seen on Surplus Center they’re selling some big Tecumseh generator engines and I’m tempted to buy at least one. Can put a tapered to straight adapter on that bad boy and get a double belt pulley to run the compressor.
Ya come to think of it thats an effective solution.
But its a Tecumseh…
They did not go out of business because they made the best small engines ya know, and that things has been sitting in a warehouse someplace for at least 12 years.
AS much as the idea is loathed by many.
Chinese engines are cheap and durable, easy to get parts for and better on fuel than these Tecumseh engines of a generation earlier.
I wish they had read the writing on the walls and built better engines.
They should have swallowed their pride and made an American clone of the Honda.
They could have made a better version.
Same short sighted managers ruined Clinton
They made good engines but the bean counters and a lack of ambition I think more than else killed them.
Sometime in the mid 80s if I recall correctly I was in a Princess Auto in the Toronto area and found brand new Clinton engines for sale.
I seem to recall they have been re branded but I knew they were Clinton.
I found out years later the company was still producing parts but not complete engines.
It may be someone else was buying these to make engines for reasons unknown.
My idea for the Tecumseh was to shave the head down as much as one can for a Flathead and run it on woodgas. That’s one reason I’m opting for an oversized engine.
Some engine are built with lower than optimal compression for their application.
The onan LK comes to mind first its 25 cubic inches and 5:1 compression.
The reason they wanted a lot of torque but limited power so you would not overload it.
And they wanted it to burn 80 octane gasoline.
There a compression increases can yield some gains ( ad there are some better heads for it )
But Tecumseh did not build engines that way.
Already they had as high a practical compression as possible.
You can try and get more but I don’t think it will work out for you…
It has a very interesting head.
The casting was made to fit the mid size big block but the demands of the 301 means it got bigger valves.
This head will fit the 340 through 420 big blocks.
Its a short cut to compression increases that don;t leave you sucking through a straw.
Tinkering with different combinations of easily found clone parts can get you an engine. with the right mix of valves that flow and chambers that are small for compression increases that will work with wood gas.
So keep yours eyes out for scrap snowblowers and strip those engines and look for parts that are simple bolt on that you can undo if they are not what you want.
Free scrap engines are out there just look for them.
Any engines even Tecumseh engines are worth tinkering with if they are free.
Buying new engines well that can get expensive if you ruin things.
Here’s one of those big valve heads.
I paid $25 for an almost new engine that blew up from Kijiji.
It has provided all kinds of useful parts for projects and I still have this head I tinkered with ( was never fully ready to do anything with )
If you look at the bottom left of the image on the floor you can just make out another engine.
Its a partly stripped GV340…
Freebie that mighty make a good gasifier engine.
I got some new ideas this year and I am going to dust off last years projects that never got started do to the strike
Only Clinton engine I ever have seen I just got rid of last week, 60cc 2 stroke in Articat kitty cat mini children’s snowmobile. Ran good, but the starter pawls we’re cheesy and tear themselves apart. I made new ones from 1/8" plate. Gave it to a collector,said he was going to hang it in his cabin in the blue mountains with some other collectible kids sleds he had
Maybe you can mill the heads, if they are thick enough, though make sure you dont over mill because wood gas engines only work up too X emount compression, any higher and it will spark knock,I caint remember the max compresion, it might be in the have wood will travel book, Wayne k knows though. PS you are building like i plan as i get the time,I got a 16 or 20 hp off a large lawn tractor, probley pull 5000 watt from wood power, if i can get it too burn clean enough on stationary filters and heat exchaners. If its too small of motor to pull hard enough too produce clean gas, i will up the motor size or just run that one on charco.
All you’ve said about Tecumseh and Clinton engines declines; to new NLA; I 100% agree with Wallace.
As a teenager I got to work on the last of the all cast iron versions of the B&S’s vertical singles. Awesome easy for annual making run. The real pits were the Lawnboy 2-strokes.
B&S, Tecumseh, Clinton seem to fall under some kind of make cheaper by made of “new capability space age” aluminum die-cast pricing down competition warring. He who could make the cheapest to deliver; use-until throwaway got the consumer grade OEM’s contracts.
I learned the hard way to favor Tecumseh for their float carburetors over B&S’s die cast zinc, clogging, rubber diaphragmed flapping fingers suction carburetors.
Then came as you said the Honda’s once they jumped from their small engine flat heads mini-generators to true overhead valves.
And now as you’ve said Chinese clones of those.
Insist getting cast in cylinder liners, overhead valves and regardless of the name plate: save fuel, save your watering eyes and your lungs sucking down all of a flatheads stinking part burned hydrocarbons.
I used up the last two of my Tecumseh doing running how-hot-possible to directly run charcoal gas testing.
By 175F you are killing the cylinder wall lubrication oiling.
Better to assured under all-conditions to pre-cool wood and charcoal gasses below that.
Regards
Steve unruh
A lot of work needs to be done in small engines to find the optimum engine parts combinations for wood gas.
Steve added some new information about temperature thats pretty handy to know.
So you say your not a fan of the Vacu-Jet carbs B&S used to make HA HA…
Consider just how clever that is for a moment…
A small engine is cube shaped for a reason.
You want it to be low and compact to fit inside things so having a fuel tank hang off the side or top to gravity feed a carb is not very cube shaped.
So mount it below the carb and use a suction set up.
But this too creates a problem because the fuel has a long way to go and the carb will not consistently flow the same amount of fuel from different loads and fuel levels.
But if you build in a simple pump to raise the fuel to just below the carb and consistently keep the level the same regardless of how much in in the tank.
It eliminates fuel lines and floats and leaky needle and seats!
AND if you keep it all cube shaped well thats Genius!!!
These are consumer level engines and they were made of aluminum and made cheap because that was what the consumer wanted and needed for light jobs around the house.
The companies that made these were caught on the back step when more robust designs with better quality could be had for not significantly more.
This engine has to fit where a Briggs or Clintons and Tecumseh engines fit.
Look at the compromises that went into make it cube shaped.
Thats a very short rod, almost too short.
It needs that Iron bore to help deal with the high side loading on the bore.
If the block has another 1/2 to 2/4 of an inch rod to stroke ratio it might have been suitable for an aluminum cool bore
This is anything but cube shaped.
It won’t fit in the same places as its contemporaries.
But it retained a long rod and roller bearings and cast iron construction.
Thats why they quite making them
Just things to think about…
Observations:
The long rod long stroke Wisconsin has advantages in wood gas.
Lower side loading on the power stroke lends itself to lower operating RPM and slow burning low cal fuel like wood gas.
Everything else being the same…
You might be better served by using this type of hard to find engine.
It will require experimentation and testing to see if the GX is a better more long lived engine than all the others.
Maybe its the Wisconsin thats better with its easy to adjust timing and low RPM operation.
This is a brand new generator engine for the 3600 rpm screamer generators. I have two of these here with the rods hanging out of the blocks. I have considered buying the replacement engine. The engine price is $220 with shipping? Even with the new engine, the screamer generators aren’t worth $220, for a 5Kw. This engine is a good engine, for free, I have dozens. They are used exclusively on Arens Snowblowers. There are thousands of fifty year old Tecumsehs here, and they all die the same way. They begin to burn oil and then they run out, then the rods poke out the blocks. The reason they still operate is because we have some meticulous stubborn Finlanders here, who always check their oil before they hit the starter (snowblower engines all have a ring gear and a 120vac electric starter motor).
Wallace is right about the induction motor bit. I would add that you should look for a big 15 horse 3 phase induction motor not a single phase five horse motor. While the single phase will just plug right into the wall and operate, it won’t provide enough power to operate your shop. The largest I have ever seen in single phase for free was the seven horse motor. But you can get three phase Motors given to you normally. We powered our house with a three-phase 25 horse motor and a diesel engine for a long time before we got solar panels.
I am really surprised that no one has tried to counsel you about air conditioning and refrigerators. If you already have grid, you might as well just pay the electric bill. You can’t Power air conditioning and refrigerators with off-grid stuff on your budget. It’s just not going to happen. I built a system for a guy who has central air conditioning and a freezer and refrigerator. And it cost over $100,000. $20000 in batteries.
If I was going to try refrigeration on your budget, with off grid, I would compare the energy star refrigerators, with a Dometek RV refrigerator, running on propane. You may find that it’s best to just go and buy some very efficient name brand refrigerators. We have one here that uses 100 Watts not continuously. At that consumption, I can’t afford to buy a dometic.
As far as air conditioning, have you measured the summer temperature of your pond? Perhaps you should arrange some sort of water pumping cooler affair. Not a swamp cooler, but cold water pump from the ground to a heat exchanger for the central air.
This looks an awful lot like that…
There are two common cranks used on Consumer generators one is a metric V type thats the most common you find in Chinese Generators.
Then there is this one I see thats an SAE crank.
This is a big block crank ( you can tell by the helical gear after the cam for a the counter balance shaft )
Keep your eyes out for a Honda engine bolted to a Mecc-Alte generator these use this style and if you find a good crank in a dead one you can mix and match until you have the perfect combination of parts to put those old generator heads you have back into service.
This is the other crank and its not good for much
I never bothered to look up the technical specifications on all these but I think this is called a V type and its used on Honda and Chinese generators.
You can buy Aftermarket Danfoss compressors from China and convert a cheap AC fridge to a DC fridge.
It would require some research and experimentation, but one of the advantages to living int he USA and you can buy refrigerants at walmart. If you know a guy that does HVAC then maybe its cheap to convert one
I have converted a few of those. Homelite used to sell a 1500w two-stroke generator. I have pulled those gen heads off and put various 4 stroke engines on them. The latest was a Kubota fourstroke gas engine.
The Honda clone generator we have was $125 and it has 2200 hours on it. That is way more hours then a Briggs or Tecumseh could have managed.
I did buy the 15kw Kohler. $750. Plus getting it on the trailer.
I have a smaller Kohler I want to show you once the snow comes off.
