Cody,
Ye gods young man.
Build a separate simplified (I.E. emergency needs first) low-voltage DC system (12V, 24V, 48V??) (RV Style??) and avoid that present system like it was snakes in a barrel.
Then you will be completely off grid on the parallel system. Earth Grounding is still a good idea. That is the plan I have distilled down to.
And then, I could be completely Mad as a Hatter! 
On second thought, you may need a fancy transfer switch for things like the well pump. Very few loads rate that high in importance. And please don’t burn anything you will need later!
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I’m eager to see it
!
To Cody and others
Grounding and bonding is kind of important.
There are things you can do to work around a lack of bond conductors.
Let me make the distinction here ( in Canadian Parlance )
A ground point is where the common conductor from a service is connected to a ground electrode.
This is done in one place only.
The Bond wires are bare copper, green or green and yellow and these attach to the non current carrying metal parts of electrical system to ensure nothing is ever energized in such a way as to cause shocks or fires from overheated parts.
You may not have a Bond in every box of an older home but you will have a ground point in any home made in the last 60 years ( maybe more )
There are as I said work arounds that make the systems without that bond safe to touch.
But thats a subject for another thread…
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Ya thats got one of those speed holes in the side…
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A Stay Kool Block! I bet with an OHV head it’ll never cook the oil!
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just a little weight reduction is all 
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These engines all have one piece cast iron oil control rings.
They do work and as long as the rings are in good shape they their job.
But as the engines wear these ring loose tension and don’t control oil very well at all.
You get into a runaway oil consumption problem with an engine that still runs fairly well and delivers decent power.
But they burn all their oil and POOF!
Valve guides also are aluminum and wear out.
Clones have cast iron guides that last longer with an oil seal on the Intake.
Cast iron bores that wear longer.
Three piece oil control rings that function longer too.
And almost all come with a low oil shut down feature.
That last point is the biggest reason clones run as long as they do…
Clones do have a problem with that oil control ring working a little too well in some cases.
It might promote longer life if they got a little more oil to the top end.
I remove the oil seal on the intake to let them suck a little oil past and try and wet the top of the cylinder.
This does not make the bore last longer but it does make the piston rings last a little longer I find
( take that with a grain of salt because I also do things to these engines like run them with less normal oil levels to reduce foaming, Angle mounts that change the oil dipper’s contact to sump. I and let them scream at 6500 rpm… )
If you take a Briggs and Stratton IC series 5 HP engine with a cast iron bore and ball bearings thats a very good motor…
With the cast iron oil control ring they start to use oil sooner, but as long as you keep them full of ol they are very reliable long lasting engines too.
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The only flathead I currently have is a Briggs IC 10hp vertical shaft taken from a Snapper Mower where the differential locked up, I’m planning to build it into a micro truck that runs only on woodgas for farm use. If things get any hairyer I might relegate the gasifier to run a genset for 12v charging.
Now that the Mazda will take forever to make road worthy I might just make THAT the little farm hauler.
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You could do both.
That engine you have is a probably more than able to run double duty.
You could rig up a Mule drive and put a large alternator on it to charge batteries
If you look at this link to Bercomac you will see the mule drive attachment they have for a vertical shaft engine ( this is pretty generic most are something like this ) you can make a rig up that lets you use a garden tractor to front mount a generator, charger, even a hydraulic pump if you like to run a splitter or something.
https://bercomac.com/manuals/file/download/8
Random selection fromt he Mecc Alte PDF files I want to show you.
The only real difference between their single and two bearing generators is the shaft and plat that bolts onto the front.
It would not be that hard cut the crank out of one of those exploded Tecumseh powered generator and have the end turned to fit a flange mount bearing and then bolt a steel plate to the generator frame.
There you go… Caveman two bearing generator conversion that you can run off a tractor mule drive…
Frequency and voltage control won;t be great but for just running tools and lights you won’t care.
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Right now I have a Peerless Tecumseh 3 speed snowblower gearbox for the transmission. 3 forward and 1 reverse gear, chain drive final to a live rear axle. I repacked the gearbox with red n tacky and filled a quarter of the case with some heavy gear oil, a trick I learned from people that race lawn mowers.
I have enough PTO length to put on a triple belt pulley if I wanted, the gearbox only needs the one. I really just need to finish setting up my steering and go with it.
Look up my Mini Joni Copy topic if you wanna see it. It’ll be a crawler with the gear ratio it has set up right now.
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I looked at it.
Pretty cool little machine.
My Toro has that same transmission used in powershift snowblowers ( 5 forward 2 reverse ).
Maybe I will build something like that one day.
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Wallace and Bruce, I can’t help but keep thinking about induction motors as a generator. I’m trying to think of a way to stabilize the voltage so someone can power more sensitive electronics. Some kind of regulator.
It seems wasteful and almost roundabout but AC motor powering a 115v to DC, and then using a battery or capacitor as a buffer to run a pure sine wave inverter.
Unless someone makes an AC to AC regulator that cleans up the current to a pure sine wave. My Google-Fu isn’t strong enough to find that.
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Cody, here is a project task, where the conversion of an asynchronous electric motor into a generator is beautifully described, also contains a program for the Arduino, to control the voltage by adding capacitors. Copy the text from the pdf document and enter it in the translator, but you may already understand Slovenian … 
https://mladiraziskovalci.scv.si/ogled?id=1668
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Tone,
Will the asinhronski generator make metric power?
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It is. Just Spin some kind of DC making device to charge the battery.
Remember, all the sensitive electronic stuff is 3.3vdc or 5vdc ultimately. Getting to that level is just various DC to DC converters. To get to the DC to DC converter level, it’s usually a transformer from ac down to a lower ac voltage, like 120vac to 24vac (antenna rotors and thermostats), or 120vac to just above multiples of Li-ion batts. So anything older or mechatronical is not so effected by voltage spikes as it is frequency. (Ex. I wondered why my washing machine only had a 10 minute cycle, it was because my AC motor generator was sped up so much it was running at 90 Hertz.)
Ac motors running at other than 60Hz will do strange things, like buzz, or get warm. They don’t usually fail tho.
You set the Hz by setting the rpm of the engine, and depending on the engine governor. You have to spin the motor at slightly above it’s rated rpm as a motor, open circuit, then let the load take down the rpm, then readjust for voltage once under load.
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Before we get too far down the trail here, let’s talk fuses and circuit breakers!
I have burned up a LOT of wire, and components because I don’t protect my circuits well, or not at all. Normally, I am the only one touching the stuff I build, so I just bow my head in shame and keep going.
Now, I use anything to protect circuits. Automotive fuses, house circuit breakers, even small wire.
I plan where I want the wire to burn up, if I can’t fuse it.
The point here is that when one kluges up some electrical stuff, rarely does proper grounding come to mind. Seeing as these inverters and generators are floating grounds, they can be pretty dangerous if their grounds don’t match what a house has.
@Wallace , you better speak to this. I don’t know the proper codes or procedures.
I do know, that my dry calloused hands and rubber soled tennis shoes have prevented me from becoming the ground quite often. When you feel a tickle, it’s time to stop and get a meter out.
I have a knife grinder that one has to use while standing on a rubber floor mat, otherwise it will blow fuses or shock the hell out of the operator. It’s currently located in a far junk pile, buried under brush.
Please list your favorite electrical protection devices…
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It does read an awful lot like Czech.
Iol
I don’t understand Czech HA HA
I read math the math makes sense
Grounding bonding for generators and inverters.
Ya Its worth a thread of its own.
There is more than just safety there is also liability on my part since electrical codes are not the same ( but physics is figure that out )
There are non standard units of measure for electrical
I learn to do motor and generator calculations in Metric, most of all this done on an engineering level is metric.
In the field however I learned to do my rough calculation in for magnetic densities in lines per inch. ( but I was trained by really old guys how things were done in excess of 60 years ago ). Since no one does any real training of value anymore its ironic that new are forced to make sense of old books and tables or new books with old tables.
A prime example of this is EASA ( not European space agency HA HA ) but the electrical apparatus service association.
All there books and tables are in a confusing mixture of very old tables and formulas
No one does things in line per inch in engineering…
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Heres a video that pretty simple and too the point about grounding and boding in American three wire Eddison systems.
The rest of the world is a bit different.
UK and a few other place are also wired different…
Bonding
The basic idea is always the same a third non current carrying conductor is used to direct sort circuit currents on metal to main service to trip the breakers or blow fuses.
A ground is a single point at the consumer service were the common, neutral white ect " NOT HOT " wires meet and are connected to ground to provide a " reference "
By this I mean the earth is ground and the local panel has to be connected to local ground to pull it all down to the same reference voltage…
This way no stray voltages can build up in the systems that might make a touch-shock potential.
We also do not want multiple places where grounds and neutrals are connected in a building because this can cause currents to flow in things that are not supposed to carry currents and this can cause fires and shocks.
Phew…
In some cases you might have more than one ground like a very large building where there are multiple ground rods connected to all the building steel work… ( but thats not a home )
There may be situations where you have building that is connected to a common power system and has its own ground.
But this is not one home this is multiple buildings…
Like I said this can get complicated…
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I think I’ve learned the first thing I need to do to the wiring in the house is to at the very least install GFCI outlets. I need to ask someone other than my mother if we have any sort of grounding, my uncle might know.
I never feel electricity from the piping so I don’t think it’s pipe grounded. Mom installed a bunch of 3 prong outlets without connecting a ground wire, I might one at a time replace them with GFCI style outlets just for my own sanity.
At least my shops are grounded…
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I am going to go outside my comfort area now and give you some non specific advice without knowing your local or national codes.
( pretty stupid on my part )
If you look inside your electrical boxes and see a bare copper wire to the back of the box but not connected to a switch or receptical that is probably code as built and the assumption made back then was the contact between the receptical and the metal box was good enough
Today I would put a jumper Between there and the receptical or light switch where practical…
GFCI recepticals can protect more than one plug!
If you look on the back of them they have a line side and load side anything you connect to the load side is protected…
Anyplace you can touch a plug or switch and can put your hand on a plumbing fixture you should have GFCI protection (the rule is usually 3 feet in most codes ).
Its just good practice to try this with everything you modify because its good practice…
If you are doing some wiring of your own look at your local hardware store for a book called the electrical code simplified.
I had one of these back in the 90s when I started out and its very simple and too the point.
It will help you wire your home, but try and get a current one and for your locality.
(Obviously a 25 year old Ontario code book will not be ideal for you to use )
When you add wiring to your home make a print up in advance so you can remember how you did in the future and where things are fed from so you can label your electrical box.
Be consistent:
I bring the source of the power into the bottom of the box ( no matter where I comes from and I put what it feeds into the top left and anything that is daisy chained off of that box in the top right ( If I can sometimes I can’t or don’t for what ever reason )
This makes future identification of what you have done easier.
Use the correct wire.
If its exposed wiring spend the money and buy some armoured cable ( BX ) for things like dish washers and built in appliances ( if it ever gets moved or pulled out and pushed back in the wires will not get damaged or pinched )
Support all your cables with clips and fasten them within 6-8 inches of where they end at boxes or enter things like your furnace or hot water tank.
There is nothing wrong with a tywrap use them when ever you want to make things tidy…
Leave yourself some slack wire inside a connection about 6-8 inches so you can comfortably work on things. …
In a Consumer service panel turn off the power!!! Then work on it.
Leave enough wire inside those boxes to move things around if you add breakers or relocate things.
There is nothing wrong with having extra wire in there as long as its neat and tidy, but there is plenty to avoid like having to use wire nuts to splice it there because you were short!
Never hide a box inside a wall.
Put it someplace you can access the wiring its usually a requirement by code to have access to a splice or joint.
Double check before you put the power on…
Make sure things are tight…
Use the right wire …
Never be afraid to hire an electrician, and if you do for a big job get a few quotes and talk to people about the quality of the work they do.
Get permits and inspections done.
I except no liability for anything my advice is simple commonsense and for discussions only I do not suggest you do any wiring in your home unless you are comfortable, and legally qualified to do so…
I am not a residential electrical contractor.
I do not inspect homes.
I do not recommend you do anything based on my advice.
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