On 11/4/2012 12:24 AM, Gunner wrote:
On Sat, 03 Nov 2012 23:57:24 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:
On 11/3/2012 10:12 PM, Gunner wrote:
On Sat, 03 Nov 2012 07:41:55 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:
On 11/3/2012 4:43 AM, Gunner wrote:
On Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:33:18 -0700, Larry wrote:
In article a843e813-2d97-4a4b-b171-
, says...
On Oct 31, 8:40 am, Frank wrote:
On 10/31/2012 8:31 AM, Stormin Mormon wrote:
For me, they include:
* Run the generator every year
* Boredom is a terrible thing
* Candles don't put out enough light to be useful.
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.
Things you should have already known.
Family here learned also that you should not run your generator indoors.
My neighbor who came over for water an outage or two ago was complaining
that they could not find any D cells for their portable radio.
Some people never learn.
A inverter is a wonderful thing, just connect to your car battery and
let engine idle. for a 100 bucks you can get a thousand watt inverter,
for lights, radio and a tv if the load isnt too heavy
A thousand watts is 85 amps at 12 volts. Most automotive alternators will fry
if you try to run them at that level, though some heavy duty truck
alternators will handle 1000 watts continuous. Your typical car alternator
will put out 50 amps at 14 volts at 4000 RPM, which is above engine idle. You
can retrofit a heavy duty 150+ amp alternator with a small pulley to make it
spin faster, but modern cars with their tight engine well and serpentine
belts make that a PITA. It would be easier to just get a 3 hp lawnmower
motor, mount a heavy duty alternator and a battery, which would give you 1000
watts easily while running the engine at moderate speed.
Actually..you are better off snagging the complete front end from a
Honda, or other small car, pulling the engine, mounting it on a stand
and adding a set of pulleys and a gen head.
http://www.harborfreight.com/engines...ead-45416.html
As an example. A regular automotive small engine will simply idle and
drive that gen head quite nicely. Anything bigger than 20 hp will be
more than enough. Hell..a motorcycle engine from a 450cc or bigger
should drive it nicely
Gunner
--
If you can set up the pulleys correctly to get a small liquid cooled
engine to run at 1800rpm and spin the generator at 3600rpm, you will
wind up with a very quiet, reliable genset. A heavy flywheel could help
but I suspect the mass of the armature would be enough to keep power
output steady. I installed a lot of generators in homes and businesses
back in the 90's after a major storm upset the power grid in my area and
my favorite gensets and the ones that had the fewest problems were those
that had liquid cooled engines running at 1800rpm. The 3600rpm
gensets with air cooled engines are called "screamers" by my suppliers.
Yes, I know all about insulated sound dampening enclosures. ^_^
TDD
With a small automotive engine..you can simply idle it at 700 rpms and
have no requirement to drive it at 1800 rpm
Gunner
--
When you write "small", are you referring to a small block V8? The 10kw
Generac units I installed had a 4 cyl Turkish Fiat liquid cooled engine
running at 1800rpm. That speed gives 60 cycle AC power from a 4 pole
generator. The 2 pole generators run at 3600 rpm. The 1800rpm speed lets
the genset respond well to changes in power demand and electric motor
start loads. I think it takes something like 1.5hp per kw to run a
genset so a good sized engine would be needed to get that kind of power
at idle speed. O_o
TDD
Im thinking more along the lines of a Pinto engine or similar. When
one simply changes the pulley sizes...an idling engine can spin a
genny at 1800 rpm easily. How many hp is the typical small engine out
of a Saturn or Pinto or similar?
the little 1.9l Saturn engine is 85hp out of the box. At idle...how
long will it run on 5 gallons of fuel? 10-15 hours or more?
And they can be had very very cheaply out of wrecks and other sources.
A buddy of mine built one using the HF 10kw gennhead and a Pinto
engine. It runs for days on a 20 gallon gas tank. At something like
800 rpm
Gunner
What is he using for a speed governor to keep the frequency stable? I
know there are a lot om OEM parts used to control idle speed on modern
vehicle engines that could be used to make your own governor. The HF
generator could be directly coupled to a small engine running at 3600rpm
using a Lovejoy coupling. The specs call for 16hp for full output so I'm
wondering if you could couple it to the existing pulleys
on a small 4cyl auto engine keeping the bell housing, flywheel and
starter to make things easier. Of course many modern vehicle engines
don't have a simple ignition system with a distributor and coil, so what
could you do there. I know an old Pinto engine didn't have an ECU
but a simple, possibly electronic ignition with distributor and a carb
which would make for a easy conversion to a stationary engine. My old
89 Dodge van has an engine control computer and TBI which could be used
to build a stationary engine for a generator but I'm wondering about the
new super whiz bang computer controlled engines of today's vehicles? O_o
TDD