Lister Diesel Engine

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Gentlemen,

Many years ago, whilst a machine tool fitter, my company bought Studer cylindrical grinders whose base material was concrete, no need for stress relief, with steel plates mounted into it and then ground to give all of the mounting surfaces.

Very accurate machines and easy to work on but care had to be taken when moving them about.

Martin P

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

Well here goes with the pic's

Edited By Larry Coleman 1 on 03/01/2015 01:02:37

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

The bottom picture is when it was pulled out of the river. The top two pic's were taken after sand blast & paint

Larry

[steveteeParticipant @stevetee]

When I worked for a Diesel engine manufacturer, some years ago it must be said, all the castings and certainly the larger ones were left outside to weather for a year or two. I believe this was to de stress the castings . Apparently the areas with the most stresses would corrode the most and eventually the castings would settle down and be ready for machining. It must be said that these castings would be considerably larger than those which might be seen inthe Lister factory.

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

Bamford showing hinged crankcase

Now I have been told that when the castings are buried they absorbe minerals from the soil ?

I had a good laugh at Erics comment which brought back memories of when I was asigned to a heavy machine shop at Garden Island Navy workshops which was on the harbour for shore. In the light machine shop the shed was on piles over the water and the shed windows is where the lemons were dropped into the harbour. After some time they sent divers down and recovered tons of brass and bronze.

Larry

 

Edited By JasonB on 03/01/2015 07:51:16

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

Garden Island would have to be one of the nicest settings for a naval base anywhere. Last time I was in Oz I did a few weeks volunteer work taking rust off the generator room floor in the Diamantina up in Brisbane, and also took a look at the restoration work going on in Sydney with the maritime heritage group there.

Going off topic onto the canal boats again…if a glass hull is built to the same shape as a steel one and ballasted to the same marks it should behave pretty much the same. (Most of the steel boats have ballast anyway.) The problem comes when they try to make them light so as to be trailable. You can still get good stability as far as that goes, but there won't be as much mass, or as much volume under the water. So it will blow around in the wind more, and react more to the weight of the crew.

We had a hire boat in France for a week, it was stable enough, but being built for French canals, it was about 30 feet long and 12 feet beam. It steered OK at full speed, which was about 5 km/h, but as soon as you reduced speed you lost all steering control. So entering locks was a bit of an art. Best to keep going fast as long as possible, then stick it in reverse quick to stop before you hit the boat in front or the far end of the lock. Getting back on topic it had a three cylinder diesel. That was fine, until the electric starter died.

There is a guy in our club making a model of one of the three cylinder opposed Commer engines, the one with levers to work the pistons. The main difficulty seems to be making the injectors.

John

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

John

Yes Garden Island was a real learning time for me. I started on one of the 30 foot plainer then on the 100 ft lathe for three months. The big lathe was the icing on the cake 28 ft Dia face plate 365 HP motor.

By the way some of the small Chinese diesels have small injectors as well as small pumps,Worth a look.

Don't you sleep john or are you a night shift person.Where are you now. The UK.

I am in Rockhampton in Queensland.

Larry

 

Edited By Larry Coleman 1 on 03/01/2015 08:28:26

[EnnechParticipant @ennech]

That certainly looks a great engine Larry, the one you unsunk!

John, I have always been fascinated by the Rootes TS3 engine. Very advanced for it's time. I remember back in the 60's we had a Commer truck with that engine when I worked as a development engineer at Girling. It had such A distinctive noise when accelerating. **LINK**

Lister made an industrial version of this engine. I have the service parts list for this engine.

Eric

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Weathering castings, It's still done in Taiwan where my lathe was made, it's bed, and the beds for smaller Colchester lathes are made at the same factory, they are weathered for two years before either being exported to England, or built into their own brand lathe.

Ian S C

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

Ian

Apart from normalizing stresses Do you know if minerals from the soil leach into the casting.

Larry

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

Eric

Do you have any pictures of those TS3 engines.

Larry

P.S. I hope your daughter enjoys there river boat. That would be real relaxing on one of those and you can change your back yard at will. I am curious do you have problems with mosquitos.

Larry

[EnnechParticipant @ennech]

I will sort out some pictures of the TS3 engine Larry.

e don't normally get mosquito problems here but I tend to get bitten by anything no matter where I am

The biggest problem I had was from Japanese camera clickers when I once moored up in Stratford on Avonl

Eric

[EnnechParticipant @ennech]

Larry, Here is a good source of information for the TS3 engine

**LINK**

Eric

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

I had a look at that link Eric and it might be the same as the Fairbanks Morse engine. I have a book on diesel locomotive engines so I scanned the Fairbanks Morse. Its got all the loco engines and was printed in 1943.

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

By the way lads I have some very old books here some dating back to 1906 and they have all the design criteria for diesel engines so don't hesitae to ask me.

My prize posession is the Babcock and Wilcox 1906 boiler design book which was given to me by Bob Ford who was Frank Whitles research assistant in the UK when they developed the jet engine.

On one of the pages there is a picture of Manhattan power station which I will post for you. To give you an idea of size have a look at the man on the hand rail on the bottom right.

Larry

Edited By Larry Coleman 1 on 03/01/2015 16:15:18

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Gentlemen,

A friend of mine has a Junkers of similar design except the top set of pistons are connected by linkage to the crank and get pulled down as the crank brings the pistons up to compression, he used to rally it but its not been out for years.

Locally we have a commer owner who rally's the truck with a TS3 as its load which he runs up for the public, always reminds me of a racing engine with its noise.

Go to this link to see Fairbanks Morse engines in US Submarines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbanks_Morse_38_8-1/8_diesel_engine  

 

Martin P

Edited By martin perman on 03/01/2015 16:13:49

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

This is the picture and the man is on the bottom right standing on the hand rail platform. That steam engine was a big baby driven by eight boilers.

Edited By Larry Coleman 1 on 03/01/2015 16:14:14

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

Engine with single crank.

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

Hi Larry, Well, I haven't been to Rockhampton although I did have a good week at Airlie Beach last time I was over that way. I'm actually based in Auckland. My great grandfather did spend some time working at Mount Morgan before the Great War.

I believe the Doxford marine engine used a similar setup to drive two opposing pistons in one cylinder.

John

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

John

Yes I was wondering where you were, so how is life in NZ from all I have seen on TV it is a beautiful country.

That engine would of had two long con rods. I have never seen one and I think they would be a fitters nightmare.

What did you think of that big steam generator. It would have been at least forty feet high.

Larry

Edited By Larry Coleman 1 on 03/01/2015 23:04:32

[John OlsenParticipant @johnolsen79199]

I wouldn't want to be the one shoveling the coal for that little lot. They built some big plants back in the day. There is a nice detailed model of a Babcock and Wilcox engine at the local transport museum….I think it was a sales model. Not working, probably mostly wood but very detailed.

The engines that use the two conrod idea are usually slow revving ones. The long rods must weigh a bit, which will not help balance. With a two stroke Diesel they should be mostly under tension, but you could not make them too light or they would start whipping about in the middle.

The scenery in NZ is different enough from Oz that you should try to make a visit some time. Hire a camper van and have a meander around both islands. Same applies in the other direction too…we don't have anything like the Barrier reef. We have two sons working in Sydney so have an excuse to pop over once in a while.

John

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I'v never heard of burying castings until now, normally they are just stacked out in the open. The only casting I'v heard of that benefits from burying in the soil , is a cast iron fry pan, (you need two or three of them), after you have been using it for a while, and it's getting a bit caked up, take it out and bury it with just the handle sticking out(so you can find it)leave it there for a week or two, the worms will clean it up.

Ian S C

[Larry Coleman 1Participant @larrycoleman1]

Ian

I have been told many times about burying castings and apparently It was practiced prior to WW2 but I can find no evidence of the practice. What I would like to see is a picture of the burial pad. Now the men who told me about the practice were old engineers when I worked for Hawker De Haviland in the seventies. Apparently the castings would absorb minerals from the ground which would in turn relieve stress points in the casting. I wonder if some foundry engineers would know about the process.

Larry

[Jesse Hancock 1Participant @jessehancock1]

I'v never heard of burying castings until now, normally they are just stacked out in the open. The only casting I'v heard of that benefits from burying in the soil , is a cast iron fry pan, (you need two or three of them), after you have been using it for a while, and it's getting a bit caked up, take it out and bury it with just the handle sticking out(so you can find it)leave it there for a week or two, the worms will clean it up.

__________

 

Ditto to outside in a heap. That's where all Newmans of Yate(Now defunct) used to cure their's. I would have to be careful where I buried my frying pan as there are lots of hatchets, pets, old wives tails ~>. It has been known in certain Bristol suburbs to bury old cars aswell.

 

Edited By Jesse Hancock 1 on 08/01/2015 04:19:58

[steveteeParticipant @stevetee]

I think that these tales of burying castings ' so they absorb minerals from the ground' is complete nonsense. I don't see a permable material that anything could absorb into. To get iron to absorb carbon we have to heat it to several hundred degrees and leave it in a special compound to get carbon to a depth of 1mm or so. ( case hardening) Surely iron and steel are used because they are not permable. Castings retain their shape and integrity for long periods of time apart from reacting with oxygen.

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