Back in 1870, or was it 1970? we had a power outage in the Paramatta area.
I had a half built experimental generator in the workshop and had to make it work over a weekend to supply power for a couple of weeks.
It was a real bitsa and did the job and then got shoved under a bench until covid forced it out for a look and see if it would ever go again.
Ahh...the memories!
I had bodged up a speed governor that never worked right and a few other things that should have been done better.
Here I do make it work again and go into a bit of practical theory about governors and alternators.

Fred.

Restoring a vintage generating set

Document uploaded.

It is interesting as to how times change. In this day and age the way to control the motor could be more like the ELB system of the CM8 Chrysler. That was apparently designed by a radio person. Which gave me some ideas as the throttle sensor was clearly a ferrite rod in an oscillator circuit and when the rod moved it was tied to a frequency counter?

That tells me that the alternator could be tied to a throttle servo to behave as the governor. As there is one on the reticulated supply locally you can actually resort to a transformer to take 3 phase to single. I have a sneaky suspicion that with all those portable motor inverters they start with DC & use an electronic system, I think invented by the Germans, (SCR?) to convert DC to AC.

This would render RPM of the motor irrelevant, it just has to respond to loading. The frequency is derived by clocking the SCR's. with a time base.

There is a saying "Knocks like a second hand Austin" Many of their early engines had a "splash feed crank" not one feed by an oil pump. That was the demise of many a "bottom end". The other thing that upsets motors is carbon build up causing detonation, wrong fuel and the ignition timing. Higher the Octane the slower it burns. If timing is wrong and it causes knocking that will destroy the engine. It may be too far retarded or the plugs are wrong.

There is a lot to be said for corrosion inhibitor. Tractor here is 70 and I was impressed as to how clean it was inside the water jacket 2019.

Hi Marc.

Interesting thing about the knock was I could minimise it by setting the firing point to a “sweet” spot about 12degBTDC. As the engine runs at constant speed, 1500rpm, there is no advance/retard but I do have the vacuum retard loop connected to pull the firing point back on load. I think the noise is piston slap and not surprising as the set of pistons I used were the “best” from the scrap box. The selection criteria was they fitted in the block and had intact ring grooves! If the engine was in a car you would probably not hear the knocking but its right in your face in a genset.

That CLAE governor was probably about the last of the commercial add-on mechanical governors made. Industry swapped over to electrical systems with 12 or 24 volt rotary actuators, a brain box with gain and droop controls and a speed reference from a pick up probe. This was a move with technology and hand in hand with voltage control systems (AVR) in the alternators going solid state as well with SCR’s replacing transformers and vibrating points. The governors on most engines were inbuilt centrifugal bob weight/spring types giving droop on load to class A or B ratings. As soon as closer regulation was needed for purposes like parallel or synchronous running with generating sets a electronic governor was a must and I fitted many kits, to all sorts of engines, from suppliers like Cummins, Woodward, Barber Coleman are three names that come to mind. Most engines had flywheel tooth starting and I would drill a hole in the housing like 5/8” AF to take the speed probe, mount the actuator to link to the engine fuel rack and fit the brain box as necessary.

Those modern gensets up to 10kVA work as you describe with DC/AC invertor sine wave switch mode blocks fed by any frequency AC/DC generators and the engine RPM running on demand up to 4 or 5 grand RPM. I have a baby 4kVA I described in this forum where I fitted a Honda G340 carby to replace the Chinese Ruixing horror fitted originally. The engine runs at a speed on no load enough to get 240 volt from the invertor and as load comes on just screams more as the throttle opens. What a complex throw away piece of crap. Compared to a conventional Honda engine with inbuilt 3000RPM speed governor coupled to a AVR 240V Modra alternator with a simple 4 wire dashboard key start this “modern Chinese set” has about a dozen plug in wire looms hooking up all sorts of sensors and actuators on the donk and gene back to the sealed-in-epoxy-for-life invertor block. If one subsystem in the epoxy block fails, that’s all there is folks, goodbye! You just throw the thing away and start again unless like me you are determined and patch in a work around!
And yes I have mothballed the Morry gene but this time drained the engine of inhibitor/water while it was hot.

Cheers, Fred.

With the Grey Fergy I have as part of the engine repair, The leaking original cover plate oil seal was replaced. As it was a 2 man job to remove the front end to get at it I used the devious plan & called in the tractor mechanic & got him to change it and inspect the 68 year old governor & timing chain: Plus the usual exchange of ideas & brain picking.

There may be an issue with that other engines dizzy? Both the Fergy & MKII Zephyr are lower compression engines. What one has to be careful of is just how far you advance the timing, doing that can cause detonation whilst having little advantage. Detonation can wreck a motor I know that the difference in the High compression head and mine is four degrees. The fact of life is, that the higher the Octane rating the slower it burns.

I hopefully solved the problem of the almost cheap self destructing Chinese inverters by getting a Honda one. I did have an incident where a B&S engine ran a whole lot better on a repaired B&S carby from a 12HP motor, shoved on it in an emergency. It stayed on it.

One of the tech teacher's mentioned before, Drove a Simca a short distance between home & campus's & its radiator was running 10W or ATF. No rusting there.

Good thing about Fergy is that I can get bits for it still. Even the carby. That's why engine repair was no stress. Even some tractor parts fit the ute.

Marc