How Much Fuel Does This Vintage Engine Use? Bamford stationary single-cylinder diesel efficiency 

I worked in a manual machine shop and some of our lathes were from world War 2. One was sold to the navy to machine barrels for battleships weapon systems, but was never used. I was always blown away that machines that old could be so accurate. Our tolerance levels were .001-.003

You should go to a tractor show

You took the words right out of my mouth. Last night i was looking at our 2007 car thinking no matter how well i look after it it was built to last a certain amount of time.

to be fair many modern diesels last just as long. Ship engines long outlast their hulls for example.

​@@CriamWe still use WW2-era manual machine tools at work. I don't know, in an absolute sense, how accurate they are--but they are still good enough to hold the required tolerances on the finished parts.

This is what I would like to do. My solar system is lacking in the winter. And I love these old engines. Got any videos of your set up

@@kansasadventure1831 No videos, But I just bought another 5/1 in good running condition that I will be doing exactly the same thing for my house in town.. Its a 6 hour round trip to pick up the engine.. Once I get It I will start putting together a parts list that Im more then happy to share.. I guess I could do a few videos of how Im going to mount the Alternator etc.. Fuel tanks, Switch overs

​@@HebrewHammerArmsCo I'd watch 😎

Would love to see more details on this.

@@HebrewHammerArmsCo i would also like to see how it can be made to power a house

Wow! That is very impressive indeed! That would be such a pleasure to see and hear it.

We have one also in new Zealand running a water pump it's a great old beast

@@daveneil3963 i’ll do a clip on it when we do the next shear if i remember to

I once worked as a maintenance man for a land holder in southern hills, South Australia who ran Angus beef and sheep. The shearing shed had a Lister diesel and it was my annual job to ready it for shearing season. Always reliable, never need any tinkering and always started easily. I eventually left there and some years later there was a bush fire. I went visiting to see how everyone and everything was. Sad but true, the Lister had been moved from the shearing shed to the workshop across the road and while the all wood shearing shed survived the bush fire, the workshop didn't and neither did the Lister.

what does it do for shearing? is it a generator to keep the lights and heater on?

That's a beautiful memory. I hope one day you will meet Sally again.

you can still see her? ghost?😮

I assume under load it uses more.

Under load that would go up quite a lot. Though for the amount of work its doing, it would be interesting to compare to a more modern portable diesel, like a 2 or 3hp.

@@wishusknight3009 Exactly what i would like to know.

Id say you are a very smart man and the old girl is shining bright . They still use these type of engines were I live in Texas with gas right out of the ground . The same gas we heated our homes with every four or five years we had to replace the teak wood chips in the vessel scrubber that the gas ran through to help an take h2S gas that is common in our part of the world . The only things my paid for was electricity and if my father had wanted too he could done that to . We drilled our own water well . I sure miss those days .

@@wishusknight3009 The losses for low-speed engines with these oversquare designs are lower than even some of the modern DI engines.

Me too. I and my son both have International LB engines. We love messing around with them and just watching them run. My son named one of his Gertrude after my Grandmother who passed away many years ago. Here is his video: ru-vid.comIBeI4l7FyQs

the weight of the flywheel has nothing to do with efficiency... efficiency is 95pct+ determined by what happens above the piston in terms of thermodynamics.

Well the flywheel certainly smooths out the power pulses and compression. Mine has a fan cast into it helping with keeping things cool too as well as housing part of the load regulator.

I've looked at buying some old stationary engines, but apparently, I need to buy a forklift first haha

A wheeled engine hoist and heavy pickup truck or trailer or agricultural equipment mover trailer is another option as hand trucks can only move the smaller engines around the smaller engines sadly end up as decoration in some cases .

IIRC "Horsepower" used to be from a formulae related to bore and stroke, and this was how the "model number" was derived - more recently Horsepower is determined by attaching a Dynamometer to the output shaft. India produces a Lister single cylinder of the same design as would be seen in the 1950's, they run drainage and irrigation pumps 24/7 for the cost of a couple of jerry cans of fuel a week. You can even buy them brand new, but they're labelled as used to overcome the emission regs

Horsepower is work done per unit time. So you can do more with less horsepower if you are prepared to spend longer doing it. The real reason these old engines last so well is that they're massive cast iron beasts that run at low speeds. Less speed means less friction and wear, and all the parts are much stronger than they need to be for the forces they experience. So they take a very long time to wear out if properly maintained. The trade-off is that a modern engine of the same power would be much lighter and more compact, a modern 3hp engine is something you can easily pick up and carry around vs an old 3hp stationary engine which would likely weigh 50kg or more. The other confounding factor is that nobody is willing to pay for a really durable low power engine anymore. As a result most of out experience is with Briggs and Strattons or similar, which are engineered for cheapness rather than durability... a lot of such engines are designed for a life of 100 hours or so, and are not intended to be rebuilt or repaired if they go wrong, you just replace the whole thing.

@@nerd1000ify you can still repair them by putting new plastic parts in it to replace the old busted plastic parts. Like the plastic cam gears they've been doing. Honda even provided an "overhead cam" version for consumer market, a version of their GX160 model and called it the GC160. It had a plastic effing camshaft, the cam and gear were one piece of plastic, run by a tiny belt. The disposable society is going to kill itself slowly by depleting limited resources until we are stuck scavenging out own trash to survive

@Goose Not maverick yeah all the small engine manufacturers are up to these sorts of tricks. They last the design life, but not great for longevity or repairability. The other usual suspect is the cylinder bore, many small engines have an uncoated aluminium bore, which naturally means a short life and re-boring or sleeving the block aren't possible due to bare minimum wall thicknesses. The economic issue is that the labour costs of fixing these things are too high, compared to the labour costs at the factory in China or wherever. So the manufacturers prefer to save a few bucks per engine and sell a whole new one for cheap when yours breaks down. You can get the 'industrial' model in some cases with real engine parts in it rather than plastic. But expect a higher up front price. IMO in many cases it's probably better to replace small engines with electric motors if possible, even the cheapest TEFC induction motors have replaceable bearings and capacitors and should last almost forever. In the US of course you are hamstrung by the 110V supply to most houses, most other places have 220 or 240V supply so we can run fairly hefty motors (up to 3hp) from a regular wall outlet, and even more from 15A plugs.

@@goosenotmaverick1156 I prefer using old engines myself. Any time I get a chance to buy a good, used old engine I do. I have lawn and garden equipment that are over 40 years old that run well. Modern machines start to break after a year of use.

I had one of the vacuum pumps run by those old gals, came out of a carriage house they were tearing down when I was a kid in 1978. I helped my buddy out on his dads dairy farm. I painted it up and took it to a few hit/miss shows.

❤da odličan 😢.....više daje snage, a manje troši money !!😂👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽🐞🐞🐞🐞🐞🐞🐞

I'm still using my grandmother's 1940's era Westinghouse refrigerator. It runs like brand new, and all the drawers, etc are in great condition.

I bought a condo a few years go and it came with a Maytag washer that's half a century old. So I thought for sure I'll have to buy a new washing machine. Well when I moved in I tried it and it worked fine 😂 years later it's still working, it's been washing clothes for literally half a century. Meanwhile my mom's fancy modern washers break after a few years because the control boards go bad. Her LG lasted only a few years and would cost 400 dollars to replace the board. Meanwhile my 50+ year old Maytag works flawlessly still. It's probably not as efficient, but the environmental impact of manufacturing one long lasting washer is probably less.

@@huge_balls a lot of energy goes into making disposal crappola

In this society you're never supposed to be satisfied with the equipment you have be it engines, mobile phones or computers. If you refuse, they will force your hand one way or another.

I think JCB was a nephew of the original Mr Bamford

For a brief year I entertained locally grown oilseed being the fuel (diesel startup and shutdown) of a liquid biomass to electricity setup. 450g per kWh (kilowatt hour) was the target consumption and your figures tend to suggest this was pretty spot on.

A rule of thumb I have heard is 1/3 of the energy goes to mechanical energy, 1/3 goes as heat out the exhaust and 1/3 goes to the cooling water as heat. What I have done with my engine is use a water jacket on the exhaust, and then circulate that and the cooling water into the house as heating. @@danielduggan7126

we should incorporate these engines in electric cars as range extending charge systems

Fiat diesel engines are Very good

@@goodlife6277 but would you want one running in next to your house, in your neighbours garden all the time, or in all your neibours gardens. Heating oil boilers around me are smelly enough, cheers.

@@ooslum Never

are you sure? I'm told that's exactly what it uses

Under full load it would of course even take a bit more from the grid to put it 4,5kwh on the shaft. However, as you mentioned the engine is far from really working that hard. The exhaust sounds like normal ideling. So kudos to the engine for doing that well of job. And agricultural diesel being that cheap in Ireland. But let's do some calculations: A Litre of diesel contains around 38Mj of Energie. We've used around half a litre. So 18Mj. Crunshing the numbers that's around 5kwh. However, that's input power. Let's be fair and say your engine is 22% efficient, which is probably still too much. So you're about 1,1kwh of work that your engine did, so it made around 1,1. kw on average. Giving a bit more power as head room, you could use a1,5kw 3 phase motor with a vfd so you could even run it on single phase. That would draw around 6A at 230V. So you could basically run it from a normal house outlet. Still with diesel so cheap it would cost you around 150% of running the diesel for fuel costs. But would have its own advantages.

@@wayoutwest-workshopstuff6299 There is a difference in power draw depending on the load just as with all engines. Especially AC motors with a set RPM (by the mains frequency). When they reach their rated speed there is less magnetic feild to overcome so the current draw goes down. Electricity is a weird thing.

Another way of supporting this: there is a reading the lamps dim and the motor over heats easier under load rather than when idling. And in for instance HVAC/R it is common to have a general fan motor and then adjust the pulleys diameters to dial in the power usage. And I am also super impressed by the idling consumption of your engine.

​@@humbucker0076 but as I understand it the use considerable more energy than the rated on the startup (electric motor) compared to normal running hence the need for capacitors etc.

That isn't really how these things work. A horse is a horse, and modern engines are objectively more efficient. If you mean like a lawnmower engine, yeah it probably wouldn't be very efficient on this setup, but those are built for high torque to run everything properly. This would likely have very little torque which is far more efficient. There are engines designed for just these kinds of applications and they will always do a much better job per litre of fuel. We just don't commonly see this sort of application in normal daily life anymore. Also certainly never see such massive flywheels, which are extremely efficient. If I had to guess, rollercoaster and ski lifts would be the closest cousins to this machine

6HP is roughly 4.5KW but probably something closer to 4KW after conversion losses. Still plenty to run something like a couple electric heaters in an emergency.

@@big0bad0brad Or charge a bank of batteries, that in turn would run an inverter. This way You could use a far heavier electric load than the engine is rated for. At least as long as the batteries charge goes.

@@sysbofh Then you have more conversion losses, I was thinking just direct AC generation with an AC generator but it could certainly work as well.

@@big0bad0brad Yes, You have conversion losses. But You can run the generator at 100% capacity - this is where they are most efficient. Also, makes easier to store the energy for latter and You don't have to worry about peaks of usage or the generator rated capacity. Any temporary excess load is provided by the batteries.

With a battery bank you can also have solar, so the diesel might only be needed on cloudy days.

"Never get tid of someting that is good, just because it's old." Especially people . . . ☆

@@fjb4932 I'm 75 and glad to have American healthcare, they are killing old folks in places like Canada now.

​​@@AdamosDadhappy burfdae!! 🐱👍🏿

@@fidelcatsro6948 Why thank you! 🤛🏼(▨_▨¬)🤜🏼 I'm feelin' 25 inside, it's the outside that's getting a little rough.

Green diesel..... Because Ireland.

THE PRICE OF VEGGIE OIL. ONE YEAR AGO IN A SUPER MARKET IT WAS 5LE £4.50 and a year later now £11.00. more than double. that was 2022 now 2023,

​@@bwghall1 I ran my old peugeot 406 on vegi oil when I could get it for 60 to 70p a litre. Straight into the tank....no additives.

3/4 gallon as in 0.75 x 5 = 3.75 litres not 3 to 4 gallon as in 15-20 litres per day, I presume.

Saw a fellla here in uk running his modern diesels on filtered used cooling oil and kerosene mix. 3 parts kerosene to 7 filtered used oil.

Smells of chips.... Sounds like a huge plus.

@@McMahonshaun a little petrol greatly increase performance.

Very often they are copies of the Lister CS.

They are illegal to buy in the USA because they don’t meet emissions standards

@@tripplefives1402 The big problem running a gasoline engine on kerosene is premature ignition from the low octane fuel.

Heck I would bet if he centrifuged old waste oil (or pump it thru one heck of a decent filter) he could run it in that old school diesel [might smoke like a busted stove though]...even mixed 50/50 with the offroad diesel too

@@haydenc2742 Add a wee bit gasoline too thin the mix a bit which could also help with the vegetable oil.

@@tripplefives1402 Your octane rating are significantly off. Natural gasoline has an octane rating of at least 50 the top of range of kerosene octane rating. By WWII 100 octane gasoline was available and Jeeps were specified for 68 octane fuel. Incidentally west coast gas and east coast gas had different octane ratings without special additives.

motorsport fans left the chat..

I second that theory of yours..3.2 to.4Kw gen on single piston engine & 6Kw + on two piston engine " Marcon" gen if my memory serves me correct..!??

Thanks, Edvin - I imagine the max power output is just before the engine starts bogging?

@@wayoutwest-workshopstuff6299 I would guess maximum power is when it just starts bogging down a bit, forcing the governor to give more fuel to produce more power to keep it running.

I suspect it would run just fine on vegetable oil.

fix that Lister!

@@fidelcatsro6948 it's on the list, as is an air cooled Petter A. Both have magneto issues

@@nathanlucas6465 diesel needs magneto?

@@fidelcatsro6948 it's not a diesel. Its a "type D" and was available as either petrol only or petrol/paraffin

@@nathanlucas6465 i see 🐱👍🏿

Perhaps run the coolant lines thru the fuel tank with veg oil to pre-heat it before it goes to the injectors, that's the main reason to heat it...to thin it out so it can pump thru the injectors and pumps easier

Not exactly friendly to the injection pump. Also used engine oil has lots of additives and contaminants in it that make nasties in the exhaust.

Could, but should you?

🐱👍🏿

Yep - another thing to test

You are right Giles, I had 2 250KVA Merrilees Blackstone gensets that ran at 500RPM, they used less fuel than a turbocharged Cummins of the same output.

they were a 1930's vintage if I remember correctly.

@@user-pb3bk3kc3g Could easily be. Not sure when these particular Bamford engines ceased production, but Lister/Petter continued them right into the mid 70's. Primarily as pumping engines for Africa I believe. A role now taken over by Mahindra Diesels. Yes Cummins, good engines until their not keeping up with emissions debacle. Still used in rail locos I think. Never really known for frugal consumption in trucks or plant though with their cam lifted injection system.

Especially if it was turning a decent flywheel to maintain it's torque