Mike is the generator king. Love to watch him work and explain how generators work. Mike is number 1 when it comes to generators and all things mechanical. Great video.
This episode is one for the books! So much great stuff. The best part was securing Mike’s Legend status as he located a short and discovered the issue creating it. Also his Growler handle was freaking fantastic! Craig keeps a super tidy shop, everything is placed in order. Excellent episode!!! 😃👍
I really enjoyed this visit and having Mike show us what he was doing. I used to do maintenance of five different powerhouses a good while back and this brought back a lot of memories of years past. Nice seeing all that old machinery In the days when they built machinery and people were proud of what they owned....CHEERS
The wealth of knowledge that Mike has, consistently blows my mind. I'm thinking he needs to be a big brother to some young Lad on the weekends and teach him as he videos all his ventures.
I was lucky enough to live within about an hour of Mike. he fixed my old military generator when few, including myself, could. And he is a Really nice guy. Thanks Mike!
Really enjoy watching and listening to Mike work. His knowledge and patience are extraordinary. That grounded winding would have been the end of the road for that armature if anyone else was working on it. No one would have taken the time to find that wire strand.
The Mega can be a dangerous device. Some bonehead, tested hot windings, right in the oven, forgetting about the dielectric of hot uncured varnish. Boom! And back to the burnout oven, and of course, it was a rush job...
The power of visual inspection, what a great catch by Mike. That whole shop is awesome. Especially that tool box. I was imagining the shop smell throughout the video. Thanks for the tour Road King!
Home made tools always work best I've found! That's a big generator. What a collection! That's back when people were proud of what they make. Lots of detail! Hope you follow-up with it working! I hope there's no more wire brush pieces in it! Good to see Mike. I miss his videos. I've learned a lot from the both of you. Thanks!
I liked the 12HP half breed. Made in Bradford PA, whilst I live in the original Bradford in Yorkshire, England. Always enjoy seeing stuff from the namesake city across the pond. I remember when I was young and we all smoked back then like people did, we all had our zippo lighters with the Bradford PA mark.
I thought i knew a lot about old equipment and steam engines until i found your channel, Thank you for the videos proving once again that you are never too old to learn something
back in the 80's I worked at a rubber plant that had been in operation since the 20's and had a Westinghouse 500hp motor with a mfr date of 1910, running the rubber mixer, started on DC and had to be switched to AC manually, and it had an amazing Rube Goldberg style starting panel. You started by throwing a knife switch, then turning a rheostat(?) up until a light bulb glowed at a certain brightness, as the motor was spooling up, then there were 2 more knife switches that had to be thrown while simultaneously using a knee to push in a contactor. If you timed it right the motor would switch to AC and take off, if not, it would slowly wind down and you had to repeat the process. It was quite the art to starting it!
Amazing piece of equipment. Looking at the letter from 1986, Canadian General Electric was a mainstay in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (about 1.5 hours from me) for 126 years. Opened in 1892 and closed in 2018.
Always a pleasure to see Mike at work, the way he knows his stuff and enjoys working on it really gives me an appreciation for early electrical equipment. I never used to have any interest beyond gas engines and now I'm starting to collect smaller generators, this is BS 😂 As always, thank you for taking us along RoadKing! We wouldn't have the opportunity to see this stuff without you!
35:24 - Backus Water Motor Company, built various products. Several instances at Coolspring. Apparently one product was a small turbine that ran off city water pressure, which was then presumably dumped down the drain.
I have seen many videos on RU-vid about stationary steam or fossil fuel engines, but, if I understand correctly, it is the first time ever that I have heard of a conversion of a steam engine into an internal combustion engine, this video is a real scoop!!!
Using eddy currents to find the winding short is pretty clever. I suppose thermal wouldn't really help much when there is so much mass you can't see anything heat up.
I am wondering if you would tell me your first name Roadking ?? Sorry I forgot fella. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me ?? Thanks you too. vf@@805ROADKING
Seeing the boiler end plates with Dillon boiler of Massachusetts reminds me of something similar I saw a the Nashua, nh. waste water plant. There is/was the same stuff there as well as a steam power head.
I started my generator career fixing DC welders. When I found a grounded winding I would hook up a light bulb in series with the winding and ground and then plug it in to the wall. A hard fault would light the bulb bright and there would be no smoke but a soft fault would light the bulb dim and it would start smoking where the ground was. sometimes just pressure washing the part and then drying it in the oven might clear it other times just let it sit there and burn and try blowing the ash out with air. Sometimes they would burn the fault clear and then dunk it in a tank of varnish. If you couldn't clear a hard fault the winding would have to be rewound. On welders I considered 1 meg good enough to run with but they were all under 100 volts DC. Now this is all on engine driven units the transformer units that hooked up to 208 or 480 shore power were different animals.
Its never enough. Especially in a place like this. Mike always amazes with his knowledge. He knows so much not only about generators but so many other things. He's a smart guy for sure. Thank you so much for taking us with you and mike on this trip!
I'm amazed at the pin striping on this old equipment ! I worked in a machine shop most of my life and even the oldest equipment in the shop never had this unique !
This was awesome to watch! I've really found an interest in old industrial machinery over the last several years. It blows my mind to think of how the Ken of the past were able to manufacture the things they did without the resources we have today. It's very cool to see this stuff being restored for future generations to see, bravo!
great video thank you for sharing most of that stuff i know because coming from a farming background i was around a lot of stuff like that but good video thank you for sharing have a great day and God Bless
The hand cranked insulation tester looks a similar sort of machine to my WM6 Megger tester but it lacks the Wheatstone Bridge of Mike's machine. Wheatstone Bridge takes me right back to school physics classes with wooden and ebonite Wheatstone Bridges for measuring resistance, made by Griffin and Tatlock of London (1888 to 1999).
the old stuff is old , but it is so cool in today's world . Now when some like Mike in today's world makes it work in the American continent and not in ...say Asia or India , it is amazing. Enjoy this so much
Does Mike own that Megger? Mine is just a simple BM7 model that's good enough for most jobs- it reads up to 100M and has a 500V testing voltage (actually measures 530-540). That big valve probably came out of a power plant.
These things were made in the days when the companies would ask, If I add 30% will it be more reliable? Unlike today where they ask, If we take 50% out will it still work? Sad😞
It is my educated and professional opinion that one should not wire wheel shellac covered armature windings. Seems crazy to me. If the intent is to preserve and conserve what is there, and to make operable again, wire wheel cleaning seems very aggressive. Maybe dry ice blasting would be more appropriate. For a Museum did you say? What does the conservator think of wire wheel cleaning methods? Maybe I am way off base, but I am surprised to hear wire wheel cleaning was used. ----Doozer
You are quite correct! Unfortunately the owner of the machine is not savvy when it comes to electric motors / generators. He saw some of the loose insulation on the windings and went to town removing every bit that was accessible with a wire brush and pick. At this point I have recommended that the armature be dipped and vacuum impregnated with modern insulating varnish.
@@SmallEngineMechanic Thanks for the reply Mike. It makes for a hard journey through life when someone has a narrow bit of knowledge and a limited scope of operation. But just like one must recognize when they are truly sick enough that it is best to call the doctor, is is beneficial to recognize when someone is dealing with something out of the range of their expertise, that they should also call a person more well versed in that area. I guess the owner of the generator called you, but a dollar short and a day late, it seems to have been. I do find it frustrating to be called into a project after some damage has been done. Like if someone brought me an iron casting to repair, after they tried to weld it themselves, and cracked the whole thing worse than it began. I personally can fix a lot of things. But I will take my wrist watch or dial test indicators in to someone who knows this stuff better than I do. You seem to have more patience with people than maybe I do. It is clear to see that you are also a compassionate person. That is admirable for sure. I keep watching your Small Engine Mechanic channel for more videos. I hope you continue to film them. I loved your work on the big Cat generator. You work carefully, cleanly, and methodically, much the way I approach mechanical things. Keep up the good work, and you are a great example of someone who truly loves machines and cares about preserving the past so it can teach newer generations. ----Doozer
Older fire sprinkler systems have WATER MOTOR GONG Alarms. When a sprinkler head pops water flows, the Alarm Valve (its a check valve) opens and the clapper swings open and believe it or not there are passages that let water flow to the hinge and out of the valve body into a Retard Chamber (if city presure surges it won't set off the Alarm because it will close) So with a sprinkler flowing it fills the retard chamber (1-2 minutes) and to a nozzle directed on .. PELTON TURBINE. Turns the shaft and the hammer hits the gong. I didn't mean to be so long winded, but they are still around. And they are failsafe. If you ever come across one, you can do alot of fun stuff.
Although it’d be a cryin’ shame to loose sight of all them pretty copper windings but, wouldn’t it be best, since it now passes these tests, to coat it with a good dose of lacquer to help protect from future shorts, once all back together & functioning?
