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Bronze Idler Gears Bronze Idler Gears in the Lister Types (Listeroids), Bronze Gear In Lister Types? Public forums offer us a chance to share ideas, some good, some bad. One thing I’ve noticed.... some of the most outspoken know less about the topic. Before one considers commenting on the merit of a bronze gear, he should know and understand that we have replaced failed stock gears in several engines that failed very early, we replaced them with bronze and saw a lot service after the change. My focus is OFF grid power, but on the next ring out of the bulls eye are those who want reliable power for backup power in storms and more. Guam's last big storm is only one testament to value engineering. Well before the commercial power grid was rebuilt, there was a massive pile of junk generators building in the local metal salvage yard. Yes, Off Gridders are 'one percenters', we are interested in reliable small power plant that can run for a few months 8 hours a day minimum, and the other 99 percent of the population wants a bargain. who in their right mind would invest in satisfying the needs of our tiny segment? Who among us would be willing to pay the price for a stationary engine designed to run for sixty years as many once did? I’ve seen an advertisement placed in a popular publication in Great Britain “buy my STEEL idler gear and all your idler gear problems will be gone”. Such an advertisement suggests the vendor has only started to inventory all the reasons gears wear or fail as there are many sources of troubles..... to name a few: *poorly machined cam and crank gears with irregular teeth or improper pitch. *Crank, Idler, Cam Shaft centerlines not in the proper place. Fact is, a new an idler gear made of cast iron or steel won’t fix these things, and may cause an expensive train wreck inside your engine, it's a fact that some owners won't have the skills or knowledge to fix the cracked gear on the crank that is often the result of a train wreck like I describe. The use of a steel idler can be similar to putting in a 60 amp fuse where a 15 amp fuse should be, it'll never blow, but all the wiring might melt.. Ahhh says the seller, "just like I told you, that fuse might last forever, you may never have to buy another fuse!" More experienced people know they want the cheapest and/or easiest to replace part to fail and save the others, exactly like the fuse. The bronze idler is more expensive, but it takes a shape and then work hardens. It mitigates the shedding of ferrous materials that often end up in the soft bushing materials in an engine that promotes 'rapid wear' in critical journals like the crank pin and cam shaft bushings. Anyone who would comment that bronze is too soft for a gear material doesn’t understand that engineers have used this material in gear trains that carry thousands of horsepower. Look at diesel locomotives, the engineers who finally built a long life drive system to the wheels used bronze gears. You can also find a lot of industrial gear reduction boxes with bronze gears, they didn’t spend all that money to spec the bronze just because it was pretty. There are articles you can find about gears and materials compatibility, I don't claim to understand it all, but if you run a steel billet cam in a performance motor, you need to change the oil pump gear to bronze or it'll wear rapidly and fail. The steel and the stock gear are not compatible. there are also notes that the bronze gear may not get along with other materials. To my knowledge, JKson was the first to supply a >real< bronze idler for the CS clones, and the Request came from us here in the States because we had customers running long hours off grid and seeing failures. Ashwamegh sent engines over here that experienced failures in the gear train in the first 100 hours, not all of them of course, but enough failures where we were needing to find a solution and we got zero help from Ashwamegh. We ended up sending every owner of an Ashwamegh a bronze idler at great expense, this was a custom run of idlers at first. Do I suggest there were failures in one or two brands only? The fact is, I've sold the bronze idlers to people who experienced failures in many different brands of Lister Clones. I'm not sure there is one brand that hasn't gone through an idler. I can tell you there are individual engines in many brands that never experience a failure, but do they have the hours of running? I do know quality control is an issue. It's not a typical problem in the Dursley built machines, if there is a history of failed gears in any numbers; it has not been brought to my attention. Joel Koch (Oregon) financed the research of idler failures and commissioned a gear company with 80 years of experience to look into the problem and recommend a remedy. This was done at great expense to him an of course it was done to help his customers when Ashwamegh would only comment that it was the end user doing something wrong. Several gear materials were tried and the more expensive bronze proved again to be the best material to use. But of course it took a while to get someone to supply a quality bronze gear, and that ended up being Jagdip Shah of JKson. We have two 12/2s here in America that ran over 14,000 documented hours on bronze gears, NOT that there aren't more. Since India often recommends a rebuild at 3000-6000 hours, we figure the bronze gear is doing a reasonable job, it mitigates the problems, it does not fix an improperly located shaft. I’d like to recognize JKson here and now for making the effort to produce a gear train we can live with, it is fairly easy to inspect the idler and see it is wearing or not. The smart owner will replace it BEFORE it breaks! Usually the end of the teeth on the idler will be sharpened like a knife just before the train wreck. If you are unlucky enough to spin and break (usually a crack) the crank pulley, you will be in for some work. The value of the bronze gear is now well understood by many who personally run the Listeroids long hours. Those who make comments about the bronze being all wrong for the job may be drawing off information where the materials the bronze runs against are different than what we typically see in the Indian Lister clones. About now, some will ask why the Dursley Factory in Great Britain didn’t use a bronze gear if it were so darned good? My answer is they were using materials that worked well, and the accuracy of locating the shaft centers was likely done with far more accuracy. Whatever they did, it was more than adequate! For the better answer as to what was used in the originals, we should turn to Historian David Edgington who has been of service to enthusiasts around the world. My advice: If you are using the Lister 6/1 clone for off grid power or running long hours, build a file folder for pictures of your engine, use an inexpensive digital camera with a macro setting to take a picture of the idler gear installed in the engine. The flash and the big door access allow you to take wonderful pictures. Note how flat and wide the end of each tooth is. Take pictures at each oil change and look for rapid wear, you will see the width of this flat grow more narrow with wear. Make sure you change the idler BEFORE the train wreck, this is one of the weak spots in the Lister clones and deserves your attention! So there you have it, we believe we've proved the value of the bronze gear, just one more opinion placed onto the world wide WEB, so many opinions ... some written by folks with no dirt under their nails. I wish to thank folks from around the world who share their experience from their failures to running lots of trouble free hours with great success. you might check out a trip Mamad made to see engines of the past who were designed to run many years in hostile conditions.. http://www.utterpower.com/abokosar.htm comments? please reference this page.. George B.
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