Luke-Belt-Drive-2
At first Look, you might think Luke has increased the distance from bearing support to flywheel center line, but not the case according to Luke.
He has trimmed a lot of material off that bearing housing before fitting his mods.
Some might look at Luke’s efforts and think they are extreme, but this set of Mods addresses some of the largest problems we typically see in Indian Lister clones. It’s the gear train, and they fail for all kinds of reasons. About the time people assume they’ve seen all the causes of failures, another one pops up.
Noel Douglas in Fiji has recently been fighting a problem where the crank gear splits and then spins.. no other gears break, gear problems can have many root causes. For those familiar, we see train wrecks all too often, Cam Gears break, Idlers Break, and the biggest pain is when the harder gear on the crank is damaged, it’s a lot of work to change.
Steve, ‘proprietor of Ozlisteroids’ is considering using a tapered bush to lock the flywheel in position, and he is dedicated to making reliable power with this old design. The Taper Lock will certainly make Western owners happy, as too few of us know how to deal with the Gibs, and only the Indians continue to use them.
If Luke produces Cams, Governors, and his belt drive, what next to improve? If we look at the GM90, we see they have managed to deliver lube oil under pressure to the crank pin, no that’s a worth while MOD too .
As of today, I know of many who have thought about MODs like this, but I don’t know of anyone that has actually done it. Will Luke do an overhead cam next? Will Luke’s Parts find customers? We’ll see.
Hats off to Luke, if you are looking for more information about Luke, you might contact through their website. Maybe Steve or Luke will come along and tell us more?
George, that’ s some impressive machinework. It’s a pity there isn’t room inside the crankcase for a roller chain and drive gears. However the cogged timing belt is standard now on so many cars it’s a valid way to go too.
I don’t know what Luke’s intentions are. If he’s doing this as a one-off, that’s fine. However I hope Luke continues to look into fabbing improved parts and making them available to the Listeroid community. An improved camshaft with replaceable lobes would be nice. I like the idea of the taperlock flywheels, too. If a new flywheel with taperlock hub is envisioned, I think it should lose the 48 oz. cast-in balance weights in favor of balance weights that could be bolted onto the crankshaft. That would keep the bending forces on the crankshaft to a minimum.
Quinn, the timing belt may be ideal, the square cut gears are likely responsible for a whole bunch of what we see on the DB meter at 50 feet. Once you toss the near worthless air cleaner, and build a more effective strainer for dirt and dust and quieter intake, the gears are likely the next offender, and even larger. The belt doesn’t transmit this clatter the way a chain and gears do. A good study is what chevrolet did with the internal timing chain in the chev V8, they went so far as to use a composite on the cam sprocket to lower the noise the assembly made. In their early efforts, this ended up causing premature failures, but it’s a testament to the preceived value of quiet, and what priority it is given in a design. The combination of slow speed and quiet will be hard to beat. Just don’t give it to a woman and expect to take it back! Men an women are wired very different, they can not tune out background noise like men can, and they can not adjust to different spectrums of light either. Their brains are wired different. so when you lower the back ground noise for a woman, you do her three times the favor you do for yourself.
Since the belt will be running in the coolest environment it’s likely seen thus far, I’d expect belt life to be excellent.
Look out Men, if you are outback and you move off a 3000 RPM screamer… onto a slow speed engine, your wife will never tolerate another day around a screamer. You’ll make more points with slow speed and quiet than flowers and candy.
That looks great to me! I don’t know about alot of people, but, myself, I think the taperlock flywheel idea should have been done a long time ago. That would definitly take out the progressive vibration and unseen shock to the rest of the engine. As always; Smoother equals longer engine life. All diesels vibrate and shake a little, so all the play you can get out, the better. I’ts kinda like a hammer and a rock; If you keep pecking on it long enough; It’ll break.
Impressed as always. When we done the weekend Lister woodgas conversion under the eye of Ken last February the noise of the injector was gone. I can only imagine if it had been muffled and stripped of it’s gear noise.. The only noise left would be a little valve train noise and possibly the alternator fan or fretting in the alternator? With no noise left at all I fear it would not be threatening enough to keep some boob out of the spokes of the flywheel.. LOL
Mike
square cut gears make a ton of noise..
Oh Godness, I’ve just been informed that Willem thinks he’s patented the taper lock bush! We better Warn Steve not to use it! Willem is even complainig that people have stolen his ideas..
Willem, hate to tell you but you’re a hundred years or more too late to patent that! For you inventors out there, you best go to some of these old farm shows, you’ll see what you thought was a new idea on 100 plus year old stuff.
George
Who is this Willem guy anyway? 🙂 I always thought an Amercian company T B Woods introduced the QD (Quick Detachable) bushing system in 1945 – perhaps us Ausssies were given wrong information – I’m happy to rewrite my notes re QD bushings – it may take this Willem guy a bit of effort to convince TB Woods they have been mistaken all these years.
Steve, It would be interesting to know if TB Woods had anything patent-able at the time, a product sure.
As per Willem.. he’s a legend.. read his pages, hours of really good entertainment.. home of the 100,000,000,000,000,000 hour engine.
Look for the man that owns one, the forums are still looking.
Really too bad you stole the Taper Lock idea… we had another guy over here who thought a pulley was his idea.
Ahh… Steve… just got a message from a KIWI.. he said Willem might be drinking Aussie Beer? He claims his mate hasn’t been right since drinking a wagon load of Fosters.
well Fosters will do it George – no real Australians drink Fosters it is “Made in Canada” – when you come over to the “land down under” sometime George – I’ll get you to taste test all the Aussie brands of beer – my partner Karen ex Oregon is still to find a bad Aussie beer – but she knows Fosters in the USA is Made in Canada (in fine print) – prolonged use of Fosters is allegedly hallucinatory and may explain some things – alas it may even cause delusions of grandeur in the very least.
Cheap beer is hallucinatory; ask around and you’ll see!..And, no I don’t drink.
I didn’t realise it was a crime to have the same idea as someone else – surely the patent of QD-SKs would not exclude an intended application to secure flywheels? Sorry if the use of taper locks to secure listeroid flywheels isn’t original – but I’ll go down this path anyway – it is not only safer, smarter but it saves everyone trying to buy elusive gib key pullers 🙂
Luke Roberts is a very gifted CNC machinist and fabricator – he is dcveloping a number of modifications on his JKSon CS 8/1 to suit his needs and unlike restoring a Genuine Lister he won’t offend anyone by being a little innovative in the way he overcomes manufacturers limitations – Luke tells me his listeroid is “as a quiet as” – there is virtually no drive train noise now that it is belt driven to distract him from hearing that addictive engine sound unique to these historical type diesel engines.
I’ll email George a pic of the mechanical governor Luke made up one night when he had nothing to do – 🙂 he tells me it holds rpm nicely and overcoems many of the binding issues found on the original Indian governor linkages – perhaps if enough people ask Luke will do a you tube clip of his engine for you ?
Happy listeroiding!
Steve,
Let me know when Luke has his governor video made up, we’ll link to it here..
George,
Well the test run of Lukes engine under load video clip isn’t too far away – I’ll be giving young Luke one of your serpentine pulleys and a QD-SK bush once we overcome the patent issues :). or is it OK to use a QD SK on a pulley? The load of an ST10 on his Ozlisteroid JKSon CS8/1 should show us all how Lukes replacement mechanical governor works. The engineering work Luke produces is not only a pleasure to look at – it encourages others to see technical and engineering boundaries in a different light – many have spoken about doing modifications on listeroid engines but often never got there or develop their ideas. Perhaps it is a timely reminder that there is a hell of a lot of talent out there in the DIYer community and we need to start seeing solutions instead of only seeing problems.
Oh, when the day comes! And, Lord willing it will! I’ll have me one to work with…. May God Bless everyone for all the info. they’ve given me.
With all the knowledge we have over here; Why can’t we very quietly,
make all the parts over here, the American way! Castings and all!
Looks like it may come down to that eventually anyway.