Sunday Morning Comment

This Am, I received the following comment:

Message:  In the article called Ashwamegh, George mentions an engine brand called PS (Power Solutions?) and I did a web search and all that came up was a company that sold GM industrial engines. What exactly is this PS engine company? I’ve never heard of them. The only brands I put my trust in is Jkson and Lovson, yet George talks about this PS brand making the best Listeroid engines. SO, again who is PS?

ANSWER:

I think we need keep in mind that George writes in a slice of time. Try and buy a new Buick, Oldsmobile, and more, they no longer exist on 12/19/2010.

I’m not sure that George said JKson and Lovson were the best, he might of said they were producing engines with acceptable quality on average at the time of his writing. Today is a new day, the world has turned upside down since some pages were written.

Rajkot never has produced products of certain quality, and you’ll likely be dead before they decide to adopt a quality control program that would assure the quality that North Americans have come to expect. Receiving goods from Rajkot that are useful is best measured in probability, and that probability can change with market demand and even the weather!

Power Solutions is/was a company out of Oregon who purchased from various vendors and then passed on a warranty of sorts. DIYers sometimes found parts that needed replacing and Power Solutions did their best to follow up with replacements. The article mentioning Ashwamegh, was all about that Company blaming the owners of their engines for every kind of failure, normally timing gear train failures, and of being no help to their dealers. Many of the articles George wrote were a warning that you need be handy, and you need consider what warranty you are getting when you buy a third world product.

Much of what we read here about these slow speed engines may be notes of the past… after all the EPA has banned these engines.

With that said… maybe George should  delete all the pages he has written that are not up to date? Maybe we do the same at the local library?

It’s likely that the most consistent quality came from JKson when we look at all the vendors Power Solutions Purchased from, but.. this doesn’t mean that other brands didn’t compare. Reality is, no one has been able to keep close tabs on all Rajkot brands and shipments, but I’d bet my last dollar, no one there delivers the consistent quality an non DIYer would need in order to be happy with his purchase.

I might mention Lovson here, they are indeed a Company who has made a sincere effort to support the equipment they sell after the sale. This doesn’t mean others don’t, it means I have first hand knowledge of their efforts. We as DIYers understand their (Lovsons’)  limitations, they are not a house of Engineers. Lets use an example of a timing gear failure. The root cause of the failure might be a poorly placed idler gear shaft.  Lovson might be willing to send you a new gear, but that does not necessiarly address the root problem. Dave Hyatt, one of North America’s top Diyers manufactured an adjustable idler shaft where you could correctly locate the shaft AND correct the gear lash problems many of us found. These are the kind of solutions that DIYers come up with, and normally, it takes a DIYer to correctly install the after market fix. This is why the more responsible dealers attempt to qualify their customers, no matter how unfair some might think it.

There’s plenty of challenges for new slow speed hobbyists, and rest assured, there will always be a way to enjoy slow speed if you’re handy. But who do you listen to? There’s a guy named Willem who wants to sell you his $349.00 idler gear to fix your problem, and another guy in UK will sell you his gear for a lot less and his advertisement once said something like “install my gear and your problems are over”. Now that’s darned near a miracle some think…. critical thought is at the heart of our hobby..