Here’s a typical install on a (Lister Type) LG6 (GM90) supplied by Lovson in India.
Note that the Utterpower 3KW PMG can make 4.2 KW ongoing in lower ambient temps, and it has great motor starting capability, this makes it an excellent match for the 6/1 and even larger engines. Notice the generator mount, it is designed on a hinge plate which does away with complexity and allows you to remove the gen head and mounting plate in 30 seconds by Pulling the pin out of the hinge. Also a snap to ‘fab-up’ if you have a wire feed welder.
Hello all
I am using a similar hinge-type mounting for my Utterpower PMG. The generator weight proved insufficient to give adequate belt tension under high load. Added a threaded rod between the hinged plate and engine frame. for adjusting belt tension. Very simple to build, and works great. I used a 3/4 inch rod for the hinge pin and 1/4inch plate just because that’s what I had on hand. Belt tracks true and has worn groves in the flywheel paint. Would recommend mounting on the other side of the engine to give better access to the crankcase door.
Off-grid, too
Cheers,
Hugh Conway
Hugh,
I have written a few posts about the use of hinge plates with the PMG, and I think that was what we used with the first GM90-PMG, where Jeff Maier a Microsoft EE was able to borrow a power analyzer and really give us a good look at the power made under load as we studied what it took to get voltage droop un- acceptable, of course it was well past full load.
The PMG worked very well on a hinge plate and we did bias it with a spring for a little more bite at full load. Since then, I have turned loose a few machines (hinge plates) running long hours, and we did find the rod used for the hinge was too small to run 40,000 hours in the first ones. The key is to use a very generous rod diameter, I’d go a full inch just to outdo your effort 🙂 And I’d make the bushings a close fit, grease them and make them a few inches wide. That should out live most owners, and of course we design the bushings to unbolt from the main frame quickly. We don’t want movement between the rod and bushing.
The mount I show here should be trouble free and and the fact it’s absolutely dead on the main frame may have some slight advantage running many hours a day over the years. But this design comes out of studying a generator where there was no attention given to the generator sub frame for many years, fact is, the generator fins were packed with black goo, and you couldn’t touch a thing without leaving a trail,… years of never even brushing the dust and oil off. Teh gen just off a dirty dusty gritty road. Finally the rod end broke off, a small rod as I said, and the gen frame was not properly tied down.. reality is, our frames and subframes only need outlive the rest of the machinery, your 3/4 rod should live 20 years of heavy use if it’s not full of cutting grit 🙂 This set I studied last.. what a testament to a six groove belt! After six years of running, it was cracked and checked, and the owner didn’t want to change it, he said he needed the money to buy fuel, since he typically ran 12 hours a day!
My experience with serpentines belts is we can get by without tensioners as the belts don’t seem to wear much or change tension with temperature changes. Of course one checks these things often till he gains confidence, and that Kill A Watt monitor set to frequency, and plugged in where you can watch it is always smart.