[Vwdiesel] Anyone else use a VW diesel or Changfa for an electric power generator?

[Area31 Research Facility]

Hi All,

I had been thinking of using a VW diesel for a long time in a standby power
genset for my farm estate.  The attraction to this particular engine was
extremely good fuel economy, the ability to run the engine on WVO, WMO, or
used automatic transmission fluid, and well size matched for a direct drive
1800 RPM alternator in the 10-15 kW range. At such a slow speed compared to
the life in a car and all the other benefits in care and feeding that a
stationary installation can afford an engine including no cold temperature
starts, I figured on much longer service life.  As a plus, automotive
engines are fairly easy to get and cost a lot less than similar sized
industrial engines.  Being a water cooled engine they last longer and are
quieter than their air cooled cousins and co-generation is possible.  I am
using the engine coolant to preheat waste oil fuel and also to heat my shop
building.

I began my DIY power plant back in January of this year and started with a
1984 NA 1.6D from a Jetta.  Unfortunately the engine was in really bad shape
and I have had to replace it but I was making good power for a while during
testing.

Last week I obtained a 1980 NA 1.5 and have been trying to coax a grunged up
Bosch FI pump back to life.  I seem to be having success and have finally
achieved good starting and running now with no smoke, with no load yet on
the crankshaft.  Today I am re-installing my flex coupler to the big 3 phase
alternator (12-15 kW rating thereabouts) and hope to try the engine under
load this evening or tomorrow.

I have built this plant from the ground up and am very proud of my work.  I
can email a picture file to anyone interested or contemplating a similar
project.  George at www.utterpower.com will be doing an article about my
project.  One of the obstacles to using this engine in a genset is the odd
flywheel on flex plate arrangement that makes it difficult to put a
conventional pulley on it as it cannot support side loads.  The way the
sterter is mounted away from the engine doesn't help either.  I have
designed a flex coupler that appears to take the extreme abuse that a
coupler in this location will see.  My design can be DIY'd by anyone with a
lathe, drillpress, 3/8-16 tap and arc welding capabilities.  Using an almost
impossible to start engine gave the prototype coupler a real worst case
abusive workout.  The rubber components in the coupler were actually smoking
they got so hot on more than one day  while I was wasting my battery ( and
poor starter!) trying to start the beast.  I propose to make my coupler
design public domain as a contribution to the alternate energy/home power
crowd who need all the help we can get trying to survive despite the
enormous mess all the damage that the well funded utility companies have
created.

In my searches for an affordable replacement engine I located a driveable
Jetta with a 1.6 TD in it.  The engine was rebuilt recently and I witnessed
it cold start not being plugged in at -20C.  It took right off first
cranking.  I was impressed.  I am buying the car tomorrow, so I hope to be
driving a VW turbo diesel soon as well as using a VW diesel at home for
electrical power.  I have to build a second VW diesel powered genset as a
backup to this plant and I also have plans to DIY a 10-15 kW wind turbine on
my property this year as part of plans to go off-grid and be energy self
sufficient.  I can no longer afford rising utility bills and the crippling
cost of car gasoline.

I am also planning to build a small co-generating DC genset out of a single
cylinder Changfa Chinese diesel for just the house. I am looking at the 15HP
and 18HP models. It will provide domestic got water using my hot water tank
as the cooling hopper for the engine, and will charge the 48 volt forklift
batteries when the wind turbine cannot.  The house will be on inverters.
The VW diesel plants in the workshop are to power and heat the workshop
(3500 sq.ft.) and to provide electrical backup to the house when needed.
Initially (now) this first VW diesel plant wll serve to provide emergency
power for the house and shop in te case of utility outages, and to provide
economical 3-phase power to run my machine shop.  My rotary converter that I
now use is very inefficient and the power bill to run it is very expensive.
That alone is justificationenough for a VW powered genset.

I could use some advice about the Changfa single cylinder horizontal diesels
I am looking at.  They both have swirl chambers but the CR is different. The
15 HP @ 2200 RPM (903 cc) engine has higher CR at 20:1.  The larger 18 HP @
2200 RPM (1093 cc) has a CR of just 17:1.  Since I plan to run this on well
filtered waste transmission fluid  I'm not sure which compression ratio
would be better for me.  I plan to run the engine 24-7 at around 900 RPM and
load it to maybe 3 kW max for battery charging.

Regards,
Rob