[Vwdiesel] 1980 Rabbit running the treadmill tonight!

[Val Christian]

> I am looking at purchasing a large single cylinder Changfa diesel in the
> 15-18 HP range to use to make domestic hot water for the house and to drive
> a large DC generator that will charge forklift batteries as will my proposed
> wind turbine.  My plan is to run the Changfa near 24/7 at very light load
> and slow speed (maybe 900 RPM) hoping to get extremely miserly fuel consumpt
> ion and very long engine life.  I posted a question earlier to find someone
> out there with Changfa experience and you have fortuitously come foreward.
> I'd like to discuss this with you off list or by telephone if you'd like to
> send me your phone number privately.

Rob,

The engines on the gensets I have are not Changfa.  Sorry.

My take is that running any powerplant at a low fraction of it's design
point will cost in some order of inefficiency.  

If you could sync your gensets, or dedicate loads to them, then you can
stage the generators, based upon demand.

Have you stumbled across a group covering the chinese aircooled diesels?
I'd be skeptical about running a one banger at a reduced RPM.  My gensets
run at 3600 rpm, and there's plenty of vibration, although, they do run 
quiet.

Val