DIY VW diesel plant makes electricity

[Sch3mat1c]

Eww, what a POC. And green!?!?

Nice job.

[kilowattski]

Beauty. I see the generator is indoors. Please make sure there are no exhaust leaks because carbon monoxide is nothing to fool around with.

[mwmkravchenko]

I helped set up a similar plant in a building as backup. They ran a crazy long chimeny and it produced so much back pressure that the motor burnt out in a month! Hope you keep a watchfull eye on the first few days.

By the way damn nice job

Mark

[rcavictim]

Thanx for the comments and compliments guys!

MARK asked a rather personal question. I've never been asked how long my chimney was before. About 12 feet I think from point of insertion. No problem. This is quite a small displacement engine at 1600cc (~90 cu.in.). I used an automotive muffler for a 300 cu.in. V-6 and 2-1/4" pipe after the muffler into the 6" chimney. Bends are gentle radius on the pipe to the muffler and way less than 90 degrees on the output of the muffler.

Sch3mat1c is concerned that it is a POC and green. Since it is a power generator is POC anything like PUC? If so don't worry, it is the farthest thing you can get to a PUC. In fact, I built it to get them guys the PUC out of my face! (I plan to go off grid once I have additional equipment built). As to the color, this is the first 'thing' I ever built that I ever painted green. I think it looks good on a generator. Deere John thinks it looks good on his tractor. Thanx for the kind compliment.

killowattski cautioned about CO. Yes, I am watching my situation. There is a net flow of air out of the room up the chimney by the suction caused by the escaping exhaust gasses. The bottom of the chimney is open to the room inside the gas furnace. Room air is sucked into the chimney this way. This and the fact that the building is large and not very air tight will help. I have two of those big roll up doors and they leak.

[rcavictim]

What I didn't tell you is that after all this hard work I discovered that my diesel engine is baffed. There was no way to really test it until I was 80% completed in the project. It has huge blowby and almost no oil pressure. I have been searching for another engine to drop in and it looks like I have found one. Having mine rebuilt properly by an engine machine shop is not an option due to the cost. This means I have to uninstall the plant, remove the engine, power wash, sandblast and paint the replacement, chase all the threads in the block that I use to mount to standard north american threads instead of metric, etc.etc. etc. Lots more work.

I plan to take this opportunity to make a custom, much larger capacity oil sump from the stock oil pan.

Despite my DIY tendencies, at this point I'm quite tired of working on it and wish I could have just gone out and bought a suitable plant, but there isn't anything out there I've found that fits the compact size requirements I have to live with. Everything I've seen is too long to allow furnace access and too wide to fit through the 27" wide door.

THE GOOD NEWS. I built my plant on wheels!

[colwaiting]

Being a long time vw diesel mech, I was going to mention that, but I thought I'd not trouble you. Oldie=not goodie.
These motors last a longtime only because the owners do not notice them wearing out! (just slower...& slower...) Typically the bores are worn way oval and the compression (due to rings) is barely enuff to run. Also when the hedgasket fails, it's the block that warps, so standard gas engine cyl. head refacing does nothing.
I have a good one in my driveway, but it's attached to a car and going to my brother in upstate NY.>>Doug

[rcavictim]

Doug,

Thanx for adding your insight. I didn't know that about the block warpage as opposed to the head. Are you suggesting that merely putting in fresh rings (and a bore crosshatch with a deglazing stone, not a full overbore) might be enough to restore compression on a well used VW 1.6D? This assumes the valves are sealing of course.

There is a diamond shaped inspection cover with two bolts holding it on the side of the block that the FI pump is on just forward of the oil filter mount. Can you tell me what this is for and if it would be a good place to place a hose connection to vent engine blowby from? VW apparently had a simple 'cure' that prevented the way blowby is relieved in the stock engine from the valve cover hose connection, to one that did not allow this flow up the oil return passages from the head.

I have so much oil accumulation upstairs that cannot get back down due to the high blowby flow up into the valve cover. This eventually overwhelms my DIY oil separator and resumes pushing engine oil into the two intake runners. I get a very smoky exhaust when this occurs and before I built the cannister I had engine run away syndrome. Yesterday I put long transparent braided vinyl vertical hoses between the valve cover vent and my separator and now the oil doesn't get quite as far as my separator and the engine exhaust stayed the best I've seen it. The motor ran better and there was no liquid oil coming out of the exhaust manifold. That puky mess was because the pool of excess oil in the head, and the overpressure was forcing oil into the exhaust ports through the exhaust valve guides. With my longer hoses two feet vertically to the separator cannister this has stopped.

Besides still being hard to start it looks like I could actually use this engine for some time if I merely fix the oil pump. It appears that the bypass is stuck open. It makes the power I need at 1800 RPM and is acceptably miserly on fuel. Unfortunately to access the oil pump is the exact same effort as putting in a new engine.

[bergw]

I was just curious if you have any addtional pictures of the design setup you used. I happen to have a factory fresh 1.6 sitting in my garage, and while i had planned on dropping it into another vehicle, the fact is that i could use it running WVO to power my biodiesel plant.

So anything you can give me would be nice. design pictures, pitfalls, things you would do different, etc.

[DigitalJunkie]

That's nearly exactly the idea I had!
Add a heat exchanger or two,and you can have hot water along with the hot air for your shop.


Nice!

Too bad about the engine tho.

[sts9fan]

I drive a VW TDI and I have been told that it is not good for the engine to idle for long periods of time. I am not auto expert its just what I heard. YMMV