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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.24] on Thursday, July 05, 2012 at 12:27:16 :
In Reply to: Re: FINALLY! posted by Paul(in NY) [12.64.108.208] on Thursday, July 05, 2012 at 11:47:24 :
I've never heard that term, but I've heard that as a rule, piston engines in general, and large diesels in particular should not be run at light load continually for a long time. The reason is that the cylinders will "wear in" to the piston excursion at light load and then when you put a heavier load on it the rings will hit the cylinder ridge and tend to break. I can understand how this would happen if you ran it at idle for a long time, and then when you speed it up, the rods would stretch a bit and the pistons would reach a little further up into the cylinders, but my understanding is it's a problem if run at full speed (typically 1800 RPM) and light load, rather than just at idle. There, it seems to me the piston excursion should be just the same, or perhaps even slightly further, at light load than at full load. Maybe it's a matter of where the rings sit in the grooves in each case.
I have a military 60 kW genset that I intend to use for running the sawmill someday, which is why I was reading up on it. According to the TMs, you're supposed to put a load bank on it in case of sustained light load. Of course the Army doesn't care about the price of diesel. I figure in my case it would be fully-loaded often enough during normal operation, with a 40hp electric motor on the mill and another 40hp on the planer/molder. First I have to fix the engine, though, which appears to be a commercial Case diesel under the green paint.
As for Paul's system, that's definitely the ideal, but not everyone can do that. I just wanted to point out that if you don't have the kind of money of space for the ultimate backup powerplant, you can still make your house way more civilized during a power outage by using a car battery and an inverter, plus maybe a bit of jerry-rigged wiring.
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