First, stop laughing at me

I'm always sitting around thinking of dumb ideas, and I've come up with another one. It involves mounting a 240D engine on a cradle and couple it to a genset head (or two).

The motivation is twofold:

A house that's all electric, including the well pump (480' down) running on 240 with two 30amp fuses. That would require a large generator - one expensive enough to make it not affordable to said homeowners.

A 240D engine running is less than the cost of a cheap diesel genset, and the engine and genset head are less expensive than a decent diesel genset.

The real question is about the governer. A friend of mine has a Unimog with the throttle pedal connected to a governor not to the normal throttle on the injection pump. This seems like what would be needed. Set it at 1800rpm (or something else if the genset is geared to the engine somehow) and then use the governer to keep it at that speed.

How doable is that?

How dumb of an idea is this?

I expect that the engine could have pleanty of muffler installed on it, and a sound-deadening cabinet (like the moderately priced home gensets come with) installed around it. Space really isn't a concern.

-Tad

I am thinking about doing this with a DC welder and air compressor and generator..... So I think it is a pretty good idea...

Beleive it or not, there are commercial Mercedes gensets available currently using the basic 603, with some variations, almost the same as in the early 300SDL and 300D. They may have offered other earlier MB diesels, at some point of time in the past!

How about an old MB reefer engine? There should still be some of those around and they should already be set up to run at a constant speed. The main problems I see with this over an auto engine is availability of parts and if it is powerful enough.

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1985 300D Turbo ~225k
2000 F350 (Powerstroke) 4X4, SWB, CC, SRW, 6spd ~148k
1999 International 4900, DT466e (250hp/660 ft/lbs), Allison MD3060 ~73k

Automotive engines have different characteristics than industrial engines which would be better suited to this purpose. Power curve for one, governor another. Your first challenge would be to find or make adapters to bolt the units together. Industrial engines have standard SAE bolt patterns.

Looking for ways to exhaust the supply of spare parts for these cars is not my favorite topic.

One of the main problems with using an engine from a car is how the power will be transmitted to the genset head. It is not as difficult as you would imagine but it will require some engineering. Your first option is to drive the gen head with belts. This is convienient because sheaves and belts are available in about a billion different combinations down at your local industrial power transfer supplier. Get a look at the master catalogue from Browning and you will be amazed at the options. The problem with belts is that a plain bearing crankshaft is not designed for large side loads from a big belt drive setup. It will literally pull the crank in contact with its bearings and bad things happen. The way around this is to use a flexible coupler. A machine shop can modify a flywheel or make you an adaptor to mount the coupler on the engine. The flexible coupler drives a jackshaft mounted in big pillow block bearings. The drive sheave is mounted to the jackshaft and the pillow blocks take the side load. The other option is to direct drive the gen head with the flexible coupler. I think the belt drive would be preferable as the ratios could be fine tuned to spin the gen head and the engine at their most efficient speeds. This sort of project is not all that difficult if you know how to weld and are a decent fabricator. I have built and worked on systems very similar to this for homebuilt hovercraft and they work very well with plenty more horsepower than the MB engine will provide. Regarding the control of engine speed, the simplest aftermarket cruise control would work fine and be very easy to adapt. RT

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When all else fails, vote from the rooftops!
84' Mercedes Benz 300D Anthracite/black, 171K
03' Volkswagen Jetta TDI blue/black, 93K
93' Chevrolet C2500HD ExCab 6.5TD, Two-tone blue, 252K