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Well, that took longer than I expected. Between my normal day job, the 3 week delay in recieving the 48mm ID LoveJoy coupling (which had to be special ordered), and the "All ya gotta do" phenomenon of fabricating the LoveJoy to Flywheel adapter, It took a lot longer than I thought to get to this point.
Below are some pictures of the LoveJoy coupling, and the adapter plate I machined. I now see why other's have started with an automotive disk brake rotor for the adapter plate! My original idea was to be able to keep the 4 groove belt drive pully as part of the install. With the hope being that I would use the belt drive for some later application. Unfortunatly, everything consipired against that idea, specificly the large dimensions of the LoveJoy coupler, which barely fit inside of the existing 4 groove pulley that came with the engine.
Consequently, the idea of keeping the original pulley for futre expansion has been abondoned. OH well...In the mean time, below are some pictures of the adapter I machined from 2 pieces of steel plate, welded to a short piece of 6" schedule 40 steel pipe. The LoveJoy coupler was faced, and then drilled and tapped so that it would be bolted to the coupling I fabricated.
| LoveJoy L150 Coupler and Adapter Plate | |||
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After the coupler was installed, the engine and generator shafts were allighned, the engine mounts welded off to the sub-frame. Next the power distribution panel was attched to the generator dog house and all that was left was to fire the beast up and see what happens!
| Power Distribution Connected | |||
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Initial startup was kind of exciting, heck it was really exciting! :) She cranked right up, I let it run at a low idle for a few moments, then spun it up until I was reading 61Hz on the Kill-A-Watt Meters. At 61Hz, the generator was producing 122Vac with no load.
The first load attached to the generator was a wimpy 7" angle grinder, which pulled 6 amps at startup, and didn't even make a change in the sound of the engine load. After that, we plugged in the Lincon Mig welder, and ran some weld beads which pulled 28amps / 243vac, and the frequency droped to 60.8hz. You could tell the engine was feeling a little load while producing 6.8KW, but it hardly noticed the current draw. Next we found some thicker steel, and turned the Mig welder up as high as it would go. This time we pulled 39Amps / 239vac, and the frequency dropped to 60.2hz. Now were pulling 9.3Kw, or 62% rated power and the motor definetly sounded like it had a load against it, but it also sounded like it had plenty of power left.
More extensive load testing will be done in the future, but this was the best we could come up with at the time. I offered to hook up the Plasma cutter, while my partner ran the Mig welder, but that didn't leave anyone to watch the gauges, so that idea was abandoned.
Next on the to-do list is to fabricate a frame to hold the motor mounts to the sub-frame, build a large fuel tank that will also serve as a roof, upgrade to a radiator based closed loop cooling system, and finally get everything permanenlty assembled, powder coated and ready for the next time I need Power :)
Take Care,
James Lerch
