Dumb idea?

[alan4494]

Hello to everyone. My search has lead me to your forum. I don't know much about electricity, but I know something about old Mercedes diesels. I have Two (82TD / 83D) and a 84 TD that I use for a parts car. It's shot body wise but has a great engine and trans. It just sits there doing nothing, soooo our (mine) idea was to pull the engine, build a fame for it and hook it to a 10kw 1800 rpm generator head. Then I got the bright idea (mine again) to just leave it in the car, jack up the back, weld the proper pully to the rim and hook it to the generator head with a belt. Theres a little more to it than that I know. Have I been standing to close to the paint thinner or should this work. Any feedback would be helpful. ???

[annabella1]

The engine should be able to produce power, I don't know if you would need a generator head if you have an alternator you can charge batteries. I also don't know about running it off the rim I think you would lose a lot of power working it that way.

[12vman]

"Dumb Idea"?.. Ain't no idea dumb if ya don't know the possibilities of what ya have.. ;)

With that size of engine you could operate a much larger generator but how could store the extra energy? A 10kw generator would only require around 12 h.p. to make it work..

Here's a thought..
I'll bet there are many folks out there looking for one of those cars you have being it's diesel. Folks doin' the biodiesel thing would like to have one to rebuild or just for the engine. Maybe do a swap for a smaller diesel engine (1-2 cylinder) that would be easier on fuel and easier to handle. That would make the connection to the generator a whole lot simpler too..

[DM]

I've seen other's use car motors to power a generator. You have to come up with a govenor for it and also work out the side loads on the crank that it's not designed for, but it can be done...

For those not already having a motor, i think buying an older tractor is a better idea, as it already has the govenor and a pto out the back to take power from and i see them cheap from time to time. Also, it's not to hard to find used PTO gensets....

DM

[DM]

A 10kw generator would only require around 12 h.p. to make it work..

For continous duty you need at least 2hp per 1,000 watts., so 10kw needs 20hp..

I know when you do the math it says less hp is needed, but in the real world with all the loss' ect.. it does take 20hp.

Of course, you can put less hp on the genset and just pull smaller loads out of it too... I do this fairly often with my PTO genset when i don't need to make a lot of power with it...

DM

[MadTripper]

From an engineering standpoint, 746W = 1 horsepower.