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Have you ever seen a ASK kit? I am going to try and attach a picture of an ASK kits for a 30 KW gen set. See attached picture. The kits were almost all the same, 15, 30 or 60 KW.
This picture gives you an idea what the parts looked like. To make it simple, you took off the outer skin, (doors, tops etc.) of the gen set. The radiator stays in its frame, (TM 9-6115-545-24P, Figure 78, items 7&
along with the control panel, (TM 9-6115-545-24P, Figure 16, item 71). Put the ASK kit on the "frame" of the stripped down gen set, and enclose it, top, sides and bottom. The parts were covered in sound absorbing material. The only open "doors" were on top of the box, (See enclosed picture) Item 1 and 2, front and rear. Cooling air flowed from the rear of the set, through the Inlet turn, (Item 2.) down to, and through the main A.C., past the engine, through the radiator, and up through the Discharge turn, (item 1.).
The control panel was accessible by the door, Item 17. The control panel portion was NOT in the cooling path. It was separated somewhat. ALL doors were closed to run, except the two top doors. When you wanted to perform maintenance or look for leaks/problems, doors on the side could be opened. Very quiet. Until you opened the door while running. Kind of a pain in the butt to work on. Draining oil and coolant became a major chore. This part was poorly thought out. The whole rigmarole was bolted down on a M-200A1 trailer.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, yes, you could build an enclosure to encompass the gen set, any gen set for that matter, to keep it from raising the dead. I do not think it’s a big deal. You might even find one of these ASK kits for sale in EBAY or from the Gov. I have seen them for sale. They did not need any extra means to keep the set cool. No fans or anything else like that. The air flow is the exact same as if the set was without the ASK. Cool air is drawn in to the rear bottom doors, through the main A.C., past the engine, and through the radiator to remove heat and cool the radiator. Nothing different. As long as you keep all doors closed.
All parts were attached with locking mechanisms, so you could remove the ASK in a hurry, (HA-HA) if you had to replace the gen set. This was a monumental project to switch out gen sets.
Sadly, it was the intention of the army to retain all the parts removed when installing this MWO, (Modification Work Order). It was intended to be a semi-permanent application. But with the possibility to return the gen set to its original configuration. Any fool who spent longer than twenty seconds in the army would have known different. As soon as the kits were installed, commanders decided that it was unsightly to have large piles of gen set doors, tops and the ten million parts removed from each set, just lying around. What to do with all this “JUNK”? You bet-cha! Toss it all away. And that’s just what happened. Hundreds of these set were later sent to the scrap heap, because they could no longer be returned to the original configuration.
