New NY guy on the hunt for a mep-002a...

[Chrispyny]

Can anyone please show me with pics, how you are making your load banks ? I am ready to plug to house, but would prefer to load test the generator first before hooking up an unproven generator to my house. Seeing as I value my house and all. I would like to run a lead off the lugs to a bank of fused outlets. Then i'll use cheap heaters and hair dryers to progressively add load until satisfied. I'm having a hard time picturing how to run off the lugs, thru fuses, and into outlets. I'd like to have a fairly balance load so that matters.
Also ordering new valve cover gasket for 002a from a member here. I would like to check valve lash before I put a heavy load on her. And I plan to send my injectors to another member here to check for correct psi before I warm her up real good. I really can't imagine I have a timing problem with my IP. Everything looks beautiful and unmolested. I can't imagine it's a timing issue.
Regarding the issue with the genset not starting at 60 hz. Is that really an issue? I mean I bring it RIGHT up to 60 once she fires up? lemme know guys. Thanks

 

[Isaac-1]

The valve cover gaskets on these can generally be reused with no need to replace to check valve clearance, still it is good to have a spare just in case. I too would test the injectors before looking at the pump as a possible issue

Ike

 

[Ray70]

Are you thinking of running several 120V heaters or do you have anything that is 240V? I have a couple 2000W 240V heaters that I hooked up to the terminal lugs then I used a heat gun on the convienence outlet to test my units. If you want to run several 120V devices it would be easy enough to wire up a couple outlets to the lugs. Put the hot wire from 1 plug on L1, the hot wire from the other plug on L3, both commons on L0 and grounds to the chassis ground if you have your chassis frame not bonded to the L0 terminal. If L0 is bonded to the chassis you can run both the common wire and ground to the L0 terminal. Then you can also put more accessories on the convienence outlet.
You don't really need to go through the work and expense of running everything through additional breakers just for the sake of load testing the machine prior to hooking it to your house. If you insist on going through breakers you can easily hook up a small breaker panel to the lugs then wire outlets to the breaker panel, or hard wire your heating elements into the breaker panel. Or some guys have found relatively cheap load distribution boxes on ebay and Amazon that they have wired to the terminal lugs.
As far as starting at 60Hz, I have 3 machines and they all seem to start easier at lower RPM for some reason. If I leave the throttle at 1800 RPM they tend to crank, smoke and chug more before they run smoothly when cold, but once running they seem to handle up to 125% loads without a problem.

 

[Keith_J]

I use 240 volt, 4500 watt water heater elements to load test. I have them mounted to a plastic panel, then the elements go into a bucket of water. Use a metal bucket and make sure to ground the bucket. Plus never touch the elements with breaker closed.

Nothing cheaper.

 

[Ray70]

Like Keith said... keep the heating element portioned submerged in the water and put them in the water before turning on the power. I can tell you from my Biodiesel days that some 4500W elements that are not submerged will quickly burn themselves up, especially a single loop element. The lower density double loops are more forgiving. Carefull using electricity around water! Using anything 240V pretty much simplifies load balancing, unless you add substantially more load to the 120V convienence outlet.

 

[Chrispyny]

I use 240 volt, 4500 watt water heater elements to load test. I have them mounted to a plastic panel, then the elements go into a bucket of water. Use a metal bucket and make sure to ground the bucket. Plus never touch the elements with breaker closed.

Nothing cheaper.

Any chance i can get u to snap a few pics ? U can email them to me if posting is a pain. Ty!

Ty all who are replying also. I can't possibly thank you all and this site enough. It has been a wealth of information which has helped me tremendously. I don't think i would have been able to get this far as smoothly as i have without you all !

 

[Chrispyny]

Hey all. Couple comments and a question.

I just got my injectors back from jerrry. Very fast turn around. He said neither was off by much which again falls under the possible true 89 hours on my machine. I installed injectors and ran the generator for an hour last night without load. Came up with some temperature numbers and would like to veryify my findings with others. Temps outside were 75 degrees. After a sold hour of smooth running i got 125 deg f. on the valve cover, 145 at most on the front louvers that automatically open and close and about 150 on the block and oil pan. Over all the generator stayed remarkably cool the whole time. The louvers opened about an inch or so which makes me happy to see the mechanics of them are working and in order. Oil pressure on my brand new guage from saturn sat at about 39 psi after 1 hour. L1 measured 120 v, L3 measured 120v, and across both was 240.
Remarkably my frequency meter 'kinda' woke up last night. instead of sitting pinned at 65 hz, after 30 minutes of running leveled out to 60 hz, but randomly shoots from 60 to pinned and back for no reason. And the meter does not read frequency adjustments made by the throttle knob so i don't trust it one bit. Once i find some extra money, a whole set of guages from jim are in order for sure.
Frankly i'm very pleased with the generator. I want to thank everyone here on steelsoldiers for all your supportive comments through my trials with this thing. You have all been very supportive and i would not have come this far without the support of all the members here.
Question about the frequency adjustment knob ( throttle knob ) . When i set the knob to say 60.5 hz, the light vibration of the machine slowly allows the knob to turn down below 60 hz most of the time. I could easily tape the knob in position with electrical tape or something of that nature, but i'm not satisfied with that fix. Does anyone have a suggestion for me to keep the knob from turning down under vibration ?

Has anyone built a generator enclosure for these suckers ? I have ideas in my head but would love to see what others have come up with !

 

[steelypip]

Your reported variables are completely normal. You probably needed most of that hour to get the temperatures where they were, but the cooling system louvers did what they could to get the engine up to operating temperature.

150 F on the block is normal in my experience - I generally measure the temperature at the oil filter housing, as it conveniently sticks out and you know it has oil fresh from the pan running through it. I actually find this temperature a little low for best engine health - you really want to see oil in the pan at 170-190F to prevent emulsified water. It's a good reason to put a serious load on the set, both to get it to warm up faster, and to keep the oil drier.

In any event, be religious about the oil change interval - it's hard to get one of these sets to run hot enough in normal operation to really dry the oil out.

You've got a pretty normal failure mode for the Hz meter. The meter movements seldom go bad as long as they don't get internally wet, but the transducer assemblies have all kinds of flaky failure modes that manifest like what you saw. You might be able to fix the flicking needle by gently tightening all the connections to the transducer box and meter movement.

My Hz meter also often starts off a run with a nonsense reading and then suddenly starts working. I just check the frequency with a kill-a-watt early in the run and then notice that the meter 'woke up' sometime later and is reading in the same range.

I believe there's a friction adjustment for the knob - maybe just a rubber grommet. have a look in the manual. If not, you might consider some heavy grease on the vernier threads.

There have been several postings about enclosures for the sets - directing the sound up is generally helpful. Material is not critical - good results have been reported with insulation over exterior grade plywood. As you may have observed, you won't get a lot of quieting from a muffler, but I run a small tractor muffler and stack flap on mine to both direct the exhaust (and sound) up and keep water out. Most of the sound comes from the cooling system: valve gear noise and diesel combustion noise carried by resonating cooling fins and the cooling blower all contribute. Check out the design of the MEP002/003 ASK to see what they damped and how.

 

[Chrispyny]

OK all. I really need some help cause i think im going nuts. So i went to adjust valve lash tonite .. i can not for the life of me see any markings on the fan which would support A or B markings anywhere .. i see the arrow that i should be aligning these markings to, but no markings anywhere on the fan itself. Am i loosing my mind ? I went as far as to scrape some CARC off the fan to see if it was covering the markings somewhere. I have no clue. I can not find an image anywhere, here or via major search engines.
Can someone please either tell me where to look or post an image please ? thanks

 

[dangier]

You say fan. A and B markings are on the flywheel. Not really that difficult. Just have the cylinder you are working on in the compression stroke with the valves closed.
David

 

[Chrispyny]

thanks, found the viewing port .. why the heck is there an indicator needle pointing to the squirrel cage fan if there are no markings on it ? Its cast into the aluminum cover that i assume goes to the inner workings of governor ? .. it can be viewed directly by looking from the ' close to run' cover when looking towards the fan.

Well anyhow, i measured the valve lash and the head being at 65 degrees per my harbor freight infared laser thermometer, the intake lash was like .014 and .016 thousanths on 1 and 2 cylinder respectfully, and exhaust was like .011+ and .013+ respectfully. I have to either find feeler gauges that have a .007 feeler ( my feeler gauge fell apart some time ago and some went missing when i put it back together) or just approximate from .006 to .008 with the 2 that i have.
Will i be accurate enough at 65 degrees ? should i leave an extra thousanth or so to ensure i'm not overtightening ? Amazing that this thing runs so well with the lash so loosey goosey like it is.

 

[steelypip]

Your go/nogo pair of .006 and .008 should be fine for .007" if you're careful. If the .006 is a loose slip fit and the .008 doesn't go, you know that you're no tighter than .0065 and no looser than .008. Just be sure you're on the loose side of the .006 measurement.

Another OK option if you're not comfortable with that is to adjust them to a tight slip to .008" Loose clearances are safer than overtight ones - less risk of burning a valve. If your .008 just barely goes with gentle persuasion then you know you're right at .008" free.

Don't worry too much about the temperature - mostly they want you to have not run the set in the last 6 hours or so, and for it not to be significantly below shirtsleeve temperatures either. As long as the whole engine is all equilibrated to the ambient temperature which is between 50 and 90 F (and in the shade) you'll be just fine. Most small displacement light alloy engines have clearance setting rules like this because the clearances are small and easily influenced by different parts of the engine being different temperatures. Check any manual for a motorcycle or light aviation engine and you'll see similar restrictions.

My SOP for clearance checking is to not have run the engine that day - make the clearance check with an honestly 'cold' engine. If it's sitting in a 60 F garage and it has all night, then you know it's all really that temperature, and your clearances will really be what your feeler gauges say.

The TM is explicit about temperature a) because they don't want you setting the clearance in a driving snowstorm, and b) because some few engines have the IMO terrible standard of setting clearances 'hot', meaning when the engine is at a particular operating temperature and has just been shut off. It's really hard to get 'hot' the same amount of 'hot' every time, and it is', by comparison, pretty easy to make sure the whole engine is cold soaked to the same temperature if it has sat overnight.

On engines that have 'hot' clearance recommendations, I usually try to do it exactly right by the book once, then let it cool off overnight and measure the clearances the next day and use those for bench numbers from then on, which is what the factory engineers should have done in the first place. It's one less variable to manage.

 

[Chrispyny]

Wow thanks man. Thats exactly what i wanted to hear. !