The Random thought thread

[facthunter]

Why Peel them? The skin is the best part Plant a small one and see what Happens, but I don't Know.  Nev

[old man emu]

I was making mashed potato, so didn't want the skins. Even so, there were no eyes on the spuds to plant.

[ClintonB]

Over on the coast, I find spuds don’t keep well. They shoot sprouts all over in the bags.

i planted some Dutch cream ones in a pot. Got a heap of small spuds. Plant grew too quick here and was wilted on top when I dug them out. I used to grow them for over 3  months until the plant died and you dug them.

maybe the temp and humidity here make things run their course quicker.

[facthunter]

A spud MAY Propagate without eyes, Easy to find out.  Bits of anything will often sprout.  Nev

[onetrack]

Spuds don't handle heat and humidity very well at all. On Cocos and Christmas Island, they struggled to survive the trip from W.A., and if they made it, they went "off" in days.

[facthunter]

Bad luck for Irish Crew then? Been to both of those Atolls/islands. (tiny dots in the Indian ocean) many times. Loved it. Nev

[facthunter]

Christmas Island had a Lot of Land Crabs and a big drop off the end of the Runway.  Nev

[willedoo]

My grandfather used to grow red pontiac potatoes and he would bed them down in straw on the floor of the laundry outbuilding to keep them a long time. That was in a cool climate though. I don't know how he kept the rats away from them. I guess I'm an embarrassment to my Irish ancestors, not being a potato eater.

[willedoo]

Picked up this little air cooled 7.75 hp Lister SR1 today for bugger all. Most of it is there except for the fuel tank, air cleaner, fuel filter and some missing fuel lines. It's the clockwise running version. The 7.75 hp is the rating at full revs, 2,500rpm. At 1,000rpm I think they make 4 or 5. Hopefully it won't take too much to make it a runner. There's a place about 100 klm away that sells unaffordable genuine parts and reasonably priced non genuine parts. Everything is still available for them.

[rgmwa]

What are you going to do with it?

[Litespeed]

Starter motor for wills Merlin powered bike

[onetrack]

It's not the first time a keen innovator has built a Lister-powered Rat Bike!

 

 

 

Edited 17 hours ago by onetrack

[rgmwa]

Spoil sport! Don't listen to him Willie. he's just jealous.

 

[willedoo]

10 hours ago, rgmwa said:

What are you going to do with it?

Get it off the back of the ute for a start. Then clean it up, put some parts on it and see if it's going to be a motor or a boat anchor. If it's ok, I might put an alternator on it for a backup.

[facthunter]

They are Cooled by water boiling. Latent Heat of evaporation. That Motor should not Knock. It's spark Ignition, Lister DO make Diesels and river crossing Punts that pull on chains were common Places to Find them. Also used to Pump water on Farms.. Nev

[willedoo]

I've got a few motors to get running so plenty to do. There's a 2H motor, a side valve Howard L motor, a couple of Honda pump motors and a Honda compressor motor to work on as well as this Lister. 

[willedoo]

Not a smart thing to do, 30 Nurofen in two days. it's a wonder he's still got a liver.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15705659/Nurofen-counter-drug-left-clinically-dead.html

[onetrack]

What a donkey. I guess he destroyed his last few functioning brain cells too, with that overdose. There are warnings on the packets of all dangerous products, but it's amazing the number of people who don't even read them, or just dismiss them. Old Italian farmers using pesticides and other farm chemicals are notorious for not reading the labels.

 

Re the SR1, they're a good old engine, but the accent is old, now. They're tricky to work on with largely hidden diesel injection plumbing. The injection parts are where the $$'s are, but they last a long time if they haven't been run with dirt in the fuel. Usually, with most old diesel Listers, pulling the head and doing a top overhaul will see them go for a long time yet.

 

When I was goldmining and re-treating tailings, our partnership bought dozens of new LT1 Lister engines to drive little centrifugal pumps to circulate the cyanide solutions on tailings dams.

They're the smallest of all the Lister engines and run from about 1.5HP to 9HP maximum. You can run them at 3000RPM, but they're pretty noisy at that speed.

 

We used to run the pump engines at about 2000RPM, they would only put out about 5HP at that speed, but it was plenty for the small pumps.

In the multiple years we owned those LT1's (all through the 1980's), we never put a spanner on a single one of them, even though they ran 24/7 when pumping.

 

I've got a stack of engines lined up to restore (after all the tractors and trucks and cars!), but the pride of my collection is a Ruston Hornsby 3 cyl VSH engine rated at 34HP at 1500RPM. It is a monster of an engine, it weighs over 700kgs.

 

It is a 1943 model and was in a powerhouse in a refractory brick plant, but the place was shut down and abandoned, and the thieves got in and stripped anything of value.

The aggravating point here is the thieves stole all the brass ID plates and the exhaust manifold, so I've got some work to bring her back to original condition.

 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by onetrack

[onetrack]

Just a quick correction, my Ruston engine is a VSO, not a VSH. Faulty memory there, and I had to go back and check. I recall I had trouble identifying the engine model until I found "VSO" cast into the cylinder head part number. This means it does 1000RPM maximum speed, the later VSH model was upgraded to 1500RPM. My VSO has cast iron pistons, the VSH went to aluminium pistons.