[Milsurplus] 3kW Genset

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 6 Apr 2020 at 20:05, W2HX wrote:

>     Very nice, Ray! One safety tip when using hand crank engines. Never wrap your thumb around 
>     the handle. The thumb should be oriented the same way the other fingers are. Reason is, 
>     sometimes engines can have a little kick-back and when it does, it could break your thumb. If 
>     you orient your thumb properly, all that will happen is the handle might pull out of your hand. 
>     My 1961 MGA can also be cranked, and this is the wisdom I learned from the old timers.
>      
>     Eugene

Well, I'm not sure I am an "old timer", but you are certainly correct, Eugene. MY first car was 
a 1930 Model "A" Ford, with hand-crank. We never wrapped our thumb around the crank for 
the very reason you mention above.

I have also had a couple of military generators which used a crank to start. Same deal there.

That black-box you mention, Ray is the voltage regulator. As I remember it, those run on a 
magnetic principle and are usually very reliable once they are working.

You will have to take it apart, and I believe there is at least one capacitor in there that must 
be replaced. In addition, often some good cleaning will help.

Let us know what you run into.

MY favorite military generator is the one which used a Jeep engine to drive it, started by 
"motoring" the generator, had two very large 6 volt batteries in series to start it with, output 
10 kW, and was used with the SCR-399. I never owned one of those, but did rebuild one for 
one of our professor's field research project once. Turns out the engine and all its 
accessories were identical to an engine in a modern farm combine. That genny had less 
than 4 hours on it when he got it from surplus.

I think that was the PE-95, but I may have that number mixed up with the much smaller 2500 
watt, belt-driven job which had a 10 HP B&S single-cylinder, rope-start engine. I had one of 
those. The engine is partcularly interesting because the spark-plug was mounted in a 
"pre-combustion" chamber.

I did receive a brand-new PU-286G once from MARS. A beautiful 5 kW, 1800 rpm genny 
which used a thermo-syphon cooling system.

I really like gennys.

Ken W7EKB

Both output pure sine-wave AC, by the way.