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Air cooled engine


tz55uk

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Hi all. I'm just in progress of buying a air cooled Ruston hornsy engine. I believe it to be 1958. The only thing I no about it is it hasn't much hours on it and has a fan on front. Sorry if lack of detail but this all I no at present. But my question is what do you think of air cooled engines in boats yours andy

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Why are you buying an engine you know nothing about ? Are you replacing an existing engine, if so what ? A 1958 engine is nearly 60 years old, engine hours will not have been counted. Never seen an air cooled engine in a boat with a fan on the front, Listers have a fan on the gearbox end in an enclosure. Can you match it to a suitable gearbox ? Air cooled engines need to have a means of cool air in and hot air out. They are noisier than water cooled engines. Can you get spares for a 60 year old engine such as this. etc etc etc

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1 hour ago, tz55uk said:

Hi all. I'm just in progress of buying a air cooled Ruston hornsy engine. I believe it to be 1958. The only thing I no about it is it hasn't much hours on it and has a fan on front. Sorry if lack of detail but this all I no at present. But my question is what do you think of air cooled engines in boats yours andy

i would suggest you find out what it is before rather than after buying it. 

11 minutes ago, Exturnaroundman said:

Never seen an air cooled engine in a boat with a fan on the front,

Lister H series 

Edited by hounddog
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By the date i'm guessing Ruston 2YDA. The 6cylinder version has a big fan on the front end driven by triple v-belts and the air is ducted down one side of the individual cylinders. Noisy engines but dead reliable, no messing with cooling water,pumps etc. 1800 rpm max, guess about 20Hp for a 2 pot.

Bill

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1 hour ago, tz55uk said:

Bill thank you that's what I needed to know.  Reliable and not going to over heat

 

Only if you duct cold air to the fan and hot air out of the boat.  Shutting it up  in an engine ole without ducts (not just vents) is likely to result in overheating and seizure.

 

N

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I have seen a few radiator cooled engines in boats,  seemed to work ok, don't know much about Rustons, are you sure it isn't a water cooled engine with the radiator missing? Just a thought.

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1 minute ago, mrsmelly said:

And you go deaf and your false teeth will chatter.

Agreed.

We have just bought a little Honda air cooled 2.3hp outboard and it is deafening and crude when compared to our water cooled 6hp Mariner!

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10 hours ago, Exturnaroundman said:

Why are you buying an engine you know nothing about ? Are you replacing an existing engine, if so what ? A 1958 engine is nearly 60 years old, engine hours will not have been counted. Never seen an air cooled engine in a boat with a fan on the front, Listers have a fan on the gearbox end in an enclosure.

Don't understand the comments about air cooled Listers.

Surely those found on narrow boats are almost invariably the S series (SL, SR or ST) or the H series (HA, HB or HR).

All have a fan on the front.

EDITED TO ADD:

In our search for a spare air cooled Lister HA2, the person we eventually bought from had a shed full of other engines, including quite a few still made up as part of standby generator sets, used by Post Office TERlecomms, (or similar), which seem to have been specced with no expense spared.  Many had large brass cased instruments, including hour counters.  Listers maybe 40 or 50 years old might only show 300 running hours.  Put another way - they were not even run in yet!

Edited by alan_fincher
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39 minutes ago, BEngo said:

Only if you duct cold air to the fan and hot air out of the boat.  Shutting it up  in an engine ole without ducts (not just vents) is likely to result in overheating and seizure.

 

N

Moving topic slightly, 

I recently came across a 38ft boat, cruiser stern- engine was a Volvo Penta 2 cylinder diesel,water cooled. The owner had a lot of trouble with it, it would start ok  and run for a while but gradually lose power and smoke a lot. Turned out, there was no combustion air getting into the engine space, effectively sealed up with the deckboards in place so the poor engine was suffocating. It must have been  like this from new and over twenty years old, but hadn't done much mileage!

bill

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50 minutes ago, BEngo said:

Only if you duct cold air to the fan and hot air out of the boat.  Shutting it up  in an engine ole without ducts (not just vents) is likely to result in overheating and seizure.

 

N

 

I'd say more H series engines in narrow boat engine holes have no ducting on them than do.

I agree it is strictly not good practice, but neither of ours are ducted, and I take the view that if loaded motor butty pairs seem to suffer no ill effects, we were unlikely to with just an unloaded boat.

The issue of course is most available engines lack the relevant ducting.and this is unlikely to be easy to source, and would normally be fabricated from scratch.  Very few H series owners seem to bother, from my observations.  We looked at quite a lot of engines recently, and none were being sold with the necessary cowl to duct hot  air away via trunking.

Mind you, if anyone has these parts for sale at a reasonable cost, I would be happy to buy them.

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1 minute ago, hounddog said:

Yes, they do, it's called the engine room doors. 


In that case I'll try to remember to say "can you take the tiller for a couple of minutes whilst I just pop in through the ducting to use the loo".

Hardly the same thing, though, it it.  Trunking to duct the hot air out means the engine is not sucking it in again.  Just having the engine a couple of feet below open side doors will not stop it recirculating its own expelled hot air.

 

  • Greenie 1
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An air cooled engine that definitely isn't going to overheat..? I doubt it. 

You don't see so many these days but I have witnessed plenty of owners of old Lister powered boats waiting for their engines to cool down.  The problem with air cooled is when you run these engines at low revs in an enclosure.  I agree you need to give a lot of thought to installation (look at all the trouble VW had to go to with the Beetle cooling system.) and if you give it enough air you will never be able to reduce the noise.   I saw an immaculate Water Travel boat a few years ago with a 3 cylinder Lister. Solid mounted,  in an open compartment with a big pigeon box on the roof and no deck boards.  It was never going to overheat but boy it was LOUD.  

 

Edited by Neil2
punctuation
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Ran a PD2 with engine hole doors open for years. Crane had an Sr3 when brought from Willow Wren and never any trouble, our 50 footer had an HB with no trunking and always kept doors open. H series are probably the best air cooled listers for narrow boats. A good silencer helps with the noise but maybe the reason I now have hearing aids or it could be using windy hammers on ships decks with no ear defenders.

david

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13 hours ago, tz55uk said:

Hi all. I'm just in progress of buying a air cooled Ruston hornsy engine. I believe it to be 1958. The only thing I no about it is it hasn't much hours on it and has a fan on front. Sorry if lack of detail but this all I no at present. But my question is what do you think of air cooled engines in boats yours andy

An air-cooled Ruston made at around that time will be from the YBA, YDA or YWA series. The YB's were produced only as single or twin cylinder units and were rated at 6.25 bhp/cylinder at 1800 rpm. The YDA's were available as 2,3,4 or 6 cylinder units producing approximately 20bhp/cylinder at 2200 rpm at industrial ratings - slightly less at marine ratings, and at 2000 rpm - and limited to approximately 16 bhp/cylinder when governed to 1500 rpm for electrical power generation.

The YDA series all used belt driven cooling fans mounted at the gear (timing case) end and were very noisy engines, with the howling from the cooling fan competing quite successfully with fairly loud and harsh combustion noise (diesel 'knock'). This model also had an unendearing reputation for the geardriven lubricating oil pump mounting lugs occasionally failing through metal fatigue, resulting in the pump ceasing to work and dropping into the sump whilst the engine was running.

The YWA series was available in single, twin or 3 cylinder models only, utilized a flywheel fan for circulating cooling air, produced a maximum of 14.5 bhp/cylinder when rated at 2200 rpm, and were slightly less noisy than the YDA's. All three models required the cooling air to be ducted outside when installed in a confined and closed, or partially closed space.

If you would like to talk to someone with 'hands-on' experience of maintaining and overhauling the YDA and YWA series engines I recommend you contact Tony Dunkley on 07553 294325 or at > tony@canalrivertransport.com <.

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Ok cool stuff thank you everyone for assistance in this. Much appreciated. So I've got engine hatches no false teeth yet and good hearing. Maybe twelve month this be different. I will post pictures of it all when I can again many thanks yours andy

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Always had h series listers.one had trunking ha2 two others hb3 and hb2 no trunking. The one with trunking got hot, the others never. The reason for the overheating was tracked down to god knows how much dog hair around the air cooling system from the years the boat had been operated by owners whose dog enjoyed the engine room. The stuff h series engines draw in by the big front fan is incredible.

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