New member and lister D for restoration

Some pics of my Lister D for restoration, long way to go, but it turns over and has compression, biggest problem it has is one of the feet have been snapped off the casting and lost, but I like a challenge and could not see it go for scrap.

Making a new foots probably not so hard, attaching it is, but I have a friend who has a welding business so will talk to him, but if anyone has any suggestions or has done this be very grateful to know.

Other than that at the moment its soak it in freeing oil for a while, can left on top and give it a spray on walking past.

Be back for more advice as I progress I reckon.

looks ripe for restoration

What are you going to do about the broken foot ? replace the crankcase ??? or leave as it is ?

matt

Ref the missing foot think i would get a chunk of steel and using one of the existing feet as a template make a copy then get your mate to weld it on for you, you could also drill both the new foot and the base of engine and add a steel rod for extra strength prior to welding

the engine is the twin of mine even the exhaust was cut off the same, with the foot i would machine a new one and try to weld it on, i would of thought it would be fine with the missing foot as the remaining 3 eould support it enough?

Looks like a good project & a fairly complete engine, all bar the war wound.

best of luck, we've got a few Lister D specialists here who are only too willing to help.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys, this is my forst project with such things other than car engines and the odd suffolk lawnmower etc.

I think the piece of steel machined up, and then welded my by mate is the way to go. I can weld but not cast. The pins a good idea, have to work out how much meat is in the base and have a look.

Shes got a way to go first, need stripping and then assessing, but its complete. The flywheel and gib look fun, i remember them being a swine from my industry days - and we had a key puller. A clean up, some oil, some heat and patience should help.

Its a project for me, theres no hurry so I will be taking my time at it, think it deserves some TLC after 66 years.

I cut the exhaust off to lay it over in the car and pack it up, there was nothing left of the silencer anyway.

Anyone know the best place to get an overhaul manual - ebay ??.

Or how about jb weld ??? i know can be a bit dubious about it but it can be really strong , i know it to be used on gearboxes .
Wind of day just has to look right the other 3 can hold it down just put bolt and nut and just nip it up . Thats what i would do .


there is a restoration book you can get try ebay .

matt

good little project, re the mount/foot/lug your mate should be able to TIG a replacement on without major issue using a nickel filling rod it will need a good "V" cutting into it all the way round the joint faces to give a good surface area for the joint though.

You should be able to find a reprint Lister D instruction and parts booklet on ebay for about £4 (make sure you get the right one for your engine and not the one for the 'earlier' model). You can also buy a book on how to restore a Lister D from 'Stationary Engine Books', I bought one and found it very useful when I refurbished my Lister D a few years ago: http://www.stationaryenginebooks.co.uk/lister.htm

Stationary Engine Books is run by a chap called David Edgington who has written a number of books on the history of different stationary engines, he also has the old factory records for Lister engines, so if you send him the spec number and engine number for your engine he should be able to tell you the date it was made and who it was first supplied to (if you don't know already). He provides this info service free of charge, so I like to buy my books direct from him if I can. If you still have some money spare then you might be interested in his book 'The Lister D story', which I enjoyed reading. Hope this is useful?

Looks like a nice project you have and it will be interesting to know how you get on with it. As for the foot if your going to weld one on you would need to heat the crankcase so you can cast weld but you'd have to be careful so nothing warps with the heat. Myself I'd make one and use plastic metal and not tighten that bolt down to much the other 3 should be enough to hold it for normal use on a rally field.

Stu.

Could not resist a tinker with my purchase, bit cold in the workshop at the moment in snowy Essex, I manage to get the carb and exhaust off with all the bolts coming out. Only one can out of the watter hopper, so they are for drilling out later.

Had a result as amongst all the rust flakes in the hopper was the broken foot, whoever broke it was thoughtful enough to throw it in there, just needs fixing back now.

My first job is to make a puller up to help ease the flywheel off, going to get a couple of hooks cut out of some half inch plate, mill some slots in a piece of channel iron, feed them through and pin them and that should help with easing it off. May also be a key puller being produced.

Anything that used to move on the carb is now well and truly siezed, that's in a pot of plus gas for a few weeks and we'll see what can be encouraged to move, no hurry for that bit as thats a long way off.

Fuel tanks sound, bit surface rusty in places, and the caps rusted on, on the shelf out the way to be dealt with later.

All good at the moment.

That's great news about the missing foot!

Sounds like it's all starting to move forward. Looking forward to hearing your progress, as & when it happens.

Best of luck.

Well done on the foot find, I was a bit puzzled to why you'd have a foot in your hopper then I remembered

One of the best tools you can have is patients, saves a lot of extra work repairing the damage caused by forcing things.

Stu.

Yes, I can go with the patience bit, slow and steady always wins the race, as they say.

The carb responded to soaking, and i have now got all that nicely free, all in pieces now in one my compartment boxes.

Got the head off after a fight, really put up a struggle being stuck on the one on the short edge of the hopper, i could get the head up by about 3/8" after some fighting, enough to just get a couple of lifting straps under it, lift the whole lot slightly off the ground and encourage the block downwards - it worked a treat. All seems OK inside, the water jacket is stuffed full of rust, mainly from inside the head but this may have been its saving grace, having stood outside theres no room for any water to get in, totally choked so its not filled up and frozen.

Hauled the magneto off, the chain is beyond any form of hope, quick clean of the points and tip the crud out inside and it seems good. Spinning it by hand and it managed to give me a good jolt, reminded of playing with Meggers when i was an apprentice. Theres life in it, on the shelf, back to that one later.

Had a word over a beer with my mate about the foot, and he can only give me a 60% chance of it welding OK, its on the corner and the way the stresses would run may just screw it. At the moment I am going for drilling a hole right through the foot from the front - through the mounting hole, counter boring it. Drill and tap the block and then using a cap screw into the block and some devcon in there. Fill the hole up and its part way to being a reasonable engineering repair. Know off the edges and fill the them with devcon, smooth them off and it will hopefully blend in after painting.

The head seems to have gone very thin in the casting in one place round the stud that fought, pondering that one at the moment, Ive got a good head in much better shape but I would love to keep it as original as I can.

Picture below of the block....

Top of the block

What is Devicon? Is it just a filler? If so I would be inclined to use something like Quicksteel Putty or J.B. Weld to fill in the gaps around the screw & over the screw head. these are very strong metal adhesives, I've had some good results with them in the past, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be strong enough on their own.

Still, you're cracking on I see. Head already off, you've already over taken my Lister D project.

Hmmm, heard of JB weld - have to look it up. Devcon is one of the epoxy steel loaded puttys, sure with something like that in there and a cap screw it will be a reasonable repair, smoothed in and painted it wont look too bad, certainly better than it does now.

What i would really love is to have it runnning by Aug, its our village fete then and it would make an interesting exhibit, the villages history is agriculture and farming. Still if not this year certainly ready for next.

Would like to have it all stripped so when the better weather gets here the workshops more inviting and not so cold.

Flywheel next, making up a large puller (waiting for a couple of hooks to be cut out of some 16mm plate) and a key puller, so some milling and turning to do.

The pushrods seem to have a slight bend in them, anyone know if this is normal ?, every other pushrod I have seen has never been bent, the ones in my BMC A series were not either.

Sounds like Devcon is the same kind of stuff as Quicksteel putty & J.B. Weld, they are both 2 part epoxy metal glues. Sounds like you've got the right idea to me, a good screw & glue fixing should hold, especially as it's one of 4 feet.

Dunno about the pushrods, sounds iffy to me.

The pushrods often have a slight bend on them but straighten easily enough. Are the little hardened valve caps there as they are sometimes missing due mostly to folk removing the head and turning it upside down, they fall off into the sh1t without folk realising that they were ever there? Sometimes you find them in the sludge in the crankcase.

Pete.

My little JAP model 3 had valve caps, what a mega PITA they were, it was a much smaller & lighter head, I lost count of the times I dropped the damn things & had to go searching for them!

You'd think I would've learned after the first few times, but it wasn't to be.

One of my D's had bent push rods, I managed to get a good set of a friend. Don't know why they bend as the engine was in a cement mixer and it wasn't high up for maintenance so the clearances couldn't be to tight. Only thing I could think of was cr4p getting under the push rod ends and them bending as they were to tight, but that's my mind running wild LOL.

Stu.

I think a lot of the trouble with these is they don't get a lot of oil up there. I believe you are supposed to lift the rocker cover from time to time & give all the valve gear a good squirt of oil, as well as remembering to screw the greaser in. I suppose a lot of that was forgotten back in the day, all of which puts more stress on the push-rods, & they are quite long rods as well.

Of course, once they start to bend they will only get worse, as the directions of the forces are all changed & the rod is, in effect, weakened until it's straightened again.

Funnily enough, one of the reasons the British Government didn't take the VW Beetle design after the war was because they believed the engine was faulty by design as the push-rods were too long (among other things). Then it went on to be one of the most successful cars on the planet! Of course there's a lot more to the story than that, but that little fact always springs to mind when push-rods come up in conversation.

Think I will straighten the push rods out when the time comes, job for the lathe, a DTI and some patience. Only slightly bent and I dont know what happened to them, everything inside the engine was free.

Had some time today, rain stopped play laying my driveway, so spent the morning getting the rest of the engine apart. My key puller and flywheel puller worked a treat, off without a fight .

I now have a nice empty crankcase on the bench so I can see what I am dealing with now, and can use that as the building block. Just to coax the head studs out now, one just unscrewed, the others are stuck fast so penetrating oil, tweaking, more oil and time on those. They are in a pretty poor state, anyone one know where I can get replacements from ?? - think it will be a scour ebay job.

A good cleanout of the gunky old oil and I can start looking at gettting the foot re attached.

Progress...

There's always a few head studs on ebay for sale so you shouldn't have much of a problem getting some. Can you get any heat onto the block to see if that will help.

Stu.

Hello Biomed,

I, just had the time to read this thread and reply to it.

I am also starting with an older Lister D, to restore.

I must have less time on my hands than you do as you are Eons ahead of me with your project.
I am following your posts with interest as you (apart from the foot problem) have the same tasks ahead as I do.

Did you have a real hard time with the key and flywheel to come off? I am about to start with mine hopefully in the next week or so when work dies down a bit.
The flywheel is next as I want that off regardless of having done anything else to dismantle the engine. (Then maybe I could lift the blasted thing by hand!)

My main job (as much as I can tell sofar) is to replace the main bearings and what ever else shows up when I get to that point.
Noting also the comments on the slightly bent pushrods, I will now have the forethought to check mine when I get to them.
Sofar on the valve train, I will need to re-bush the shaft and properly space the rockers as everything wobbles pretty good when things are turned over by hand.

I will be going through the same motions you just went through and will be looking forward to the next few posts.

It was good to read that some one before you had put the broken foot in the hopper..., bonus!

Regards and good luck, John.

Hi John (smitty)

Good to know someone else is going through the learning like me, its always been car engines up til now, so this stationary engine resto is new to me as well.

The key and flywheel came off easily, I spent a couple of hours making a key pulling plate up from a lump of 3" bar, and made a flywheel puller of from a lump of channel iron. I have put some pics below. I used a couple of small lifting straps round the channel iron and behind the flywheel, waiting for some steel hooks to be cut from some plate. I had been feeding it freeing oil for a few weeks as well, and smoothed the end of the crank off with some wet and dry, no lumps and bumps.

I have yet to discover how the crank and bearing assy comes apart, my bearings are OK, as is pretty much everything else mechanically, just crudded up and external parts siezed up, bore, piston and internal moving parts are 100%. I may just clean the crank assy as is in a pot of paraffin and leave well alone, don't fix what's not broken.

Good luck, be keen to know how you get on with it, I'm coaxing head studs out at the moment, got two to move this morning, two to go.







Any one got any heads studs that they wish to sell on ?, especially the shorter ones in the water hopper ??.